Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

I'm not convinced by all of that article about historical free bleeding. The mill stuff is very interesting, but the first couple of examples are 'people assuming what other people do' rather than proper primary sources. And in the Mexican one the hasty wiping up of blood suggests it is not accepted normal practice.

Abby Cox did an interesting video on historical menstrual solutions, including trying out the menstrual apron: (FWR regulars may need to grit their teeth to get through the disclaimer, but stick with it). And some of the later solutions are briefly mentioned in Bernadette Banner's piece on women's pants and peeing:

I find the Kola Borehole( Russia) story fascinating. It was like the space race but a race to dig the deepest hole ever made. Germany was also digging one in competition! The story around it is really interesting. They call it Hells Gate.

I get this! … and the fact that just having sex can change your whole life - and create a whole new life - somehow this still blows my mind!

Other topic but genetic genealogy - solving old crimes and unearthing history by using bone dating, dna analysis etc.

I always wonder this - I mean who sat there and thought "if I crush these seedy things, I get a white powder and I can mix it with water and put some of this fungusy type thing in it, it'll rise and then bung it in the fire and it'll be alright to eat" 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ Puzzles me nearly everyday.

When I was first pregnant I suddenly felt v weird telling people. Like announcing “I’ve been having sex”. I know everyone does have sex but yeah. It made me feel weird especially with my parents and work people.

That whole Assume Nothing series is amazing for the strange stories they've unearthed out of Ulster, worth looking at The Secret of St Brides and Did the Right man Hang? as well.

I've just spent a while reading these (and found two of mine on there - does that make me doubly rare😂? ) have you seen deadly disease top trumps? You definitely should write that book 😁

@Needmorelego oh god, I went down a whole rabbit hole of abandoned buildings in California and New Mexico a few monthsback! Fascinating.

I've been going off MN lately - trolls, nasty bitching, HQ not adequately responding to people's genuine concerns about commercialisation etc but this thread has reminded me of the wonderfully diverse and interesting women who contribute. I've now got a list of irresistible rabbit holes to dive into as well as the ones I already inhabit, one of which is the brain. I have always been fascinated by its workings and love Oliver Sach's books, like The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. The result of a brain injury or a tumour can be as specific as not being able to use nouns.

My partner has vascular dementia and I have been studying this dreadful disease to try and get a grip of it and to help him, but I read somewhere that if the brain was less complicated we wouldn't be clever enough to understand it.

Thanks OP, what a brilliant thread.

There's a page I follow on Instagram called dark theme Reddit and they share stories of weird, wonderful and scary stuff. My favourite are the most dangerous places or towns people have been or scary/weird things most people don't know. I read them and then find them on Google earth and look around and try and judge for myself or google the shit out of them until I'm so far down a rabbit hole I can't remember how I got there. Another morbid curiosity has some really interesting stories about things that happened years ago. I love mysteries but then get really annoyed that I will probably never know the answers.

The David Parr house. David Parr was a decorator and between 1886 and 1926 he painted the walls of every room in his house in the style of William Morris. I've thought about this a lot, what it might have been like living there while all the painting was going on. Some rooms must have been unusable at times because the paint was wet and there would have been a constant smell of paint and terps. I wonder what his family thought of it all.

The coal mine fire under Centralia in Pennsylvania is really interesting. It's been burning since the sixties and is likely to keep going for a few hundred years more at least.
Experts spent years coming up with suggestions of how to put it out, but they were all astronomically expensive and not guaranteed to work so in the end they just left it to burn and evacuated everyone who was willing to go.
So now it's an almost ghost town, with a fire merrily burning away underneath, and is just being left to do its thing.

I also find extinct megafauna fascinating. Huge otters, ground sloths and beavers, glyptodon, argentavis, megalodon. I get lost in looking up stuff about them quite frequently.

cali the story of Mary Barbour is another one! To step up and defend woman and children from greedy landlords in the times she lived and take them on and not only win but actually get a change in the law is fascinating and amazing!

For anyone who is happy to get stuck down the reincarnation, near death experiences rabbit hole I recommend Raymond Moody's Life After Life. Fascinating.

That pipe is still there exactly like it is in the before picture. And there is still litter everywhere. Those pictures don't really show any genuine difference. The steps are a huge improvement though

I LOVE this thread and also anticipate an hour or two of happy googling. My contribution - The Bolton Stride and children’s’ skulls (teeth). Both brought to my attention by Mumsnetters on old threads. I consider my general knowledge to be really good and knew nothing about either of these things.

@calimali no that's not her.
The one I remember was an English women and her book was from the 80s/90s.
Although I am now going to spend hours reading about the one you suggested 😂

cali Totally agree I find woman’s history and stories fascinating as it’s been ignored for too long! Too much his story and not enough hers!

Although I love the David Livingstone story we forget his wife was there probably doing everything he did and giving birth raising children too!

Anyone who's interested in British history can happily lose hours on the Old Bailey Online site of actual court cases from 1674 onwards. Utterly engrossing.

There are videos posted on Youtube of a man who goes down storm drains and explores tunnels, underground train lines...even saw a river with boat and people underground. Can't remember the name of the poster but real fascinating stuff.

@SolitudeNotLoneliness - if you enjoyed that one you might enjoy Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal ".

I have that book! Dc is, reading it at the moment and finds it fascinating!

I went on a Paternoster lift once with my parents, when I was a child, we were visiting someone at a College or University at the time - I can't remember which one, but it might have been Leicester or Loughborough, I think it began with an L anyway!

I was bloody terrified of it, it didn't stop and you had to jump on and jump off, I thought I would either brake my leg whilst jumping, or that I would get squashed going over the top! I never went on one again - they were a horrible invention 😂

This got us through lockdown for so many hours and we still play it religiously. Absolutely love it

I worked in an archive and we had an album of photographs of criminals from the 1880s. It fascinated me looking through the album as to what they thought of having their photograph taken, the faces they pulled and their circumstances.

We also had asylum records, the asylum was a central location and patients were sent from around the country, Liverpool and Lambeth for example. There were people from all walks of life, doctors to housewives and chimney sweeps. The place made a constant supply of birthday cakes for the inpatients, they had a farm and grew vegetables, patients working in the laundry and kitchens