Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

Penguins. I just can't get enough of them.

That's a good point about regularity. Most women would have spent most of their married lives pregnant or nursing so actually the likelihood of having to deal with monthly periods probably wasn't that high. If you look back at family trees, especially for the poorer in society,many women had a baby once every 2 years.

When I looked at my own great grandmother on the 1911 census, she married in 1890 and by 1911 had 15 children (7 died had died according to the census question) and was pregnant with her 16th and went on to have her 17th in 1914,. So within 21 years she had 16 pregnancies. Two the daughters were called Elizabeth and Eliza, so she either liked the name or was running out of ideas

*noughties 😳🙄

That is true. They had one in the library when I was at the University of Essex in the early naughties. I went on it on the top floor and I didn't realise that it went up and over until I saw a horrible light appear and it came back down over to the top floor to go down again.

I was in a huge panic and the person waiting to get on and go down looked at me very oddly as I got off, wondering why on earth I had just appeared from the above them! 😳🤣🙄

I just really love this thread! So many interesting worm holes to go down when I should be working.

The people who do QI have a podcast called No Such Thing As A Fish which has so many fascinating episodes.

I always remember when as a child we saw the 'foam' on the sea and the sands at Backpool, we weren't allowed to even paddle. It was the same on the No8 bus into Manchester, as we past what is now Salford Uni we saw the foam on the oxbow of the River Irwell and thought it was lovely when in reality it was the crap from the mills etc further up the river!

My DS is autistic and played geoguesser for months - learning which road signs and road markings, soil colours, rocks, rooftops, lampposts etc belong to which country.
He can pretty much guess within a few 10’s of miles where he’s been placed!

I am so fascinated by the 'Wood Wide Web' - the symbiotic relationship between trees and funghi

Some even think they can communicate!

www.sciencefocus.com/nature/mycorrhizal-networks-wood-wide-web/

I think there is a lot to be discovered there!

Paternoster lifts - my brother's close friend was livign in New York and there was a paternoster lift in the nightclub where he worked.
One day he tripped going in it and was dragged and jammed against the floor above.
He was nearly severed in two. Lost his spleen, part of his liver and had vast tissue damage. He won thousands in damages from the club.
he was extremely lucky that his spine wasn't damaged and he didn't bleed to death.

Flowering intervals of bamboo. The longest flowering period is of P. Bambusoides of 120-130 years. All plants of the same stock (taken from cuttings as you can only get a new plant from seed) will flower at exactly the same time, regardless of location, climate, time zones and then die.

I don’t know why this fascinates me so much but it does. The fact it has an interval death clock, for every plant even if treated badly or well. It’s a bit like final destination of the plant world.

Then there’s discussions on why this mechanism occurred and how it works. No one can agree.

And then The fact that it has such a long flowering period. Why! If you know about plant cycles there’s various strategies as to why they have longer intervals, and usually a prime number as laps less with other species. But why so long! How many Darwinian ‘generations’ has it even had. Considering it has the most sophisticated systems for survival but less generations time to work it out.

Its just odd.

When I were a lass, long ago, being "on the rag" was a euphemism for periods, which I'm guessing was a hanger-on of the period when women did use and wash rags held by a belt to catch menstrual flow.

What an absolutely fascinating thread this is! Thank you for starting it OP. Bookmarking for future reference.

I love anything historical, particularly social history and also little known facts, museums etc. I don't know if anyone has mentioned it on the thread but me and DH are loving Greg Jenner's podcast You're Dead To Me where he and two guests (an academic and also a comedian) discuss an historical figure, event, era of time etc. We recently listened to the episode called the History of Football which revealed some really interesting info on the history of the women's game. We've listened to several episodes which have made both of us go further down a Wiki rabbit hole to find further information.

That's a good point about regularity. Most women would have spent most of their married lives pregnant or nursing so actually the likelihood of having to deal with monthly periods probably wasn't that high. If you look back at family trees, especially for the poorer in society,many women had a baby once every 2 years.

@Halsall thanks for enlightening me!

