December 2010
21 posts
List of objects dropped on New Year's Eve →
Tallapoosa, Georgia - An opossum, on on odd years. “It kind of started out as a joke”, said organizer Kate Gardner. “But now it’s grown to one of the biggest events we have”.
Seaside Heights, New Jersey - Nicole Polizzi (a.k.a. “Snooki” from the TV series Jersey Shore) in a ball (2011).
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin - A carp (real but dead) weighing...
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Hippocratic face →
The Hippocratic face is the change produced in the face by impending death, or long illness, excessive hunger, and the like.
“[If the patient’s facial] appearance may be described thus: the nose sharp, the eyes sunken, the temples fallen in, the ears cold and drawn in and their lobes distorted, the skin of the face hard, stretched and dry, and the colour of the face pale or dusky.…...
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Jon Brower Minnoch →
Jon Brower Minnoch (9/29/41 – 9/10/83) was the heaviest man recorded in history. At his peak weight, he was approximately 1400 lb (635 kg, 100 stone). This figure was only a close estimation, however, because his extreme size, poor health, and lack of mobility prevented use of a scale.
His weight loss of approximately 924 lb (419 kg) was the largest ever documented.
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Eternal September →
Eternal September is a Usenet slang expression, coined by Dave Fischer, for the period beginning September 1993.
The expression encapsulates the belief that an endless influx of new users (newbies) since that date has continuously degraded standards of discourse and behavior on Usenet and the wider Internet.
Orphan Train →
The Orphan Train was a social experiment that transported children from crowded coastal cities of the United States to the country’s Midwest for adoption. The orphan trains ran between 1854 and 1929, relocating an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. The children were transported to their new homes on trains which were eventually labeled “orphan trains.” This period...
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Tsutomu Miyazaki →
During the day, Miyazaki was a mild-mannered employee. Outside of work, he randomly selected children to kill. He terrorized the families of his victims, sending them letters recalling in graphic detail what he had done to their children. To the family of victim Erika Nanba, Miyazaki sent a morbid postcard assembled using words cut out of magazines: “Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat. Rest....
Griggstown cow →
The Griggstown Cow was a “ghost cow” that was reported to inhabit Griggstown, in central New Jersey. For thirty years there had been a legend of a “ghost cow.” The cow was seen many times but only on foggy nights or other times of poor visibility, and many tales were told by local hunters and hikers along the canal path. No spoor or tracks were ever found. Some fuzzy...
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Rosenhan experiment →
The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973.
The first part involved the use of healthy associates or “pseudopatients” who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the...
List of animals in The Simpsons →
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List of animals named after animals →
including:
Bee wolf
Fish crow
Kangaroo rat
Peacock goat
Zebra dove
(via opendaylight)
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Soul cake →
A Soul cake is a small round cake which is traditionally made for All Saints Day or All Souls’ Day to celebrate the dead. The cakes, often simply referred to as souls, were given out to soulers (mainly consisting of children and the poor) who would go from door to door on Hallowmas singing and saying prayers for the dead. Each cake eaten would represent a soul being freed from Purgatory.
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Toilet-related injuries and deaths →
Mishy-phen →
A mishy-phen is a misplacement of a hyphen with the effect of making a word or phrase incomprehensible or ludicrous.
In the word co-worker, a line-end hyphen may be placed after the w, so that cow-orker appears.