History buff, lesbian, collector of oddities, spiritual, random, cynical, photographer, lover of many things. Constantly turning, always thinking, see what's inside.
In 1995, the body of an almost entirely frozen young Inca girl, later named Mummy Juanita, was discovered on Mount Ampato. Two more ice-preserved mummies, one girl and one boy, were discovered nearby a short while later. All showed signs of death by a blow to the head. Juanita was killed as an offering to the Inca gods sometime between 1450 and 1480, she was approximately 11–15 years old.
Judging from the condition of the body, it is believed that she was drugged and left to die in the mountains. It would not have taken much time for her to die due to the high exposure. The Incan high priests took their victims to high mountaintops for sacrifice. As the journey was extremely long and arduous, especially so for the younger victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance, then killed them either by strangulation, a blow to their head or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure. She is the best-preserved mummy ever found, with internal organs intact, blood still present in the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed. No special effort had been made to preserve her and 500 years later still looked like sleeping children.
Many Inca children were offered as sacrifice during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca (who was the emperor) or during a famine. These sacrifices were known as capacocha.
Dr Julius Neubronner’s Miniature Pigeon Camera
In 1908 Dr Julius Neubronner patented a miniature pigeon camera activated by a timing mechanism. The invention brought him international notability after he presented it at international expositions in Dresden, Frankfurt and Paris in 1909–1911. Spectators in Dresden could watch the arrival of the camera-equipped carrier pigeons, and the photos were immediately developed and turned into postcards which could be purchased.
Founder of a free school for slum children Rajesh Kumar Sharma, second from right, and Laxmi Chandra, right, write on black boards, painted on a building wall, at a free school run under a metro bridge in New Delhi, India. At least 30 children living in the nearby slums have been receiving free education from this school for the last three years.
In 1966, when David Reimer was 8 months old, his circumcision was botched and he lost his penis to burns. Psychologist John Money suggested that baby David be given a sex change. The parents agreed, but what they didn’t know was that Money secretly wanted to use David as part of an experiment to prove his views that gender identity was not inborn, but rather determined by nature and upbringing. David was renamed Brenda, surgically altered to have a vagina, and given hormonal supplements — but tragically the experiment backfired. “Brenda” acted like a stereotypical boy throughout childhood, and the Reimer family began to fall apart. At 14, Brenda was told the truth, and decided to go back to being David. He committed suicide at the age of 38.
Running along a similar theme similar to the Milgram experiment, The Third Wave, carried out in 1967, was an experiment that set out to explore the ways in which even democratic societies can become infiltrated by the appeal of fascism. Using a class of high school students, the experimenter created a system whereby some students were considered members of a prestigious order. The students showed increased motivation to learn, yet, more worryingly, became eager to get on board with malevolent practices, such as excluding and ostracizing non-members from the class. Even more scarily, this behavior was gleefully continued outside of the classroom. After just four days, the experiment was considered to be slipping out of control and was ceased.
In 1963, in the wake of the atrocities of the Holocaust, Stanley Milgram set out to test the hypothesis that there was something special about the German people that had allowed them to participate in genocide. Under the pretense of an experiment into human learning, Milgram asked normal members of the public to ask questions to a man attached to an electric-shock generator and shock him in increasing measure when he answered incorrectly. The man was an actor, the shocks fake; but the participants didn’t know this. The terrifying part? People overwhelmingly obeyed the commands of the experimenter, even when the man screamed in apparent agony and begged for mercy. A little evil in all of us, perhaps?
(Photo of The Milgram Experiment taking place)
In this study, conducted in 1939, 22 orphaned children, 10 with stutters, were separated equally into two groups: one with a speech therapist who conducted “positive” therapy by praising the children’s progress and fluency of speech; the other with a speech therapist who openly chastised the children for the slightest mistake. The results showed that the children who had received negative responses were badly affected in terms of their psychological health. Yet more bad news was to come as it was later revealed that some of the children who had previously been unaffected developed speech problems following the experiment. In 2007, six of the orphan children were awarded $925,000 in compensation for emotional damage that the six-month-study had left them with.
