The top ten nerd curses... (does not include eat slugs by dear Ron.) 

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The Top Ten Curses in Nerd History, Not Including the One That Made Ron Barf Slugs

Skipped over at basketball tryouts? Spurned by that cute boy in psychology? Constantly retching up slugs on the turf at school? You might be the victim of an ancient curse! But before you can break the spell, you need to figure out exactly how your juju got bent out of shape. Let\'s take a look at how victims of black magic have broken some of the biggest curses in history...

After the Boston Red Sox traded away Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919, they experienced 86 years of not winning the World Series (*rattles windowpanes*), in which time the Yankees won 26 titles (see also:

). The Red Sox broke the curse by winning in 2004 and have not traded anyone named Babe or Ruth from the team since. In fact, they won\'t even allow the candy bar Baby Ruth to leave the locker room uneaten. That\'s how superstitious pennant-hungry athletes can be.

 Through the witchery of Pedro Martinez\'s pitching, Johnny Damon\'s lead-off home run, and Manny Ramirez\'s magic steroid beans. BONUS PREVENTATIVE CURSE: A Red Sox fan attempted to protect against further bad juju by burying a David Ortiz jersey at the site of the new Yankee Stadium. The Yankee\'s quickly performed an "excavation ceremony" to exhume the jersey (via several jackhammers) and the spell was broken. The Red Sox are still not as good as the Yankees (kidding).

President William Henry Harrison won the 1840 election because of his strong leadership at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. Legend has it he was cursed by an Native American chief during that battle, by extension cursing every president subsequently elected in years that are multiples of ten. Sounds VERY specific, doesn\'t it. Well, until Reagan (elected in 1980) made it out of office alive, seven presidents (including Harrison) all died in office: 1840 (W Harrison, natural causes), 1860 (Lincoln, shot), 1880 (Garfield, shot), 1900 (McKinley, shot), 1920 (Harding, natural causes), 1940 (F Roosevelt, natural causes) and 1960 (Kennedy, shot).

Fluoridated water? Tiny running shorts? The birth of Jessica Simpson? It\'s unclear what \'80s talisman protected dear Reagan, but the spell was broke!

According to nerd legend, any actor who dons the blue and red costume is doomed to horrible luck. Actor George Reeves, who portrayed Superman in the television show, committed suicide. Movie star Christopher Reeve became paralyzed after falling off a horse, and 

Oh wait, maybe not! According to Wikipedia, "In 2013 Cain agreed to host a reality show about Bigfoot called "10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty" where he offers contestants $10,000,000.00 to prove the existence of Bigfoot."

Forget about Annabelle, cursed dolls are nowhere near as creepy as cursed

 In 1955, Hollywood heartthrob James Dean was killed in a car accident when his brand new Porsche, nicknamed "Little Bastard," crashed into another car. Later, car enthusiast George Barris bought the wreck for $2,500 and when it arrived at his garage it slipped and crushed one of his mechanic\'s legs! Later, two race car drivers, McHenry and Eschrid, used some of the  parts in their cars with disastrous results. McHenry\'s car, who had the Little Bastard\'s engine, went out of control and hit a tree and Eschrid\'s car flipped over! Both racing cars were scrapped, ending the curse. Unless there is still a cursed tail pipe somewhere...

The evil car was dismantled and thrown into the ocean, metaphorically speaking. (Also how Rose dealt with the Heart of the Sea.)

If you are 27 and famous, you are living in the most dangerous year of your life. Many celebrities have died at age 27, including guy-on-your-friend\'s-t-shirt Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin who your grandpa saw at Woodstock, The Doors\' Jim Morrison, musician Robert Johnson, and Nirvana\'s Kurt Cobain. Now this may not be so much a curse as a affect of fame and drug use, but many people claim there is something spooky about 27.

OH MY GOURDS IN TIGHTS! Not another superhero curse! This one is less of a supernatural happening as it is the repercussions of putting together a dangerous Broadway show:

. Problems started during rehearsals back in 2010, when an actor suffered a broken foot and a concussion the same night a stunt double broke both of his wrists. *POW!* Then, on the night of the first preview performance, one of the main actresses got a concussion when she was hit in the head by a rope. *BAM!* You didn\'t need Spidey Sense to know that show was trouble. Broken bones and a dwindling cast were just one part of the curse: the other part saw U2\'s Bono transformed into a douchecanoe, secretly plotting against producer Julie Taymoor by email.

Bono\'s luck went from bad to worse when he crashed his bicycle in Central Park. He still seems a bit of a douchecanoe? So maybe the curse isn\'t entirely broken.

This one started with the Romans, who believed that it took seven years for life to renew itself. So, if a person with bad health looked into a mirror it would crack and that person would experience bad luck for the next seven years. Of course, the Romans also believed that the gods lived on a mountain, so maybe they didn\'t know what they were talking about. If a person with bad health could crack mirrors then I\'d crack one every Saturday morning.

The Romans might have had some things wrong, but the myth that the body replaces all its (ugly) cells every seven years has hung on into modernity. So if you\'re cursed with breaking a mirror, I guess just sit and wait for all your skin and hair to shed off?

Videogamers believe that whomever graces the cover of the annual Madden football game will be have bad luck for that upcoming season. After posing for the magazine, Daunte Culpepper suffered a knee injury and missed the last five games of the season. Michael Vick fractured his right fibula one day after the Madden NFL appeared in stores. Donavon McNabb claimed he did not believe in the curse and accepted to appear on the 2006 cover. But the Madden Curse got him too, as he suffered a hernia during his first game.

but no movie has so many SPM (scares per minute) as his 2009 movie

. In it, sweet Alison Lohman is cursed after denying a gypsy woman a bank loan. She then has three days left on earth before a devil comes and well… drags her to hell. This movie is super scary and fun and is another reason why I will never go into the banking business.

A cursed video tape? A crazy Japanese woman with long black hair? A dark well of nightmares? They all may seem like horror tropes now, but they all started in the Japanese movie

HEY WE UNDERSTAND JAPANESE!). In it, a cursed VHS tape finds its way to a group of friends who watch it and then start dying off one by one. Nowadays, if you have a cursed VHS tape, your friends will make fun of you for having a VHS player in the first place. The only curse worse than the curse of 

"Voldemort raised his wand, and before Harry could do anything to defend himself, before he could even move, he had been hit again by the Cruciatus curse!" - JK Rowling

Harry Potter might have had to watch Ron Weasley ride off into the sunset with his true love Hermione, but nothing was more painful as enduring the Cruciatus curse from Lord Voldermort. This curse is one of the three "Unforgivables" and inflicts excruciating pain on its victim—like worse than you felt after Dobby got spliced by Bellatrix\'s wand.

1. The Curse of King Tut\'s Tomb This is the biggie. Legend has it that anyone who dared to open Tut\'s tomb would suffer the wrath of the mummy. George Herbert, an archeologist and general bad boy, didn\'t care about that though and in 1922 led the dig to open the tomb because Briton\'s don\'t have time for silliness, they want to get their work done and then enjoy some spotted dick and figgy pudding already. However, shortly after going a-digging, he and several of his team died (and apparently the lights in Cairo flickered). Listen, if it took George\'s death to give us Brendan Fraser, then I think the curse was well worth it.

HAVE YOU EVER SUFFERED A CURSE? HOW DID YE BEAT THE DARK ARTS?!

Tags: harry potter, baseball, magic, curses, top ten, american presidents, king tut, the yankees, red sox, babe ruth, this might hurt

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