"Starving time"

The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was established at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 by 104 settlers who arrived aboard 3 ships. Because of harsh weather, crop failure, and other issues, only 38 remained after the first 9 months – and they faced an increasingly harsh existence. Fewer than 20% of the original colonists lived through the winter of 1609–1610, which became known as the "Starving Time." George Percy, the president of Jamestown during that period, wrote a letter 16 years later describing the miserable situation which he was lucky to survive:

“Haveinge fedd upon our horses and other beastes as longe as they Lasted, we weare gladd to make shifte with vermin as doggs Catts, Ratts and myce…as to eate Bootes shoes or any other leather. And now famin beginneinge to Looke gastely and pale in every face, thatt notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.”

Now archaeologist William Kelso and physical anthropologist Douglas Owlsley of the Smithsonian Institution have presented hard physical evidence to back up the textual references to survival cannibalism. An excavated skull, which allowed them to reconstruct the face of the 14-year-old English girl depicted above, also bore the cut marks that indicate she was butchered and consumed.

Posted with Blogsy

Packer's pistol

On a recent episode of "Mysteries at the Museum," I learned that storied "Colorado cannibal" Alferd* Packer (1842-1907) was vindicated using modern forensic techniques. Here is a timeline:

1874

Six men intending to prospect for gold tried to cross Colorado's San Juan Mountains in winter, against advice. That spring, Packer was the only one to emerge. His fellows were found murdered, and there were signs that their bodies had been cannibalized. Packer was arrested, but afraid of being lynched, he escaped from jail and remained on the run for 8 years. When he was finally tracked down in Wyoming and put on trial, he testified that prospector Shannon Bell had attacked him with a hatchet after killing the other men. Packer then shot and killed Bell. Packer reluctantly admitted to eating the flesh of his companions to avoid starvation, and blamed that admission for his conviction and 40-year sentence. Packer was paroled after 16 years in prison and died 6 years later, still maintaining his innocence of murder.

1950

While at the Packer massacre site on Cannibal Mesa near Lake City, Colorado, historian Ernest Ronzio of  Western State College unearthed a 1862 Colt Police Model pistol (photo here), which he loaned to the Western State College Museum for study and display. It was in poor condition: the grips were rotted off, the main spring was broken, and the rusted cylinder still had .38 caliber bullets in 3 of the 5 chambers. The gun was later purchased and donated to the Museum of Western Colorado.

1989

A team led by James E. Starrs of George Washington University's National Law Center, exhumed the bodies of the 5 victims on the site of the Colorado massacre and examined the bones in an anthropology lab. They found cuts to the arm and hand bones possibly indicative of defensive wounds, in addition to nicks suggesting that the bodies had been defleshed. Starrs photographed the skeletons and took samples, which remain with the Hinsdale County Historical Society.

2001

As curator of History at the Museum of Western Colorado, David P. Bailey took on the task of documenting their collection of firearms. He was intrigued by the pistol and its yellowed accession card, which read, "This gun was found at the site where Packer killed and ate five of his traveling companions." He verified the provenance of the pistol and set out to shed light on Packer's case, which resulted in strong corroboration of his claim of self-defense:

• The gun matched the time frame and location of the massacre.
• It had never been introduced as evidence because it was lost in the snow after Packer's desperate fight with Bell.
• The Colt had 2 empty chambers, and an 1873 statement confirms that only Shannon Bell had been shot (the other victims had all been killed with a hatchet), with a bullet hole seen through his wallet and a severe wound from a 2nd bullet to the pelvis. 
• Comparison of a 50-micron piece of lead in the soil samples collected from beneath Bell's skeleton with a bullet that remained in the gun under an electron microscope and an x-ray spectrograph showed that it was an exact match in structure, size, and composition!

This confirms that Bell was killed by a bullet shot from Alferd Packer's gun and suggests, but does not confirm the motive. Bailey concludes, "Although this new information was over a century too late to help vindicate Packer, it is never to late for the truth."

*Not a typo - he spelled it this way.

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Related posts:

Alive!

Franklin Expedition

The Raft of the Medusa

Custom of the sea

Pishtaco

Hunger and thirst

Contemporary cannibalism?