(Photo of Wendell Johnson, of the University of Iowa, who was behind the study)
PSYCHO (1960) Soundtrack Score Suite (Bernard Herrmann)
Mexican experts found a cemetery a few thousand years old in the state of Sonora that has features never seen before in that region and extending the zone of influence of the Mesoamerican peoples, said archaeologists from the Institute National Anthropology and History (INAH).
A mere 300 meters from the village of Onavas, southern Sonora, was an outdoor grave site, the first pre-Hispanic cemetery,of that state found with burials composed of 25 individuals, 13 of whom have intentional skull deformation, INAH said in a statement.
Five individuals with cranial deformation also have dental mutilation. These cultural practices are similar to those of pre-Hispanic groups in southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit, but had not been recorded in Sonora, detailed the Institute.
Some skeletons wore ornaments made from shells and snails found in the region of the Gulf of California. They were bangles, a nose ring, earrings, pendants and necklaces of shell beads. Also, an individual was buried with a turtle shell placed at the height of the abdomen.
The INAH said that the burials were not accompanied by offerings.
For archaeologists, the discovery is relevant evidence of practices that were not recorded in the old Sonora cultural groups: cranial deformation (frontal occipital) was applied to 13 individuals, and modification by the wear of the side of teeth to give them a “V”.
“The area meets the unique finding that mixed expressions of groups of northern Mexico, as the use of ornaments made from sea shells Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California), with Western traditions never before found in Sonoran territory” , said archaeologist Cristina Garcia Moreno.
Garcia, director of the research project, which is conducted by Arizona State University, USA, with approval of the INAH Archaeology Council, said: “With this discovery extends the limit of influence of Mesoamerican peoples farther north: than had been recorded archeology” by previous archaeological finds.
The archaeologist noted that no other archaeological site in Sonora have been found where modifications are identified by cranial and denta mondificationsl, nor have they been seen in the southwestern United States, which shares the cultural area with Sonora.
“The closest cultural groups who developed these traditions are in northern Sinaloa and the National Wetlands area (southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit), who incorporated their culture some Western customs and Mesoamerica,” he explained.
However, he said, “Cemetery Onavas not in migratory Mesoamerican groups, but one who had a sedentary local development and that at some point in its history established contact with Mesoamerica and incorporated some ideas into their culture.”
He explained that according to historical sources, the site must have belonged to the old Pima Indians, the region’s cultural group whose descendants moved to what is now the Sonora-Chihuahua state line, and could be part of a settlement located in the area of traffic that followed the western coastal towns in the southwest U.S. which traded in turquoise.
“And in that transition, the Pimas adopted new traditions from Mesoamerica,” he explained, adding that the datings performed on human remains Epiclassic match the Mesoamerican period (900-1200 AD).
Finally, archaeologist Cristina Garcia noted that these findings are giving rise to further research in the southeastern part of Sonora that has been little studied, “the North, the desert, the Northeast and the coast are the most researched, from these findings it is known that the southeast is different from what was known, this side is completely new.”
In what has been described as the worst subway crash in New York history, on September 11, 1905, an above ground 9th avenue train accidentally went too fast along a sharp curve, on a track it wasn’t supposed to be on. As a result, the second car of the train was thrown off the trestle down to the street along 9th Avenue and sparked an electrical fire. 13 people died, while 48 sustained serious injuries.
Hurricane Sandy has unearthed a Canadian ship almost a century old that was buried in the sands of Fire Island since the early 1900s.
The ship washed ashore about four miles east of Davis Park on the Fire Island National Seashore. There are conflicting opinions on when the 4-mast Canadian schooner ran aground years ago. But all reports say between 1919 or 1922.
“There’s so little of it left we may not be not be able to determine which ship it actually is, but we may be able to learn more about its age,” Paula Valentine, public affairs specialist for Fire Island, said. “It’s just a rare treat to see something exposed.”
The Canadian schooner wasn’t the only shocking discovery unearthed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy’s devastation. From Connecticut to Massachusetts, a skeleton, love letters and Pepsi bottles with notes have surfaced lending an eery and romantic twist to the tumultuous storm.
