Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

[ElizabethBest]

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.

That game sounds amazing is it an app?

Geoguessr now downloaded and I’m officially addicted!

I knew I shouldn't have clicked this link. I was about to go to bed. Now I'll still be awake in 2 hours, lost down rabbit holes.

I'm a bit tired tonight, but I am anticipating a cracking good time on the internet when I look up the physics of how my new combi-microwave oven grill thing works with the metal accessories inside.

I was fascinated looking up case law and sentencing guidelines in the case of R v Auriol Grey, the woman convicted of the manslaughter of the cyclist.

London, it's a consuming fascination. Right from the Romans to the present day.

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

Mitochondrial Eve

Blows my mind.

I was not expecting that from the cropped version of the image before I opened it 😂😂😂

That is fascinating! I never knew this, always think of them as so fragile. Now sitting in bed wondering how on Earth those tiny wings take them that far when my fat ass is knackered just walking home from the shop 😳

Place marking as this is fascinating

(Not to derail, but ArseMenagerie if you don’t know him already look up this guy who is such a champ at guessing! www.instagram.com/georainbolt/?hl=en)

I have been re-watching QI recently, starting with the very first episode. Utterly bloody fascinating stuff. God I love Stephen Fry! The podcast (No Such Thing As A Fish) is also really good.

Absolutely love threads like this!

For anyone interested in old, derelict buildings / asylums / hosipitals / miltary bases/ etc - check out
www.28dayslater.co.uk 28 days later

It’s an urban explorers website, updated regularly and absolutely stuffed with photos, I’ve lost hours and hours searching through in fascination!

Black holes and galaxy clusters. Mind blowing.

Yes I would love to see this programme too!

my ancestor was put in prison following a protest outside parliament. Id love to know more about these women!

I know it's fascinating

@Tabitha1960 if you're in, or visiting, London, I do recommend the National Archives at Kew. They have a huge collection of suffragette material. And some really interesting books in the shop - I had to be forcibly restricted to buying only 2.

What we traditionally understand of how the immune system works in pregnancy (like a transplant organ) isn’t actually true. There’s been a whole raft of research, including a textbook, that shows the absolutely fascinating way the body actually adapts.

There is now research to suggest that there is an immunological clock in pregnancy, and we can set our watches by it.

Additionally, some other research that suggests that some miscarriages are caused by the body not making the correct cytokine shift at an early stage in pregnancy.

Quite frankly every pregnancy is an absolute miracle biologically.

I would also like to nominate octopuses. They are intelligent in such an alien way to us.

You need to listen to this too:

It all started with rumours of an 800-meter underground organism hidden under the streets of Cambridge and a plate of mushrooms on toast.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00132xm

Octopi are as intelligent as humans

Some genuinely brilliantly interesting stories on here...if I now don't get to sleep until 2am because I am lost in the virtual shelves of the internet I am blaming this thread :)

Paternoster lifts I've spent hours reading about and watching them after riding on one In Germany

DNA, how we it is passed down, how actual segments can be traced back to different ancestors, how we can identify relatives just by spitting in a tube and having the saliva analysed in a lab. How it looks like a human barcode when the chromosomes are mapped. How we share more DNA with some cousins etc than with others. How we all have pieces of all our great grandparents in our actual individual DNA mix. How ancient people's beliefs about 'bloodlines' are actually kind of scientifically true. DNA - it's amazing.

Monarch butterflies do the same in the Americas - generations working their way up and down the continent twice a year, and always going back to the area their ancestors came from (unless butterflies from different groups mate, in which case their offspring will go back to a location half way between the 2 ancestral homes).