Contemporary cannibalism?

You hear stories that cannibalism is still practiced among the natives of some remote South Pacific islands, but headlines trumpet that as the fate of a present-day adventurer. Just 10 days ago, German yachtsman Stefan Ramin, 40, was killed - and presumed eaten - in French Polynesia. He and his wife Heike Dorsch, 37, had anchored off the coast of the Marquesan island of Nuku Hiva on Sept. 16th. In one of the last entries on his blog, Ramin wrote, "I seek freedom and adventures." He had gone goat-hunting, but never returned. Police are looking for his local guide, who tried to lure Dorsch into the jungle, telling her that Ramin had been in an accident and sexually assaulting her when she refused to accompany him. It was only recently that the authorities found Ramin's remains, consisting of ash, clothes, teeth, and bone fragments. The man's body had been burnt in a pyre so fierce that it left scorch marks 25' high in the trees and scattered debris over a 35' radius. The charred bones were sent to the island of Papeete for analysis. "It is almost certain the remains we found in the fire are those of Stefan Ramin," said prosecutor Jose Thorel. The teeth have been matched to dental records sent from Germany, but they are awaiting the definitive results of DNA testing. Modern forensics confirms that Ramin has been murdered and investigators are convinced that the guide is both killer and cannibal: "It is the suspicion of the authorities that the hunter carved his victim up, ate parts of the body and burned the remainder along with animal cadavers."

1st image) A view of Nuku Hiva from on board the restored tallship Soren Larsen, which can be booked for adventure sailing cruises; 2nd image) Ramin and Dorsch at another stop on their around-the-world voyage, which had begun in 2008; 3rd image) An 1892 painting by French artist Paul Guaguin (1848-1903) entitled "Arii Matamoe [The Royal End]," which depicts Polynesian funeral rites after the death of a monarch, including lying-in-state and collective mourning. "Arii Matamoe" was painted during Gauguin's 1st Tahitian period on another island in the Marquesas.

Follow-ups

*Don't forget to watch "Saturday Night Live" tonight, hosted by Betty White!*

4/19/10 Oklahoma City Bombing About this photograph, follower Cynthia Chaldekas commented, "I often wonder about the people behind these iconic images. How must they feel as the rest of the world embraces a piece of them, via an image. the person in the image suddenly is no longer theirs in the same way because pictures do take on a life of their own. I think of the Kent State College student who screams out in pain over a fellow...or the child who is running down a road in Vietnam. Most of live anonymously, so to be thrust into the forefront by sheer accident would be disturbing."

4/18/10 Another kind of crittercam Footage of a sea lion gobbling up an octopus.

4/17/10 Xenoglossia A British woman attributes her Foreign Accent Syndrome to her migraine headaches.

4/11/10 We lost another Munchkin James Taylor reports that just a few days before this post, he had a long conversation with the author of this book during which they discussed how many of the Munchkins would survive to celebrate the 75th anniversary of "The Wizard of Oz."

4/6/10 Corpses in strange places On a motorcycle in a funeral home in San Juan, Puerto Rico (pictured).

4/5/10 Ostrich people A Massachusetts woman with no arms is preparing for her black belt in tae kwon do.

3/26/10 Dwarfs on display The shortest woman to give birth in the U.K. is only 7" taller than her now 14-month-old son. A dwarf horse, possibly the world's smallest.

1/24/10 Follow-ups These photos of owls rival the one used to illustrate this post.

1/21/10 Gatorland! Customers were lured to the grand opening of a business in New Mexico with a display of live alligators, but then scared away when the animals were fed live bunnies. An Australian water aerobics class was postponed so a crocodile could be removed from the pool.

1/20/10 Ancient Egyptian finds A Greco-Roman mummy has been found southeast of Cairo.

1/20/10 Bees in the weird news Researchers at the University of London have determined that bees see the world five times faster than humans.

12/27/09 Bushmeat An Indonesian couple was arrested for making and selling meatballs made from the meat of protected monkeys. PETA finds the Banana Derby, an event at St. Mary's Spring Fling in which dogs are raced with monkeys as jockeys, objectionable.

12/20/09 Rats! An island in the Hebrides that spent £600,000 getting rid of its rats is now overrun with rabbits.

