Month: June 2018
Victorian men unable to grow “soup strainers”, “thigh ticklers” and “Piccadilly weepers” resorted to false facial hair, “beard generator” creams or even crime. Everyone from writers such as Dickens …
From eating the dead to feeding the dead to comforting mourners, food has always been a staple of burials. Paleolithic humans ate their dead in an effort to both …
In 17th and 18th century England, you could hire a sin-eater for a nominal fee to eat the sins of the dead. Village in parts of England, Scotland, and …
The world’s first traffic lights were installed in 1868 to allow politicians to safely cross the busy road to enter Parliament. Image Source In the months before its installation, …
Before there were ships in a bottle, there were whimsy bottles depicting crucifixions, saloons, murders and missing men. When hobo Carl Worner arrived in a new place, he would …
Image Source The “unspeakable act” In 1394, a Medieval transgender person spilled forth a steaming broth of Medieval scandal and vice including cross-dressing, sex with clergy (male and female) …
In the 1890s, Victorian fashionistas wore live jewel beetles, ensnared in delicate gold cages attached to chains and brooches. Fabrics from India embellished with beetle wings were already popular as …
The London Necropolis Railway from Waterloo Station to Brookwood Cemetery was the most haunting train line in Britain. In the 1800s, London was burying 50,000 dead each year — …
The CIA worked on a surveillance cat project called Acoustic Kitty during the 1960s. They made a monstrosity That’s actual cats surgically implanted with microphones and radio transmitters—designed to …
Grover Krantz decided to donate his body to science, but not without his best friends. The anthropologist told his colleague David Hunt of the Smithsonian: “I’ve been a teacher …
From smearing on arsenic to bathing in viper juice, history shows there’s nothing we won’t try to rid ourselves of lice. Lice and nits (lice eggs) were our constant …
The Stasi stole people’s underwear to make a library of their smells. Image Source When the Berlin Wall fell, merrymakers found something rotten at Stasi headquarters. Hundreds of jars …
