Strange & Bizarre News

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I'm more a 'stay on the continent away from the edges' type of guy. At least the monsters that roam around up here can be defended against a bit more easily. If I want to swim the water best have chlorine in it.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It is an excellent piece of footage where the shark goes through the box like it isn't there. However, that Mail article is absolute garbage. For one, it calls the perspex box (or whatever material it is made out of) a 'cage' several times, apparently because cages are used to perform a similar function. It is a bit like saying that a fixed-wing aeroplane is a helicopter, because an aeroplane is also used to achieve flight like a helicopter. The article also calls the box 'opaque' three times, despite the meaning of this word being not able to be seen through. Clearly the box is the opposite of opaque, i.e. transparent, or see-through.

Furthermore, it describes the shot of the shark breaking the box as follows:


I watched it again. The shark breaks the box with its snout, and does not 'clamp its jaw around the box' prior to breaking it. I saw another clip on another newspaper's article, and it showed a little more of the event.

Yeah Dailymail dropped the ball on that writing, I was annoyed by the writer using the word cage to describe what is clearly not a cage, but a plastic box...

Then I have this to say about that plastic box, who in their right mind would think that plastic would stop a massive great white shark?...I would definitely prefer metal bars, a real cage, over that Lexan plastic lol (if that's what it is used).

It is an excellent piece of footage though, most definitely, showing the incredible strength these animals have...That guy floating about in his little plastic fish tank is too funny and too dangerous for me...That shark busted right though the plastic with its snout like it was nothing to him...I would love to dive down and see large sharks like that but I have to be inside a metal cage or I'm not diving in...

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The shadow

The shadow knows!
Wendy's changed the look of Wendy ..
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Now Wendy is trendy and in Ian's words "looks Emo."
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It is a Felony to own 6 or more sex toys in the state of Texas. Texas penal code 43.23 obscenity (section F)

(Excerpt)

The legal basis for it is as follows:

Section 43.23 “Obscenity” of the Texas Penal Code considers a felon “A person commits an offense if, knowing its content and character, he wholesale promotes or possesses with intent to wholesale promote any obscene material or obscene device.” And then under provision F, “A person who possesses six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.”

The Texas Penal Code understands that an “Obscene device” means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs. So, because the law considers dildos obscene devices, and a person who owns more than six obscene devices is committing a criminal offense, therefore, owning 6 dildos (or plastic vaginas) is illegal.


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Standingstones

Celestial
It is a Felony to own 6 or more sex toys in the state of Texas. Texas penal code 43.23 obscenity (section F)

(Excerpt)

The legal basis for it is as follows:

Section 43.23 “Obscenity” of the Texas Penal Code considers a felon “A person commits an offense if, knowing its content and character, he wholesale promotes or possesses with intent to wholesale promote any obscene material or obscene device.” And then under provision F, “A person who possesses six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.”

The Texas Penal Code understands that an “Obscene device” means a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs. So, because the law considers dildos obscene devices, and a person who owns more than six obscene devices is committing a criminal offense, therefore, owning 6 dildos (or plastic vaginas) is illegal.


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Better stick to five….
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Treasure hunters are granted permission to raise buried canister they believe contains £200MILLION of Nazi gold from beneath Polish palace 'where Hitler's troops stashed stolen loot'

Treasure hunters get permission to raise buried canister that may contain £200MILLION of

Treasure hunters digging for 10 tonnes of Nazi gold in the grounds of an 18th century Palace (inset bottom) in Poland say they have been given permission to raise a buried canister which they think could contain the loot next month. Led by a group called the Silesian Bridge Foundation, the dig in the village of Minkowskie (left, right) has been concentrating on an old orangery in a small area of the 14-hectare palace park. It is thought treasures, stolen on the orders of SS boss Heinrich Himmler to set up a Fourth Reich, are buried there. In May this year, the group uncovered a 5ft metal canister buried 10ft below the surface. Roman Furmaniak (inset top), who is leading the dig, confirmed on Sunday the final permit had been obtained to begin the operation.

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Standingstones

Celestial

Treasure hunters are granted permission to raise buried canister they believe contains £200MILLION of Nazi gold from beneath Polish palace 'where Hitler's troops stashed stolen loot'

Treasure hunters get permission to raise buried canister that may contain £200MILLION of

Treasure hunters digging for 10 tonnes of Nazi gold in the grounds of an 18th century Palace (inset bottom) in Poland say they have been given permission to raise a buried canister which they think could contain the loot next month. Led by a group called the Silesian Bridge Foundation, the dig in the village of Minkowskie (left, right) has been concentrating on an old orangery in a small area of the 14-hectare palace park. It is thought treasures, stolen on the orders of SS boss Heinrich Himmler to set up a Fourth Reich, are buried there. In May this year, the group uncovered a 5ft metal canister buried 10ft below the surface. Roman Furmaniak (inset top), who is leading the dig, confirmed on Sunday the final permit had been obtained to begin the operation.

