Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

Brilliant. Have downloaded and now addicted 😂

The Spitalfields Life website is my black hole - I can spend hours and hours on there. I used to live near there and it is my favourite part of London - the layers and layers of history are fascinating. I've been on one of the Gentle Author's walking tours and it was really good. The books sold on the website are also a wonderful source of information about that area.

spitalfieldslife.com/

I'm also quite obsessed with Charles Booth's poverty maps of old London and wish they would do more series of "The Secret History of Our Streets"

I've had this all my life. Until a couple of years ago I thought it was normal.

Last night I spent most of the night LD, I kind of napped/REM all night. I didn't actually "sleep" at all. It can be very out of body. I also have a lot of really scary nightmares I can't pull out of - out loud shouting and panic.

I get 100% phosphenes, non light dependent, and can control them to some extent. Blues, greens and yellows.

Another thing that fascinates me is the way in which some people have original songwriting/musical talent that they don't have to develop & which almost seems to come from no-where.

I remember years ago seeing Paul McCartney interviewed & he said one morning he woke up with Yesterday going round in his head. The tune was already there, he just sat at the piano & played it & wrote the notes down when he got up in the morning.

As someone with less then zero talent in this area, I find that amazing.

Lucid dreaming, though it's hard for me o find info about it that isn't too 'woo'.

More than 30 years ago, I remember a mathematician pointing out that ramps for the stone blocks would work, but that the common image of dozens of people pulling the stones would be too heavy.
He suggested that 'D-shaped' pieces of wood could be packed around the block to make something resembling a cotton reel. Ropes wound around the bobbin would enable the workers to stay at ground level while a smaller number with A-frames guided the blocks to their destination.

You might enjoy The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester.

@JaffaCake70

Did you see the musical of Grey Gardens at Southwark Playhouse? I was going to say a few years ago but googled and see it was 2016.

Jenna Russell & Shelia Hancock were in it and were amazing. Jenna Russell particularly was so like the real life character in the film. It was acting but also weirdly an impression without being an impression

playbill.com/article/staunch-see-the-first-pics-of-sheila-hancock-and-jenna-russell-in-the-uk-premiere-of-grey-gardens-com-377873

Yes, I've listened to a lot of You Must Remember This. I lost interest when she moved on to more modern themes, but the older podcasts were very interesting and informative.

Grey Gardens is a docu/drama that follows two aging relatives of Jackie Kennedy (Big Edie and Little Edie Beale) who are living in squalor in their dilapidated East Hampton mansion.

In my opinion it's a must watch. The ladies are as eccentric as you're ever going to find and the conditions they were living in have to be seen to be believed.

Truly fascinating characters!

I find etymology and dialects fascinating. Apparently when radio was first broadcast in that clipped RP, half the North couldn't understand. It saddens me we've lost some of that regional diversity.

I'm a professional genealogist so every day throws up fresh rabbit holes for me to lose myself in. A very sad one is the Irish Industrial School system which I came across through work then spent months reading about. It's truly traumatic and part of me wishes I knew nothing about it, but I think I've become a better person for understanding what lies behind so much of today's social inequality.

I'm also a lifelong fan of westerns, and all things relating to the pioneers crossing the USA. Any book, Netflix series or film with a wagon in it gets instantly devoured. I even like the word 'wagon'.

Speaking of westerns, I'm fascinated by the fact that Kevin Costner is called.... Kevin. I think about it regularly.

Chelsea are on tv tonight
So I’ll be googling the Bartlett and The old Bailey. Thanks MNs

Have just spent an hour searching methods that were used to kill accused
“witches” across the world,
I had no idea Scotland killed more than anywhere else.

At least Nicola Sturgeon made an apology, don’t think England has…yet.

I've become fascinated with cold cases solved when cars have been found in lakes or rivers etc that have been sitting there for decades unnoticed. I've linked two below, but check out adventures with purpose on YouTube who are scuba divers who specialise in searching different bodies of water for missing people. They've solved loads of cold cases in America.

abcnews.go.com/amp/US/case-missing-south-dakota-girls-finally-solved-40/story?id=23347176

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-foss-lake-mystery-six-skeletons-found-inside-two-vintage-cars-pulled-from-lake-could-solve-separate-disappearances-of-a-group-of-teenagers-in-1970-and-three-adults-in-late-1950s-8823930.html?amp

Re Crippen trial!

Wasn't it subsequently shown that the remains found were male?

Yes I know about Thelma. I have the book Hot Toddy and have read umpteen articles about her and her untimely death (which is still a bit of a mystery).

The Collyer Brothers, NYC. Massive hoaders.

Please could I nominate this for classics so it doesn't disappear until I've had time to follow all these up?!

Buster, or 'The Great Stone Face', was a real trailblazer when it came to stunts. And apparently he was one of only a small number of friends to stick by Arbuckle when he was going through his trial for murder.

uncertainalice · Today 16:57

I was just getting excited about going to the Corning Museum of Glass...only to discover it's in the States...

You could try the National Glass Centre, in Sunderland.

but why would you have a bucket of batter mix near a 1000 degree heat source

Maybe that was an accident too?

I agree, though, and would also love to know the sequence of events that resulted in so many things being invented.

Tricyrtis2022
The first idea that springs to mind for that technique is that someone in the distant past dropped a red hot piece of pottery into the batter by accident and then thought 'Sod it'

Yes I'd thought that too - but why would you have a bucket of batter mix near a 1000 degree heat source - too hot for cooking !

I'm sure many things are invented by accident - I'd like to know the events leading up to the accident and how the good outcome was recognised.

I've just been looking at the strange death list.

I guess the manager assumed he had walked out? I no wonder whether he was reported missing?

Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, 25, a supermarket employee from Council Bluffs, Iowa, is believed to have fallen into an 18-inch (460 mm) gap between a cooler and a wall and became trapped. His body was discovered ten years later when the cooler was moved.