On Oct. 30, residents in New Haven, Conn. got a haunting feeling when a human skeleton appeared after uprooting a huge oak tree planted in 1909 in honor of a local Civil War hero.
“I noticed what I thought was a rock at first, I kind of poked it and a piece came off in my hand, and I noticed it was bone fragments,” resident Katie Carbo told the local TV station WTNH. “So I took a stick and knocked some of the dirt away and noticed it was an entire skull and body and vertebrae, ribs.”
There were romantic stories, too. N.J. resident Kathleen Mullen came across a bundle of letters when she was walking on the Henry Hudson Trail in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. the day after the storm. “They were obviously tied with a pink ribbon, so I automatically knew that they were love letters,” Mullen told ABC News’ New York station WABC-TV.
Though Mullen had no power, she decided she would take the letters home and dry them by her fireplace. Amazingly, the letters were still legible. Written by Dorothy Fallon of Rumson, N.J. and Lynn Farnham of Vermont between 1942 and 1947, they told a tale of a couple that was separated but thought of one another constantly.
“There isn’t much more to tell you tonight, dear,” one letter read. “I love you very much. Yours always, Dotty.”
Mullen was determined to find the family members and return the letters to their original authors. So she posted information on Facebook and Craigslist. Ultimately, she found the information she was looking for on findagrave.com. There was a woman named Lynn Farnham in N.J. who had recently passed away. Through the website, Mullen found the couple’s niece, Shelly Farnham-Hilber.
“It’s magical. You go, ‘This can’t be real,’” Farnham-Hilber told WABC-TV about her aunt and uncle who were separated when the husband fought in World War II. “It’s like a genealogical gold mine. It’s just that moment that you think is lost forever and here is something. It’s a gift.”
The Farnhams’ story wasn’t the only dreamy revelation during Hurricane Sandy. Forty one years ago, a 12-year-old boy named Steven Smoot wrote three notes, wrapped them in sticks, and placed them in Pepsi bottles in the water off Salisbury Beach.
The first bottle was found within a month or two on Plum Island. The other two never showed up. Four decades later, photographer Mark Kanegis and his daughter were walking on the beach looking for undiscovered treasures after the storm. His 13-year-old daughter, Elise, suddenly spotted a bottle. The two decided to carefully break it open to investigate the contents.
“To whom it may concern, who ever finds this note Please take note of where and when you found this note … Steven F. Smoot, 35 Doonan St. Medford, Mass, 02155 U.S.A” the note read.
“The whole thing was so unlikely,” Kanegis said. “I almost threw it away. The note almost broke apart and we almost lost his name. The next day was the nor’easter, and the moontides would have washed it back out till who knows when?”
He changed his mind, though, and decided to look for Smoot’s number. After he got in touch with Smoot, the now-grown man was shocked. “The probability of this happening is almost infinite to me,” Smoot said.
Kathleen Mullen felt the same way. “It kind of sent the message that love conquers all, you know, in such devastation,” she said. “Something so delicate just washes ashore.”
In a tiny corner of western Poland a forest of about 400 pine trees grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks - all bent northward. Surrounded by a larger forest of straight growing pine trees this collection of curved trees, or “Crooked Forest,” is a mystery.
Planted around 1930, the trees managed to grow for seven to 10 years before getting held down, in what is understood to have been human mechanical intervention. Though why exactly the original tree farmers wanted so many crooked trees is unknown.
More than 5,000 ducks brought traffic in the Chinese coastal city of Taizhou to a standstill Sunday when a duck farmer and his herd traveled to a nearby feeding pond, the Herald Sun reports.
As the ducks waddled into the street, pedestrians and scooters wove around the herd as onlookers watched with amazement.
Armed with only a couple of long sticks, not one duck was lost over the half a mile trip, an annual ritual in China’s Zhejiang province, according to the Daily News.
Even more impressive, the farmer says he regularly takes the journey and hasn’t lost a single duck in the past six months, according to Metro.
Capsized Cruise Ship Costa Concordia from Space