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It does make a person wonder. Where did all that stolen loot and artwork go to? Did the Nazis or anyone else ever recover it? Perhaps they hid it so well and time passed that no one can remember where it was hidden.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It does make a person wonder. Where did all that stolen loot and artwork go to? Did the Nazis or anyone else ever recover it? Perhaps they hid it so well and time passed that no one can remember where it was hidden.

I think the Russian Amber room is either lost forever or its in the possession of some private (wealthy) owner...

...
 

nivek

As Above So Below
A message in a bottle tossed in the sea in Germany in 1913, believed to be the world's oldest, was presented to the sender's granddaughter. The bottle included two stamps from that time, so the finder would not incur a cost, the bottle was in the water for 101 years… Inside was a message on a postcard requesting the finder return it to the writer's home address in Berlin. Much of the ink on the postcard had been rendered illegible with time and dampness.



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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Disturbing Details Found In John Wilkes Booth's Autopsy - Grunge

DISTURBING DETAILS FOUND IN JOHN WILKES BOOTH'S AUTOPSY

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While enrolled in a course called "Civil War and Medicine," sophomore Acadia Parker of Binghamton University began research for her final project on Civil War-era autopsies (via BingUNews). The greenhorn historian paid a visit to the National Archives Research Center and began thumbing through authentic Civil War autopsy reports alphabetically. Far from the digital scrolling of modern research, Parker was able to appreciate how these original documents carried visceral characteristics, describing that "they smell like old tobacco and they have bloodstains on them."

With barely a semester of historical research experience, Parker started with A and soon found herself under "Assassinations." Before she realized, there in her hand was John Wilkes Booth's autopsy report, followed shortly by Abraham Lincoln's.

Civil War-era autopsies usually contain a couple of lines describing the events leading to death. Parker found 19th century doctors wrote about Booth's death with the same medical analysis and language used today. While medical documentation is usually dry, the pain of a heartbroken nation seemed to seep in around the edges of the autopsy written by Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes. The emotionally charged text and the events surrounding this particular autopsy are both intriguing and disturbing.

MOVING THE BODY

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Traveling after the Civil War wasn't a straightforward event, even for an assassin's corpse. Around sunrise on April 26, 1865, Booth was tracked down to a large Virginia tobacco barn. He was fleeing under the alias James W. Boyd. After refusing to exit, the barn was set ablaze by an overzealous tracker. But before he could escape the inferno, Booth suffered a gunshot wound which would lead to his death (via Navy Medicine, posted by Indiana State University). After he died, Booth's body was wrapped in a horse blanket and transferred from a market wagon, to a steamer ship, a government tugboat, and finally onto an ironclad, the U.S.S. Montauk, docked in the Washington Navy Yard (via Roger J Norton).

Arriving sometime around 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. on April 27, Booth's body was placed on a makeshift carpenter's bench next to a rotatable gun turret. The horse blanket that covered the body was removed and replaced with a tarpaulin. It was going to be an unusually hot day for April, the metal of siding of the boat likely growing warm to the touch as the body awaited examination.

AN AUTOPSY OF A PRESIDENT'S ASSASSIN


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Surgeon General Joseph K. Barnes arrived at the Montauk in the late morning of April 27, 1865. Just two weeks prior, he had directed President Abraham Lincoln's autopsy (via Smithsonian Institution). Now, Barnes was to be one of the three surgeons to perform an autopsy on the man who assassinated the president. Barnes side-stepped proper military etiquette, boarding the ship without announcement to or acknowledgment of the officers. After this breach of protocol, Barnes "walks up to the corpse and commences to cut adrift the wrappings," said Lieutenant-Commander E.E. Stone (via Naval History and Heritage Command). The autopsy began unceremoniously.

The body was that of a haggard man, with a shaved mustache, a fractured and reset leg, and a large wound in the neck (via Indiana State University). Doctors concluded the cause of death was a conoidal pistol ball that ripped through Booth's neck. The ball struck low, "passing through the bony bridge of fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae — severing the spinal chord (sic)," Barnes described in a report to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

Barnes went on to say, "paralysis of the entire body was immediate." In a remarkably impassioned line for a medical report, the surgeon asserted that "all the horrors of consciousness of suffering and death must have been present to the assassin during the two hours he lingered" (per The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion). Though the physicians weren't present in Booth's last moments, they were able to accurately describe them.

ANY LAST WORDS?
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With the second and third cervical nerves intact, Booth likely could still feel his face and head as he died (via Cleveland Clinic). Because the fourth cervical vertebrae contains nerves leading to the diaphragm (via Spinal Cord), one might conclude that Booth asphyxiated, unable to take a breath. However, the extent of the damage likely delayed this process. The presiding Dr. Joseph Janvier Woodward concluded as much, observing that the damage to the phrenic nerve made swallowing "impracticable ... Death, from asphyxia, took place about two hours after the reception of the injury" (via Journal of Community Health).

Many last words have been attributed to Booth, though the autopsy doctors were not confident that he was able to speak after his mortal injury. According to army lieutenant Edward P. Doherty's report on Booth's capture, Booth survived two hours after being shot and no last words were recorded (via The Report of Lieut. Edward P. Doherty).

