3

Tourists Are Killing The Bahamian Swimming Pigs

One of the top tourist destinations in the Bahamas is Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island home to some world-famous adorable "swimming pigs." Local legend has it that passing sailors left them there, planning to return and cook them later, then plain forgot about Food Island. Whatever the case, the result is the same: cute swimming pigs!

Or their floating corpses, at least.

A number of visitors got a macabre surprise when, instead of a school of pigs happily swimming to shore, they were greeted with the unfortunate sight of seven dead ones bobbing around. While many were quick to blame a small but unsavory number of tourists who had been riding around on the poor pigs, feeding them junk food, and even trying to get them drunk, the official cause of death was sand. It seems the lure of snacks on the beach led them to abandon the food sources in their natural habitat, and beachgoers unwittingly fed them sand every time they threw food to the little piggies.

Pxhere"Now that that's all cleared up, how about some of that rum?"

2

A Small German City Celebrates Karl Marx To Sustain Chinese Tourism

There's a lot of reasons to visit Germany: beer, castles, and ... Karl Marx? That's right, Mr. Seize The Means Of Production is a major draw for hundreds of thousands of tourists from China, and they've become instrumental to the economy of the moderately sized city of Trier, where Marx was born.

This would normally be a cute local quirk, if not for one little issue. The town is located in the former East Germany, and some locals are uncomfortable a) celebrating the man they associate with that regime and b) working to please China because of it. Thanks to the complete infusion of Marx, he literally tells them when to stop and when to go.

Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images"Maybe people will focus less on their Cold War memories if we make him into a cartoon gnome."

It's not just cute little stop lights, or the fact that the house is a museum. China commissioned and built a huge statue of Marx for the city center, though Trier was able to negotiate the size down from 21 feet to a more modest 17.

Thomas Lohnes/Getty ImagesBecause what former Eastern Bloc city wouldn't want their town looking like Red Square?

According to city officials, this is no big deal. Marx is an important son of the city, and it's entirely possible -- nay, encouraged -- to separate the man and his ideas from those who abused them. The fact that they stand to profit enormously from the statue, and that it was gifted to them by a repressive government, is entirely beside the point. Their faces must have been pretty red, then, when China confirmed in a party newspaper that glorifying communism was exactly the statue's purpose.

1

Venice Might Be Visited Into Nonexistence

Venice, the world's most beautiful open sewer, is at risk of disappearing. And it's not what you're thinking. Before the islands sink because of climate change or the gondoliers rise up in rebellion, tourists will kill the city.

The city's population has dropped from 175,000 to 55,000 since WWII, and it loses another 1,000 people each year. Compared to the 30 million tourists and counting each year, it's clear that Venice is devoid of Venetians. A city can't exist without its inhabitants, which is why UNESCO has threatened to revoke the city's status if it drops below 40,000 people. Astute math-doers will note that if it keeps losing residents at its current rate, that will happen in 15 years. By the time you're officially uncool, Venice could be a floating museum.

Marco Secchi/Getty ImagesExcept that we're being generous -- both about when you'll turn uncool and Venice staying above water.

And it's all thanks to the outsiders who make living in the city unbearable for its natives. Foreigners buying property have driven real estate prices and the cost of living way up, and the city's services can't handle the volume of people. The latest solution is straight-up segregating the populations. In 2018, the government tried to keep the tourists out of the way by restricting them solely to popular attractions, and even erecting metal barriers to physically stop them from interacting with locals. Hopefully, it goes well, and the same system can be implemented in Los Angeles.

E. Reid Ross has a couple books, Nature is the Worst: 500 Reasons You'll Never Want to Go Outside Again and Canadabis: The Canadian Weed Reader, both available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Jordan Breeding also writes for a whole mess of other people, the Twitter, and a weird number of gas station bathrooms.

Support your favorite Cracked writers with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out The 4 Ways We Travel In The Modern World (Are About To Suck):

Follow us on Facebook. And we'll follow you everywhere.