12/19/09 Nero's dining room Italian archaeologists have unearthed a small 6th c. B.C. temple with do-it-yourself assembly instructions that they compare to Ikea furniture! Here is a panoramic view of a temporarily drained 19th c. Belgian reservoir.

12/8/09 Hermits - 2 scenarios The death of a 94-year-old loner ends a tradition in Idaho.

12/7/09 Rose round-up British plant biologists have succeeded in developing a polka-dot rose.

11/25/09 Homicidal somnambulism This article warns that sleepwalkers can be violent and shouldn't be awakened.

11/19/09 Stone/house A woman parked her car in Derbyshire, U.K., to run an errand, and when she returned a few minutes later it had been smashed by a 5-ton boulder that had tumbled off a passing truck.

11/13/09 Circus animals on the lam It took 15 people to wrangle a rhinoceros back into its enclosure at the Jacksonville Zoo in Florida. Lemurs were on the loose in Clearwater, Florida. Australian nursing home residents hospitalized after being injured by a rampaging goat.

10/23/09 Trepanation A British countess and friend of Mick Jagger, now 67, trepanned her skull at age 23.

10/22/09 Birds in fable and fact New Zealand researchers have found that crows can use 3 tools in succession to perform a task.

10/3/09 Dinosaur eggs An 11-million-year-old primate fossil has been found in Catalonia. Fossil remains of a newly identified extinct turtle have been discovered in a coal mine in Colombia. An amateur paleontologist has uncovered a rare dinosaur fossil in Colorado.

9/5/09 The biting off of fingers The theft of a newly-purchased iPad stripped part of a man's finger to the bone and necessitated amputation.

8/9/09 Adventurers Club An unemployed man in West Sussex, U.K., is living in a treehouse. Local children in Brisbane, Australia, are fighting to prevent the city council from tearing down their treehouse. Photographs of 6 amazing treehouses.

7/27/09 Hottentot Venus France is repatriating the preserved heads of 15 Maori warriors to New Zealand.

7/16/09 Cemetery scandal A funeral home in Maryland has been closed after 40 bodies were found stacked up awaiting cremation. Unauthorized funeral urns have been discovered at the bottom of a Swiss lake.

6/18/09 Birthing and hoarding bunnies More than 700 animals - half of them dead - have been found in the home of a man in Ocala, Florida.

6/14/09 "Seven Pounds" A 10-year-old Australian girl has stunned doctors by surviving the sting of a deadly box jellyfish. A strange new jellyfish has been discovered in a Tasmanian river.

5/2/09 Chihuahuas in the weird news A mixed-breed dog in China is nursing abandoned red panda cubs.

4/27/09 Mastectomy tattoos I received an e-mail from Lindsey on behalf of the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation who writes, "Over the past few months, we’ve been working with some artists and young adults who have cancer as well as young adults living with people who have cancer in art workshops, culminating in an exhibition called ‘The C Word’ that will be exhibited in June this year. The aim of the exhibition is to explore questions of identity and issues young adults face when confronted with a cancer diagnosis, as well as to demystify cancer and to celebrate the idea that though we may be diagnosed with cancer, cancer does not define us. The head artist for the project is Rae Leung, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 – she is also a voice-over artist and an avid blogger and was keen to share with other young adults who have cancer how they might find writing a good way to deal and process with the issues that they face. Partnering with her is a professional visual artist / sculptor who is working with the participants to create collages and other work that will be on display in the project. We’re currently doing an open call for submission of written work, video or photography by young adults who have cancer to be included in our video installation. As such, I was wondering if maybe it would be possible for you to help us reach out to your community to see if any of them would be interested. The project is a community art project and we would love to be able to include work from around the world. If you can help us to inform your community that would be amazing!" See their website for details on the project and the submission process and contact Patricia Chiu at pat@hkyaf.com for further information.

4/25/09 Prosimians A pair of rare pygmy lorises have been born at a Texas zoo.

4/24/09 Ocean garbage dump Visions of creating a recycled island out of the plastic floating in the ocean garbage patch.

4/24/09 Bears in the news Vermont officials freed a black bear whose head was stuck in a steel milk can. An e-mail circulates stating that this grizzly bear was hit by a man on a motorcycle, but apparently it was killed by a truck.

