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.

Aye, and theres more than one, who knew.
I've just been to find the link and hilariously it's from 2017, I had no idea I'd been watching Tom for so long.

Jesus wept!

It sounds like the souls of the damned are crying out for blessed relief from the flames of Hell!

@Ourladycheesusedatum

That video about the muscial road and why it's out of tune is really interesting. The whole thing is mad.

After I watched that video, this was the next one on Youtube which is just as interesting about how water can solve a watertight maze by not taking wrong turns due to air presurre. I randomly found something interesting on the back of the interesting road.

I thought this was fascinating - any fans of Jack Aubrey and Hornblower, or of 18th century naval history, would enjoy this.

@Britinme if you're ever in Portsmouth the Mary Rose, the Victory, the Warrior and HMS Dolphin make a really great long weekend agenda.(Assuming you like boats and ships).

The Mary Rose, the Victory and the Warrior had roughly the same number of people on board (700 to 800). The Warrior was 2x the length of the Victory. The Victory was 2x the length the Mary Rose.

Very roughly:

MR = 34m
Victory = 60m
Warrior= 127m

I probably ought to add that the Cutty Sark was 65m length on deck and sailed with a compliment of about 30 people.

@Daftasabroom - I live in the USA but I have toured Victory and Warrior and seen the Mary Rose exhibit years ago

Mary Rose exhibition is absolutely stunning now, @Britinme - used to live in Hampshire so went a few times in the early years when it was basically a shed full of wet wood, but now they have her properly displayed it's spectacular, and the contents are just amazing - it's like the opposite of land archaeology because the things that survive are wood and leather rather than metal. And the skeleton of the ship's dog....

I went round it with my brother and sister-in-law, who said to brother in front of one display cabinet with personal possessions in it, "Ooh look, those shoes are nearly as tatty as the ones you keep refusing to throw away!"

@SqueakyDinosaur - clearly I shall have to revisit! If you ever get a chance to go to the Vasa museum in Stockholm, that is also spectacular.

Also, they had an ACTUAL FIRE (in a brick hearth) in the galley. Which if I'd thought about it for a minute would seem obvious, because how else do you cook? But it did remind me of a favourite line from Harry Potter, when Hagrid is trying to hatch a baby dragon, and Hermione says, "Hagrid, you live in a WOODEN HOUSE."

The link I posted to 18th century battleships on the Fascinating things thread shows that too. Very interesting.

Yes, the Vasa is AMAZING. It’s just incredible that they knew it was there for all those years - and finally managed to raise it in such pristine condition. It's huge - but so unbalanced, you can see exactly why it tipped over and sank on its maiden voyage.

I love a good Rabbithole - are we all listening to the podcast "Rabbithole Detectives" with Cat Jarman, Charles Spencer and Richard Coles ?

There used to be a paternoster lift at St Thomas' Hospital (me and a fellow student nurse got stuck in it once and had to be hauled out by a couple of medics) And there used to be one at Newcastle University.

I love those books which introduce you to a fascinating thing that you'd previously never heard of. For example ... Flying Boats. I highly recommend this book if you can get hold of it
The Lost Domain of the Flying Boat amzn.eu/d/eblcErs

I'm also fairly obsessed with Antarctica.

I wasn't watching it, but I will now!

Hello all my fellow niche weirdos! I am reviving the thread because my latest rabbit hole is cave exploring disasters, so thought I'd share this in case anyone else is interested....

Also, the disney + documentary 'The Deepest Cave' is fascinating.

I haven't seen that particular one, but the Nutty Putty Cave Incident is dreadfully upsetting. There's a Russian cave disaster, too which is chilling.

I have a real phobia of enclosed spaces myself, and can think of few things more dreadful than being trapped underground.

The Nutty Putty one is awful! That's the one that haunts me. Diving disasters are another rabbit hole to check out when you've had enough of caves.

God, the Nutty Putty cave is a tale of nightmares. There’s a photo which is erroneously attributed to it, it made me gasp out loud when I saw it. I’ll attach it here but put a sensitive thing on it so that claustrophobic people don’t have to look at it!

Not a disaster but if you like caves there is a brilliant documentary on Netflix called Unknown - Cave of Bones which has archaeologists scrambling through something like the picture above.

...and imagine if her sister was called Delilah?!