IDENTIFICATION OF BOOTH

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According to official records, there were only three civilians on the Montauk around the time of the autopsy and one of them was a young hotel clerk named Charles Dawson (via Indiana State University). The military officers had the clerk identify the body (via Indiana State University). Booth was a regular at the National Hotel, staying whenever he toured through D.C. (via Clio). As Booth signed the register, Dawson recalled seeing a small tattoo on the guest's hand. Dawson had chided Booth, saying, "what a fool you were to disfigure that pretty hand in such a way" (per The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography).

During the Civil War, tattooing your initials on yourself became a bona fide trend, allowing soldiers to rest in peace knowing their body would be identified and sent home using new post-mortem formaldehyde techniques (via Atlas Obscura). The hotel clerk remembered the India ink letters J.W.B., but was inconsistent in remembering their location on the body (via Indiana State University). These were the same initials of the alias Booth used after the assassination.

The rest of the witnesses were conveniently military officers on the ship, who happened to have intimate knowledge of the general appearance of the actor. Though there were numerous witnesses and acquaintances of Booth in Washington D.C., and an unconfirmed rumor that a number of co-conspirators were being held in the hull of the Montauk, none of Booth's local stage coworkers or family were contacted.

THE MARK THAT LABELED AN ASSASSIN
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Dr. John Frederick May was working in Washington D.C. when he was summoned to the Montauk (via "Mark of the Scalpel," published in Records of the Columbia Historical Society). Convinced he was more needed tending to the living than the dead, he delayed. Little did he know he was being called upon to identify the president's assassin. A more forceful summons arrived and May obeyed when he was reminded of the Latin adage "inter arma enim silent leges" – "for among arms, the laws are silent." His identification of Booth became the most convincing to skeptics.

Dr. May had earlier treated Booth surgically, removing a fibroid tumor from the neck of the future assassin. The wound reopened during the course of one of Booth's performances and Dr. May further treated it, but it left a unique scar.

In his memoirs, Dr. May recalled his hesitancy to identify the body. He described seeing "no resemblance in that corpse to Booth, nor can I believe it to be that of him" (per Records of the Columbia Historical Society). Booth's spent remains were a far cry from the once handsome stage performer (via the New York Daily News). It showed evidence of what the toll killing the president and fleeing for 12 days by horse, boat, and foot can take on a body. It wasn't until the Booth was turned over that the evidence May needed was clear: the scar from the earlier surgery. "My mark was unmistakably found by me upon it," he confirmed.

DISTURBING AND MYSTERIOUSLY MISSING EVIDENCE
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The body of Booth was buried and re-buried a number of times before it was released back to the Booth family (via Roger J. Norton) though missing some noticeable elements. In what was most likely a lengthy and challenging dissection for the young doctor, Joseph Woodward removed the cervical vertebrae and spinal cord where the bullet had passed. He then wrapped the fourth and fifth vertebrae in cloth and sent them to the newly established Army Medical Museum, never to be reunited with the rest of the body. They remain in the collection to this day at what is now called the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Surgeon general Stanton ordered a single photograph be taken of the corpse (via Smithsonian) by the non-military photographer Alexander Gardner and his assistant (via Indiana State University). After taking the photo, the assistant was escorted by the government detective James A. Wardell, to have the print developed and delivered to the War Department.

Wardell handed the print to the chief of the secret service, Colonel Baker. "I gave him the plate and print," said Wardell, "and he stepped to one side and pulled it from the envelope. He looked at it and then dismissed me." Since that day, no one has confirmed the location or has claimed to have seen the picture, fueling conspiracy theories that Booth had survived (via "The Ghosts of Fredericksburg — and Nearby Environs").

A FORETELLING ASIDE
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Booth was both charismatic and drop-dead gorgeous earlier in life (via New York Daily News), yet his tragic decisions led his visage to be nearly unrecognizable. While the time pre- and post-mortem had taken its toll on Booth's body, "the mark made by the scalpel during life remained indelible in death, and settled beyond all question at the time, and all cavil in the future, the identity of the man who had assassinated the President" claimed Dr. May.

In lighter days, Booth chatted with his surgeon, making jokes before his fibroid surgery. Failing to see the humor in one of Booth's dramatic exaggerations, Dr. May still recorded it in his memoirs. Booth cheekily requested that if ever asked about the surgical operation, the doctor should explain it away by saying "that it was for the removal of a bullet from his neck" (per Records of the Columbia Historical Society).
 

nivek

As Above So Below
This 1974 photograph shows the true colours of the freshly unearthed Terracotta Warriors, before rapid deterioration due to environmental exposures.
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nivek

As Above So Below
There is a gaping hole in this horse's neck, and the horse is fine. Apparently, the horse lived with an abusive owner who shot it through the neck, but the bullet didn't hit anything important, so eventually, the wound healed on its own and formed this hole. The horse was rescued.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuonR9IQBU4


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