3/26/09 Centenarians - and then some A 100-year-old tenant in Illinois is being evicted by her niece. A Japanes woman Kama Chinen, the oldest person in the world, has died at 114. A 100-year-old Australian war hero is being denied government compensation.

3/15/09 Kangaroo home invasion James Taylor told me about the phantom kangaroos terrorizing residents of a mountainous area north of Tokyo, Japan.

3/12/09 Shark attack capital A surfer in Hawaii survived a shark attack.

2/17/09 Killer chimpanzees Chimps in a Scottish wildlife park have been observed comforting a dying member of their group and mourning her death.

1/31/09 A morning's work A British family has complained that a woman's rings went missing between the time her arm was severed in an accident and its arrival at the hospital.

1/23/09 Natural mummification Reader Chase alerted me to the story of a mummified baby who spent years above ground before being confiscated by police and buried in Concord, New Hampshire, and has now been stolen from his grave. The death of a man in Bristol, U.K., went unreported by hid roommate for 10 years as his body remained under the couch.

1/6/09 More mammoths Researchers in Canada and Australia have discovered a mutation in a blood protein of woolly mammoths that allowed them to survive in freezin temperatures.

12/24/08 Progeria A West Yorkshire, U.K., schoolboy has a form of atypical progeria so rare that he is the only person in the world with the condition.

12/17/08 First U.S. face transplant! Full face transplant performed in Spain.

11/25/08 Traumatic skull injuries U.S. surgeons donned body armor to remove a highly explosive bullet from the skull of an Afghan soldier.

11/8/08 Raft of the Medusa News reports that the Donner Party may not have practiced cannibalism after all were greatly exaggerated and do not accurately represent the research of Appalachian State University anthropology professor Gwen Robbins.

Eye news

Today I offer for your consideration a long list of weird news about eyes. When I first filled out an organ donor card, I excluded my eyes because it gives me the willies to think of them being removed, but I feel so strongly about restoring sight, if possible, that I no longer make that exception. What follows are stories about curing blindness and causing blindness, the weird things people do with and to their eyes, and eyes in archaeology and on the cutting edge. I have prefaced each headline with an adjective to help you decide if you want to go to the link to read/see more.

Promising: Scientists in the U.S. were developing a microchip that could be surgically implanted in the eye to stimulate the cells around the retina and restore sight.

Ironic: The U.K.'s National Health Service sent a letter inviting a woman from north Wales to have the ophthalmic surgery she needed - 18 years after she had died.

Painful: An 81-year-old monk on Thailand mistook a tube of superglue for eyedrops, but was fine after doctors unglued one eye.

Diabolical: A man from Dundee, Scotland, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for gouging out his ex-girlfriend's eye and attempting to throw her off an 8th-floor balcony.

Surprising: American woman Jalisa Thompson's claim to fame is her eye-popping ability.

Disturbing: A 70-year-old Swedish woman undergoing cataract surgery was mistaken for another patient and had an unneeded operation on her eyelid last month.

Miraculous: A 60-year-old American woman from Mississippi has regained her sight after doctors implanted a tooth in her eye to anchor a tiny prosthetic lens.

Unforgivable: Under the influence of PCP, a Bakersfield, California, man mutilated both eyes of his 4-year-old son, blinding him.

Strange: The eyes of a young woman in Melbourne, Australia, clamp shut for 3 days at a time, blinding her, then open for the next 3 days, then clamp shut again - a baffling affliction she has lived with for 4 years.

Remarkable: A 5,000-year-old artificial discovered at a site near Zabol, Iran, is believed to be the oldest prosthetic in the world.

Horrifying: Doctors in Kragujevac, Serbia, removed an 11cm parasitic worm from a 37-year-old woman's eye socket.

Questionable: Photos and a firsthand account of one of the first eyeball tattoos.

Insane: A 25-year-old death row inmate in Texas, who has a history of mental problems, pulled out his remaining eye and ingested it, having mutilated the other eye 3 years earlier while on trial.

Unfortunate: A drunken blind man stumbled into the wrong house in Houston, Texas, and was injured by birdshot fired by the homeowner when the man refused to leave.

