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.

Bare with me. I'm autistic so this may affect my view.

I can't get my head around the fact (most of the time if you're the opposite sex) you have to have sex if you want a baby.

Some people that don't want children, just the sex can have their life changed dramatically (religious reasons / found out too late / anti abortion).

Some people just want the baby.

If you have issues with conceiving you basically have to discuss your sex like with a doctor, your parents, work.

I honestly can't explain it and I don't know why I feel so uneasy about this.

Also that in lots of cases a man, sometimes a stranger inserts his penis into you. I mean you can't get any more intimate than that.

I just find it mental.

I honestly had no idea or gave any thought to the lyrics until I listened to the podcast. So maybe the parents didn't either.

Same as when I tried to send a song about being 16 to my friends daughter, and realised they were all songs about letchy men waiting for girls to become legal. Ew ew ew.

So far, all three topics on the podcast have been really interesting, and I'd really recommend subscribing.

Following

So many rabbit holes... so little time 😵‍💫

Children who have past life memories. Google the little boy from Bara and the boy who was a WW 2 fighter pilot. There is a scientist, in Canada I think, who is doing research into this phenomenon. Fascinating but also makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

There’s a book called ‘Stiff’ which talks about all the different things that a dead body can be used for. Made me think that a burial is a bit of a waste!
And the Great Vowel Shift, a change in the way that we pronounce words. Nobody is quite sure why it happened, but it’s why a lot of English words appear to have obscure spellings.

Was your twin identical though?
So fascinating- I have identical twins and is mad knowing that if my newly fertilised egg had split literally 4 days later my twins would have been conjoined.
Also fascinating to know they don’t really know why identical twins occur. Why does the egg split? What causes that? An enzyme released in the mother they think but why is it released? How would you prevent it (or encourage it?) they just don’t know.

@PurpleWisteria1
I absorbed the cells of my non identical twin*

@Tabitha1960 they probably still don’t want to give us ideas above our station!

The book Your Inner Fish. Enlightening and fascinating. How we have evolved from fish in easy to understand lay-man terms. Did you know that "the head is made up of vertebrae that fused and grew a vault to hold our brains and sense organs?” And that “bones that are the upper and lower jaws in sharks are used by us to swallow and hear.” Lots of cool revelations of this sort. There is a section that describes how our ear was related to a sense organ, the neuromast, present in the sides of some fish. Really interesting reading.

There was a butterfly or bird migration who would fly around a massive lake rather than cutting out several miles flying over it.
Scientists couldn't figure out why they didn't go over it.
Until they went way back in history and discovered that this lake used to be a mountain and the butterflies/ birds have followed the exact same path despite the mountain turning into a lake over years and years.

I was astonished!

Also I love mushrooms and fungi.
There is evidence that trees communicate using fungul networks of mycelium underground, a tree on one side of a forrest can warm trees the other side of the forrest, 40 miles away and those trees can make their leaves taste bitter or put up other defences before the pest is even close to them.
it's amazing.

Also a tree stump 'grandparent' can be sustained for years (decades) by theor 'grandchildren'. They share nutrients with fallen members. There's a great book about it.
hidden life of trees.

@Kate0902900908 Chimerism is totally fascinating, but I’m so sorry for your losses.

@HarrietSchulenberg do you watch ‘A House Through Time’? I love it!

@Needmorelego

You will love this website www.28dayslater.co.uk/

Urban explorers travel everywhere in the UK taking pictures of disused buildings. From old cinemas, mental asylums, empty hospitals, military sites, power stations etc.
Some empty since the 50s and 60s. These guys are top notch at photography, they sometimes break the law getting in to these sites, but what they show in their photos and dialogue is just beyond fascinating. No one would believe there are so many disused sites in this country.

Saving this thread to have a proper read (and Google ) later.

Regarding deserted places, Ben Fogle has a series on ‘Lost Worlds’, ie abandoned places, and I think there’s a series on Quest/more 4/ etc on abandoned places.

It was still operational when I worked there in the 2010s. We used to bring visitors to ride it (the only time we ever went into that building, ditto probably 90% of the people going there )

It ceased operation in 2017.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-42339097

However, the thing that fascinates me is when missing children are found years later, having been abducted by people and kept in cellars etc, often in ordinary surburban streets. Neighbours have no idea that there is a captured child next door. These stories horrify and fascinate me.

There has been a modern TV series about the suffrage movement. I’m sure it was BBC and it was hosted by Lucy Worsley.

I've had to force myself to stop reading before I lose the entire day - but anticipating hours of happy googling 😁

I love ancient astronomy.

Newgrange in Ireland is a burial mound older than Stonehenge and the pyramids. It has a tiny, narrow shaft that light can only reach the chamber through at sunrise on the winter solstice.

Unbelievably precise calculations carried out by people equipped with sticks. How the fuck?

I was lucky enough to see the Turin Shroud at the Louvre many, many years ago, when it was there on a limited loan. I had gone to see the Mono Lisa, which left me cold, but then I went to see the Turin Shroud which literally gave me goosebumps.

⁸I heard on the news sometime later that carbon dating meant it couldn't have been the real cloth that Jesus was wrapped in, but they must have made a mistake, because the feelings I got from that piece of Cloth was not imagined.

And, vitally, what did it mean to play pop with the manager?

@ComeTheFckOnBridget 'playing pop' means to shout at someone; give them a hard time. It’s an old Northern expression. It may be related to the current usage of 'have a pop at' somebody, though I’m not 100% about that. It seems likely, though.

Spider webs… I once sat in the garden for 5 hours watching one being made 🕸️🕸️

Hang on. I was thinking of the earlier one by Amanda Vickery called Suffragettes Forever. It was very, very good.

www.imdb.com/title/tt4484616/

@kateandme actually they were allowed out to go and stay with family, and had access to their suitcases throughout their stay. That’s why some of them have unposted letters in - the writers passed away before finishing them.

Simon Roper makes fabulous videos!