Here's the ward 81 link - www.maryellenmark.com/books/ward-81

I am an Urbexer, or at least was for a long time before work/life took over and I don't get time anymore.
Here's some of my shots - www.flickr.com/photos/120082695@N07/

The Willard suitcases are fascinating, you see a lot of discarded belongings in asylums.
OP (and others) might enjoy Ward 81 by Mary Ellen Mark who documented some female psych inmates. Her photos are wonderful.

Some of my favoured wormholes -

Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia - Its regularly documented by this guy and I find it horrific and fascinating in equal measure -

kensingtonblues.com

Chernobyl and Pripyat

Pennhurst Asylum (as was not as its current "haunted attraction" bollocks which I find disrespectful in the extreme)

Anything paranormal (love the mumsnet threads on the topic) and Im from Enfield so the poltergeist was always of interest.

Quote fail, Northwick Park has a Paternoster lifts

Thanks BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn i will have a look into that, it's fascinating

The reversal of proof in infanticide cases was one of the things covered by the TV series Garrow's Law a few years ago (fiction based on William Garrow en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Garrow).

Although the presumption of innocence is an ancient concept - found in both Roman and Talmudic law - in more recent European history it wasn't really observed in practice. It was only in the 18th century that defence barristers became common in UK courts. Before that it was usual for a lawyer to present the prosecution case but defendants mostly represented themselves, and 'evidence' was often simply assertion and not put to much of a test.

I’ve just spent time looking up everything from people who believe they have lived previous lives to random air raid shelters due to this fantastic thread! Thank you @ElizabethBest

The infamous Leicester University paternoster was in the Attenborough Tower, I spent much of the early-mid nineties hopping on & off it as an undergraduate & postgraduate. As @Kucinghitam says, it was decommissioned 6 years ago. My old uni friends & I wondered about heading back there just to go over the top & under the bottom again before it closed 😀

@HarrietSchulenberg the Bold Street time slip fascinates me. I’m not generally woo but am beguiled by the idea that we may be experiencing brief time slips regularly that we don’t know about because there would be nothing visually obvious if time only shifted by a day or an hour or so. Those who believe they have time travelled often report seeing fashions from another era - the most obvious visual point of difference to indicate this isn’t the present day. If the shift was small this wouldn’t be a give-away.

Two lovely & very sane members of my family were driving down a deserted country road in rural Hampshire in the early 1960s & an ethereal figure of a Roman man walked across the road in front of them & went straight through a low wall at the other side. To the end of their lives (they both died around a decade ago in their nineties) they maintained the same story & said neither of them could explain it.

I might have to look in The Unexplained & see if there is a dedicated time travel thread there 🤔

@Trixiefirecracker I’m obsessed with Hidden London Underground & spent time last week on Clapham Common to see the WWII air raid shelter there.

Bizarrely fascinating but I did feel a bit sick by the end of it.

Thanks for that.
What a wonderful thread this is, I’m taking notes. I can’t wait to check that out at the Bartlett.

www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Crimes.jsp#killing

This link spells it out, I didn't remember that it was so clearly written. Under infanticide, so many poor women assumed to have murdered their own babies when they were already traumatised from having to give birth in secret. The only crime when the burden of proof was reversed.

This is horrific but I've never heard it discussed at all.

All the people who love the history of London and particularly its buildings - do you know about the UCL Survey of London at the Bartlett School of Architecture? The volumes are available to read online (which is lucky, as they cost ££££ to buy). The ones called British History Online are older, though still fascinating - the more recent ones are Vols 48 onwards and are just riveting.

Once you start on those, a) your head will explode
and
b) you'll never do anything else again
😊

Drying laundry in winter is a pain and got me wondering just how long humans have been fretting over getting their clothes dry. Looked it up and it could be as long as 34,000 years! And that's not taking into account the drying of skin clothes in earlier times. Makes me want to weep and also helps explain why I feel like I rule the Universe when I've made use of good drying days.

news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/oldest-known-fibers-discovered/