Defensible: A blind man in Inkster, Michigan, shot at 2 men trying to rob him, hitting one of them in the chest.

Undetermined: Snopes has no information on the authenticity of this photograph showing a man pulling his eyeballs down to cheek level.

Unbelievable: The Texas Commission for the blind violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against 2 employees who have impaired vision.

Daring: A legally blind man climbed both Mt. Hood in Oregon and Mt. Whitney in California, setting world records each time.

Creepy: This unnamed man has quite a range of motion when rolling his eyes around in his head.

Pishtaco

A horrifying story in the weird news today raises the specter of the pishtaco, a vampire-like demon in Andean folklore. Peruvian police have arrested 3 (or by another acount, 4) members of a gang of at least 9 people accused of killing peasants and selling their body fat for use in cosmetics. The suspects have confessed to 5 such murders, but are believed to have killed dozens of people over several decades. At a press conference, police displayed 2 bottles of what was confirmed to be liquified human fat, carried by the suspects when they were arrested in a Lima bus station. Said to be worth $16,000 or more per gallon for use in anti-wrinkle cream, the fat had been extracted from the thorax and thighs by dismembering the body and suspending it above a candle to allow the fat to drip into a vat below.

Pishtacos were characterized as white foreigners who found their Indian victims on dark lonely roads, killed them with machetes, and extracted their fat to make soaps, lubricants, healing salves, and beauty creams. A review of Mario Vargas Llosa's 1996 book Death in the Andes explains the myth and quotes from the book: Pishtacos, half-gringo ghouls who are said to live in caves, lurk along the highways, and suck the fat out of anyone foolish enough to travel the Andean roads at night. Pishtacos "needed human fat to make church bells sing more sweetly and tractors run more smoothly....They not only slit their victims' throats but butchered them like cattle, or sheep, or hogs, and ate them. Bled them drop by drop and got drunk on the blood."

The Peruvian police have not charged their suspects with cannibalism - that's another (recent) story altogether: Police in Perm, Russia, have arrested 3 homeless men for attacking a 25-year-old with knives and a hammer, eating part of his body, and selling parts to a kebab and pie kiosk...reminiscent in this case not of myth, but of Sweeney Todd.

Grave and golem

Today we have a guest post by Loren Rhoads. For 10 years, Loren edited the cult nonfiction magazine Morbid Curiosity. Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, a collection drawn from the magazine, is due from Scribner on Sept. 29th and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

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Jews first came to Prague as free traders in the 10th c. They lived peacefully along the trade routes below Vysehrad Castle until Christian crusaders destroyed their settlement at the end of the 11th c. Afraid to lose the money the Jewish settlers generated, the nobility invited them to shift their homes to the city's Old Town, which then became the first ghetto - 3 centuries before the word was coined in Venice. Medieval Christians believed Jews had killed Christ, and continued to use Christian blood in their rituals. The Passover lamb was considered a euphemism for Christ and it was widely imagined that unless the Jews were locked behind ghetto walls at night, Christian infants would end up on Passover plates. As the Middle Ages melted into the Renaissance, interest in the Kabbalah swelled among both the Jews and Christians of Prague. It was in this atmosphere that Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1512-1609) became chief rabbi of the ghetto in 1597. Legends sprang up around Rabbi Loew (pronounced "lurve"), who was said to be one of only four men since Adam to see the Garden of Eden. While there, he was granted the shem - the secret name of God, which can create life. When the ghetto was once again menaced due to Christian bigotry, the Rabbi and two apprentices formed a champion out of the muddy banks of the Vltava River. This artificial man served faithfully, protecting the Jews from slander and worse...until something went wrong one night and Rabbi Loew had to rip the shem - variously a clay tablet or a scrap of paper - from behind the golem's teeth.

