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Original poster

Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

770 replies

ElizabethBest · 06/03/2023 14:24

Let's hear it please - I love a good wikipedia rabbit hole. I'll start - The Willard Suitcases. Over 400 suitcases of possessions were found in an attic at the Willard Insane Asylum belong to patients who had died whilst inpatients so never left. The New York State Museum started a project to document the cases and their contents, and you can learn all about it and see the cases on their website.

OP posts:
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Allmyarseandpeggymartin · 08/03/2023 19:38

Victorian London graveyards and the graveyards in Hollywood are fascinating - loads of stuff about the residents on Wikipedia/online

WisteriaLodge · 08/03/2023 19:38

Biilie82 · 08/03/2023 19:27

My mum worked in mental health and cared for an older man who was detained as a 9 year old for stealing a bottle of milk. He never got out of mental health institutions. Barbaric

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God that's awful, poor man.

Almahart · 08/03/2023 19:41

@DailyMaui yes! must reread them

AramintaLee · 08/03/2023 19:42

I watched the Finding Michael documentary on Disney+ and ended up down a Mount Everest rabbit hole. The amount of dead bodies that are just left on the mountain... preserved to an extent due to the cold... forever...

Just really made me feel sad.

Emotionalsupportviper · 08/03/2023 19:45

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 07/03/2023 09:52

For the devepment of complex foodstuffs, it is much easier to understand if you stop thinking about it as a single invention. It's not a case of 1 day munching on grass seeds, and the next day inventing the baguette.

First you eat the seeds.

Then you pick more seeds than you need for that day and find that they get drier but stay edible. So you can pick and dry grain to use through the winter.

But it's a bit hard by the time you're getting to the end of your stock, so you try soaking it in water to make it eater to eat, and maybe bashing it up a bit so it absorbs the water better.

Then one day you get carried away chatting while bashing the grains and they are ground to powder. Which is really difficult to eat, but you don't have enough food to waste so you mix it with water to make it edible. And probably stir in some herbs, or strongly flavoured seeds to make it taste nicer.

One day, sitting by the fire eating your paste, you drop a bit on a hot stone. Can't waste food so you peel it off and eat it, and it tastes much nicer than the uncooked paste.

Then you make a big batch, to cook over a few days, and it goes a bit bubbly because wild yeast has got into it. You have invented bread. (Or beer, if you were making a fruit bread and put too much water in the mix so it's too runny to cook.)

I've wondered stuff like this too - but along the lines of "Who thought 'I'll bung an egg in this and stick it in some really hot fat over a built-over fire and see what happens' 🤔 Followed by 'Bliddy hell! Lookit that! I think I'll call it "Yorkshire Pudding'. " While the rest of the tribe thinks "What?" 😬

Chuffaluffa · 08/03/2023 19:47

Almahart · 08/03/2023 18:36

@chuffaluffa that is fascinating. Brilliant thread.

I'm always fascinated by the period just after WW2, that Europe was in ruins, people had been through the most awful traumas and they just had to carry on.

Meshuggah by Isaac Bashevis Singer is a really interesting novel about Holocaust survivors in New York. I also like The War After by Anne Karpf, her family try to adjust to taking back the servant they had had in Berlin in London but everyone is too traumatised.

That sounds amazing, thank you for sharing. I’m also obsessed with the impact the Industrial Revolution had on populations of UK hedgerow bird species- as hedges were removed for large machinery birds lost massive habitats and their populations still haven’t recovered, and probably never will unless we do something radical with agricultural land. Fascinating (depressing) unintended consequences of human activity.

Original poster
ElizabethBest · 08/03/2023 19:51

@AramintaLee I watched that too, yesterday. There was a big thing about a decade ago where a number of climbers clambered over a dying climber lying on the path to the summit, and nobody helped him. There’s an interesting article on the expedition that found the body of George Mallory here - secretsoftheice.com/news/2017/04/02/everest/

OP posts:
Rocketpants50 · 08/03/2023 19:53

I love these and going to delve into some of your suggestions.

We love thetruesize.com where you can pick up countries and compare how big or small they actually are. We seem to love a map in our house. For those who like geoguesser we also like worldle and globle .

I love delving into how places looked years ago, and maps and comparing to now. Some are quite amazing Hong Kong or Dubai and how quick they have developed.

Redebs · 08/03/2023 19:54

cakewitch · 06/03/2023 22:13

I'm oddly fascinated by indoor fish ponds. I just love them.

I thought it was just me!

Redebs · 08/03/2023 19:56

airey · 08/03/2023 18:53

I’d love to watch that!!!

would anyone else want to contribute to crowdfund it? Show of hands please?

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🖐

8misskitty8 · 08/03/2023 19:57

Edinburgh. The royal Mile. All modern roads and buildings surround it but once you get there The buildings completely change.
Centuries old tightly built tall buildings, street is cobbled.
But under this area is the original town. The buildings and street you see were built over the old town.
People still lived in the original streets which became dark and damp as it was now underground. People coming up to the surface to purchase food etc.
Over time the old town was then blocked up (some streets allegedly with plague victims still inside) until no one lived there and none could get in.
The streets and buildings are still there buried beneath Edinburgh.

