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.

Some bright spark put these in the arts tower at Sheffield univ
Getting on and off ….( meant to say, jumping on and off …). carrying portfolios was hilarious, students and artwork flying everywhere🤪

So called “glitches in the matrix”.
Doppelgängers.
Skinwalkers.

Photosynthesis. If you think about it, every single living thing on earth only exists because plants can turn sunlight into (edible) matter.

It seems to be a bit historically accepted these days that female underwear - even as we would recognise it today - was used going back centuries and possibly quite regularly. At least by the upper classes. A wonderfully preserved bra and pair of knickers was found in, I think - if I remember correctly- escavations of a medieval castle in France some years back now. Although some historians dismissed the pertinencec of them at the time, it seems they've had quite an influence on our understanding of female undergarments.

Certainly the theory that bleeding into petticoats was common for centuries.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that women used some form of pad tied to their bodies during their periods and petticoats were acknowledged as extra protection. Women are very practical, typically keepers of the domestic and intimate spheres. Undergarments and menstrual management were fairly unmentionable and women's histories have been successfully suppressed and unrecorded so much of what we know of them comes from material culture and of all garments least likely to survive - sanitary wear and basic knickers are right up there!

I was sceptical when I opened the link for these reasons but some of the contemporary accounts recorded here have a ring of truth about them and I'd love to dig into this some more.

No idea how women managed during the oh-so-refined and delicate Regency period though. Those white gauzy skirts and petticoats were so sheer that womens legs could be seen through them in right light! I suspect women just probably hid at home one week per month with their old tattys on!

@OldFan @AmandaJonah

Twixt The Sheets is a brilliant podcast looking at women's history and they have a recent episode I've not got to yet 'The History of Periods'

@ComeTheFckOnBridget Yes, women used spagnum moss and stuff for pads or tampons for millenia. Or rags etc.

I did read that women in some cultures would (as well as other methods) have like a period 'apron' tied on backwards so they had an extra bit of material between them and their clothes.

I think the bottom half of the white regency stuff would end up looking a bit like a 'wet T shirt' competition after a sweaty dance. Everyone would've been really fragrant, too.

Very interesting. I come from a City built on the Mills and the women in my family were mill workers.

They have, or at least had, one of these at Essex uni. One of only 3 in the country I think!

Lol I literally came back to mention the aprons as I'd just remembered them!

Is this the guy who does, "How to read French without knowing French?"

If it isn't him then put the "how to... " in to YouTube

Also get the book "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language" by David Chrystal.

Can you recommend a good link?

Wow! That's incredible. How interesting. I'm sorry to hear about losing babies. Now they know why, can they "fix" it?

The first week after your period you are slightly more flexible because your estrogen is high. The week before your period you will feel more stiff because estrogen is low. Dancers and performers particularly take note of this.

Or maybe I’m the only person who hasn’t noticed this because it was only recently that I became regularly physically active because I’m lazy. 😂 Either way it’s fascinating to me at the very least. 😆

So many things!
I obsess over something for a period of time, then move on.
Longer lasting fascinations have been the history of counter- culture and protest, and mountaineers and Everest,

My rabbit hole of choice is the tesseract. It’s a 4d cube. There are some really interesting podcasts out there on how many dimensions there probably are and how big the universe is, if you just search ‘tesseract.’

@Kate0902900908 .I genuinely have never heard of this condition. Am so sorry it is effecting your fertility. Was your Mother aware that she had a twin pregnancy ?

I’m so sorry about your losses and thank you for sharing your story. May I ask how it was discovered and if doctors are quite fascinated by it? I can imagine it will be challenging to explain to some doctors who might be unaware.

I saw this condition referenced as a storyline in a TV show recently and it was discovered as a daughter had a blood type making it apparently impossible she was her mother’s daughter. They discovered her mother was a chimera and so the daughter was born from the aunt’s egg, in theory. I wondered at the time how accurate the storyline was and how rare a condition it might be!

Recently listened to a BBC Sounds podcast about Typhoid Mary and realised I didn’t know the story at all.

Very fascinating to hear it now in the context of the recent pandemic as she was the first identified asymptomatic carrier of an infectious illness. She was imprisoned/isolated as a matter of ‘public safety’ and whilst they ran tests on her. Ultimately she was released, partly as a realisation there must be tons of asymptomatic people and they couldn’t all be locked up. Sounds familiar…!

My (current) rabbithole is nothing so lofty or intellectual or historical as most of the other subjects mentioned above.

It's Brad Mondo on Youtube where he provides advice on how to cut/colour your own hair, along with hair basics, and watches videos of people who have attempted to recreate his efforts.

I find the processes mesmerising, and he's very camp, catty and witty which enhances it for me.

If you need to chill for 15mins, you could do worse than whack on a Brad Mondo video. 😛

My obsession is to trace my way through the descendants of Queen Victoria (in fact the descendants of any royal house). I am not interested in the well known branches who make it to the throne, I want to know what happened to the descendants of all of the younger siblings.

Queen Victoria's daughters, granddaughters and great grandaughters are fascinating, and many of them had difficult and tragic lives. Once I go down the Wiki rabbit hole I am lost for hours.

I love the stuff about the history of language. I remember as a child being told that an apron was originally a napron and I think that triggered my interest.

OMG! I heard that song on the radio yesterday and it was the first time I’d actually ‘heard’ the lyrics. I never realised how creepy/disgusting it was. I once met a woman called Sharona. Thought it was pretty cringe to be named after the song (I’ve always hated it incidentally). Now I’m wondering why the hell her parents would have named her after this!

@cassiatwenty yes! I can reread her biography several times a year, what a life and time to have lived in, she's so fascinating!

Re paternoster lifts - we had one in the arts tower at Leicester uni when I was a student there in the early 70s.

Ant and bee colonies- the efficiency, the organisation. Mind blowing stuff.

Emotions/feelings… they’re made from nothing physical and yet they power us throughout our existence. I mean, you could split hairs and say tears are physical but tears are the physical response to emotions, not the emotions themselves.

Same with our ego/consciousness; an invisible entity stored inside a meat puppet. What becomes of it when our physical selves expire?

Airplanes. Just bonkers! Brilliant and bonkers. Although that fascination quickly dies down when the aircraft is Ryanair.