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Founded in 1478, the Beth-Haim (Hebrew for "House of Life") served as the only Jewish graveyard in Prague for 3 centuries. Penned in on all sides, the Old Jewish Cemetery could only increase in height and contains 12 layers of graves. Some 12,000 surviving gravestones (see photos above) totter over an estimated 20,000 to 100,00 burials. The most visited of these - a tomb of pink stone guarded by lions - is that of Rabbi Loew. When I visited, pebbles, coins, and scraps of paper covered every flat surface. I've read several explanations of the custom of placing pebbles on graves. The simplest appeared in Mystical Stonescapes by Freema Gottlieb: "Vegetation fades, but stones are as close as matter gets to eternity." In Old Bohemian and Moravian Jewish Cemeteries, the ritual is traced back to the Hebrews wandering in the desert after Moses led them out of Egypt. Those who fell during the 40-year trek were interred along the wayside, and those who passed the grave added a rock as a way of keeping the burial mound inviolable. While the Nazis demolished many Jewish graveyards, this one - and Rabbi Loew's tomb - was spared and was intended to become a museum to the extinct race. Now overseen by the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic, the graveyard welcomes 10,000 visitors each year. Most bring pebbles in their pockets for Rabbi Loew.

Follow-ups

Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin wearing one of his designer prostheses.

I want to follow up on my posts, but the news items and comments are coming so fast and furious that I have opted to discontinue my time-consuming practice of many small illustrations in favor of the one I consider the best, so be sure to check all the links for associated photographs. Enjoy!

The narwhal 8/19/09 Here are some extraordinary images of an ocean photographer's encounter with a 50' humpback whale in the South Pacific.

Leonardo's lion 8/17/09 Relating to my post about Leonardo da Vinci's inventions is this Smithsonian slideshow of the instruments of discovery used and improved upon by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), including another of my favorite words to say - the astrolabe.

Mona Lisa(s) 8/12/09 Among these replications of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting, I forgot to include the work of Scott Wade - Mona Lisa's image on a dirty window.

Victor Noir 8/10/09 Speaking of sex symbols, Marilyn Monroe can be your postmortem bunkmate. The woman whose husband's body is entombed above hers at Westwood Village Memorial Park in L.A. is moving his body and auctioning off the crypt on e-bay to settle her Beverly Hills mortgage. (Thanks to reader Elena for the link!)

Jaws in 1916 8/8/08 Thanks to reader Michael Keighery for this link to an Australian mystery from 1935. The Shark Arm Case followed 3 shark deaths off the coast of New South Wales. A 3.5M tiger shark was caught and put on live display at the Coogee Aquarium Baths. The visitors who flocked to see the man-killer were not disappointed - it disgorged a tattooed human arm. But the owner of the arm was the victim of a murder rather than the shark...

Eunuchs 8/7/09 In India, thousands of male members of a cult devoted to Radha dress as this female lover of Krishna, baffling religious leaders.

Stain 8/6/09 My former boss Jim Schaefer sent me this link to an incredible story and slideshow of photographs of Hiroshima taken by the Physical Damage Division of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and accidentally rediscovered in a pile of junk on a Watertown, Massachusetts, street. On this year's anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, a piano that had survived Hiroshima was played at a performance in Tokyo.

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Death worm and bloodworm 8/5/09 Follower Kent Schnake liked the worm post and recommended the film Dune. He also points out that the guinea worm and similar parasites common in Africa are - even though they don't spit acid and shoot lightning out of their ass - horrible in their own way.

Weird watercolors 8/1/09 This post mentions the painting Rembrandt did as a child. Here you can listen to a piece of music written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) at the age of 7 or 8.

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Hummingbirds 7/28/09 Follower Megan McCabe said this post reminded her to tell me about the work of graffiti artist Dan Witz, who paints lifelike hummingbirds in public spaces.

Creative cremains 7/24/09 I heard from a reader who offers another creative alternative to stashing ashes in a columbarium - adhering a small portion of them to a photograph - an "ashprint," as she calls it on her blog Final Photograph. In other ashen news: Earlier this month, a man in Vershire, Vermont, borrowed a wheelbarrow, disinterred the cremated remains of his father, and brought them - along with the man's headstone - home with him, a crime punishable by a prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

Happy Father's Day! 6/21/09 In a follow-up to my Father's Day post, I referenced this story about fighting finches. I just learned that partridge-fighting is a popular gambling sport in Afghanistan.

Placing of rocks 6/20/09 I had not heard of the Durdle Door in Dorset, England, until I researched this post, but once seen, it is most recognizable. It has been used, however, to lure tourists to a resort in Dubai.

