"...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."
~Edgar Allan Poe

Friday, September 13, 2024

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to the Link Dump!

This week's post will be followed by a concert from the Strange Company HQ choir.



The first college football game.

18th century "latrinalia."

How farming helped humans evolve.

Once again, our universe leaves astronomers very very confused.

Further proof that scientists seem to have way too much free time on their hands.

Viking encrypted messages.

A teenage fiend.

Bone-eating, blood-red vultures.  So.

An ancient Roman military camp has just been uncovered.

The man who is rescuing forgotten songs.

Shaving the dead, 1890.

Do animals go to heaven?  (A side note: Some years ago, I was talking to a security guard I knew at Santa Anita.  He was a thoroughly admirable fellow: smart, honorable, and kind.  He was also devoutly religious--I suppose you would classify him as a fundamentalist Christian.  Anyway, we were talking about our pets, when he happened to mention--I forget how this came up--that he did not believe animals had souls.  He said something like, "I'll defend my dog with my life, but I know I won't see him in heaven."  This surprised me, because I just assumed that if you accept that people have immortal souls--and I do, although some souls clearly need a lot more work than others--you'd think that animals would, too.  Well, I suppose it's pointless to debate the matter.  Eventually, we'll all learn the truth about that.)

A bunch of naked Quakers.

The escape of "the human fly."

The discovery of 900 year old buried treasure.

The goofier moments of Arctic research.

The tragic Collyer brothers.

The similarities--and differences--between near-death experiences and psychedelic trips.

A heroic stray cat.

The planet Mercury, up close and personal.

Some mythical places may not have been all that mythical.

Yes, we're still analyzing the Voynich Manuscript.

How to live the Habsburg way.

The Oldham Hermit.

A poisonous Tudor-era family.

The mysterious Stonehenge "altar stone."

A horrific event for Japanese Catholics: the Great Genna Martyrdom.

The life of a political radical.

A 1,000 year old ring from the Painted People.

A video tour of an ancient Thracian tomb.

The "world's ugliest woman."

How to hide an entire army with this one easy trick!

The oldest known map of the world.

Recipes from ancient Mesopotamia.

The 19th century "floating laboratories."

In search of "lost" ancient texts.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a very strange encounter in the tunnels of Toronto.  In the meantime, here's some harp music with a surprise cameo appearance.



4 comments:

  1. Another good selection. I felt sorry for the 'ugliest woman' (though she did resemble recently deceased actor Michael Gambon, I think); what a way for anyone, but especially a woman, to have to earn a living. (I suspected acromegaly in one of my cats, you may recall; Neville didn't have it, though.) Dudley Clarke I've read about. It's interesting that the deceptions in both world wars were all on the Allied side, and mostly British. I don't know of any German instance of strategic deception, and nothing from the Russians, and only a few from the Americans. It may be related to lack of resources, which the British always seemed to be suffering in war. The lammergeier vultures seem a most discriminating species; only bones, eh? And to find a treasure trove from ancient times! What a dream. And Mercury looks disappointingly like the moon...

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  2. How quickly they forget Grace McDaniels!

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  3. re: animals going to heaven ? I had a minister tell me they would not and I thought (but held my tongue) "I tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my kitty be when thou lyest howling." Anyone who has loved an animal know they have souls. Not so sure about all humans.

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  4. The deer and the harpist seem to prove my comment.

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