There are tours round some of the old streets/closes that have now been opened. Some are done at night to see the ghosts !

Ellie474747 · 08/03/2023 19:57

TheLadyofShalott1 · 07/03/2023 08:29

I have been there and it is amazing. I truly believe that Newgrange, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, and probably those in Central and South America as well, were all calculated and designed by extra terrestrial aliens - even if they did get humans to actually build them. I came to that conclusion about the Egyptian Pyramids when I was a child, long before I knew that other people also thought that that was a possibility.

Most of you will probably think I am "seriously mistaken", but it is the only conclusion that makes complete sense to me. I also think that if the parting of the seas in the Bible did happen, and if Manna from Heaven also happened, that that was due to an alien star ship, and it's crew. None of which negates there being a God, there are still far more questions than there are answers.

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There is a good Netflix documentary on this called ancient apocalypse, the presenter an archaeologist dismisses we originate from caveman based on these sites, thinks there was an advanced civilisation, slams academics for not being open to this fact.
I have same view. Oddly when I was a child I knew about Atlantis having never been taught anything about it. I am fascinated now.

Tiddlywinkly · 08/03/2023 20:00

Omg, thanks Op! This is right up my street. I love comparing old maps and street photos with newer ones as someone up thread said.

My mind was blown when I took my dd to a playdate. The house was a modest 3 bed Victorian, but it had a side entrance for the maid and she'd lived in the basement (way back when). I got thinking about that period of history when it was normal for middle class people to have live in maids.

I also love spotting ghost signs on buildings. Google it🙂

LaDamaDeElche · 08/03/2023 20:00

The Chaos Theory and quantum physics. I find it utterly fascinating. I need to find reading material that's a bit dumbed down though, as it's quite complicated to understand in any real depth.

MadMadaMim · 08/03/2023 20:04

City of London. Shady on all levels

Xanthan · 08/03/2023 20:06

Tabitha1960 · 06/03/2023 18:28

The suffragettes. It's a much longer, bigger, more complicated and exciting story than most people seem to think. I cannot get enough of the subject: lectures, newsreels, photographs, books, websites, individual biographies. If I have a spare hour to fill I sometimes just log on to the newspaper archives and read contemporary news stories about their activities.

A side benefit to this is that, when recently a Mastermind contender chose the suffragettes as her specialist subject, she scored 9 out of the 11 questions asked of her, whilst I got all 11 correct.

I am at a complete loss to understand why a TV series has not been made depicting the whole story. All they've ever been given is one six-part, low-budget series made in 1974 and all but forgotten.

These women deserve better than that!

Consider making a thread? I'd love to know more.

Bunnyfuller · 08/03/2023 20:10

Following. I love looking at property, and travelling around on Google earth.

Piglet89 · 08/03/2023 20:13

The case of Elizabeth Holmes.

1974devon · 08/03/2023 20:16

I had never heard of this but now need to learn more...my mum spent time in a psychiatric hospital in the 80s..she remembers it as one of the calmest/easiest times of life..but know the experience can be very different depending on illness etc and where you go.

NeedWineNow · 08/03/2023 20:19

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain Thank you, I'll have a read.

Messyhair321 · 08/03/2023 20:26

The belongings in the suitcases should be returned to the families of the owners if they can be found, or are aware themselves, like a public request for family to come forward if possible.

I am fascinated by language as others have touched on, how meaning changes & just frankly weird words that have survived or not. I have a book about local words that haven't survived, I remember reading this word "dimpsy" no-one uses this anymore but it means it's getting dark, apparently. I might try to revive these words 😂

nilsoften · 08/03/2023 20:31

Everything, once you start to look at it. The very fact we are here and at some point will cease to exist forever and are just a blink in time and a speck of star dust. A pale blue dot in the universe.

ShinyMe · 08/03/2023 20:32

I quite like some of the unexplained incident things (especially if they involve snow apparently!) like the Dyatlov Pass incident: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

Supersimkin2 · 08/03/2023 20:36

I’m obsessed with how to repair and mend things, ideally on the cheap. You’d be amazed what you can bring back
from the dead with the right little pot on Amazon.

My current handbag cost £1 in a jumble sale and after some lovely fossicking about online, I sorted it out and it had to be insured for over £1400.

Anything expensive and old can survive decades of neglect and come up
smiling. Love that.

VeganStar · 08/03/2023 20:49

Onemorewaferthinmint · 06/03/2023 17:47

Another thing I love is those videos comparing the size of objects - stars so big that they would make the planet jupiter a) look like a billiard ball and b) raise its temperature by thousands of degrees

Yes it’s absolutely fascinating. The size of our Earth and sun compared to those most giant of suns far off in other galaxies really shows where we are in the great scheme of things.