Bog bodies 6/19/09 Workers at Gilltown bog in Co. Kildare, Ireland, uncovered a 3,000-year-old oak barrel of butter. Museum director Padraig Clancy calls the Iron Age practice of sinking the butter in the bog "piseogary."

Obama likeness 6/5/09 A similarity to Michael Jackson is seen in this Egyptian statue at Chicago's Field Museum.

Elusive animals 6/4/09 Researchers have just discovered that the Tasman booby is not extinct after all - it has been masquerading as the masked booby for years!

Barnacle geese 5/30/09 A sea monster with writhing tentacles that washed up on shore in Wales turned out to be a seething mass of goose barnacles attached to a log!

Cave paintings at Lascaux 5/25/09 Archaeologists believe they have identified the earliest map - a 14,000-year-old representation of the area landscape found on a tablet in a Spanish cave.

Birds! 5/21/09 Like the goose flying upside-down in this post, here is a remarkable photo of an eagle (unsuccessfully) attacking a goose larger than itself in mid-air.

Mortsafes 5/20/09 My friends Valerie and Roger were vacationing in Scotland recently and send me this snapshot from one of the graveyards indicating how the caretakers have responded to a gravestone that apparently fell over on someone.

Species named after Stephen Colbert 5/8/09 Related to this post only because it's about a bug, here's a story about the discovery of the rarest insect on earth, not seen in 70 years - the 6" Lord Howe Island stick insect, also known as the "land lobster." The article was written by fan Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions and Atlas Obscura.

Bears in the news 4/24/09 There have been numerous stories in the news of bears being struck and killed by cars, but here is a more uplifting item (with video) of a bear that took a swim in a residential pool in San Dimas, California.

Robo-animals 4/9/09 A duck with a fractured leg that healed badly has been outfitted with a sandal. A Thai elephant that stepped on a landmine 10 years ago now has a prosthetic; here's another article about "Motola" with a few more photos. An elephant suffering from abscesses in an English zoo has received a pair of slippers. And a wetsuit has been tailored for a featherless penguin.

Flannery O'Connor 4/9/09 After roaming free for 6 weeks in the town in which I grew up - Springfield, Illinois - 2 peacocks have been reunited with their owner.

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Taxidermy art 4/6/09 I recently made the on-line acquaintance of artist Lisa Wood - check out her wonderful website here.

Poisonous plants 3/30/09 A German supermarket has removed all bags of mixed salad after a customer found a poisonous weed called groundsel in with the greens.

Rosamond Purcell 3/22/09 I have attached this story to my post about Rosamond Purcell because she photographs such collections. Almost 300 rare tropical birds have been stolen from cabinets in the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertsfordshire, England. Police believe the irreplaceable specimens may be ripped apart so their colorful feathers can be used to make jewelry and fishing lures.

Designer legs 3/15/09 Like amputee Aimee Mullins, who owns several pairs of designer legs, Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin has more than a dozen attachments for his prosthetic arm.

Seahorses and sea dragons 3/14/09 Researchers at the University of Zurich found that male seahorses choose the largest females as mates, which contradicts earlier assumptions that the females do the choosing.

Footprints 2/28/09 Paleontologists from the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland, have discovered - halfway up a mountain in the Alps - the largest dinosaur footprints to be found to date in Europe. My Dad and stepmother Sarah recently happened on a dinosaur museum while traveling through Blanding, Utah, so I have uploaded them here.

Preserved in amber 2/24/09 A new species of an ancient gecko was found in the forest of Myanmar (Burma) preserved in amber in 2008. The amber preserved its toes, with their characteristic sticky hairs, and part of its tail. Here is another article about all of the new species discovered in the Himilayas.

Man on Wire 2/23/09 A priest dressed in traditional garb took part in a daredevil stunt in East Sussex, England, to raise money for charity - he walked a tightrope 80' in the air with no net and no training.

Corpse flower 1/30/09 I haven't specifically blogged about carnivorous plants, but here's a story too good to pass up: a newly discovered species of pitcher plant large enough to eat a rat!

Ancient animals 1/19/09 "Billy," a 110-year-old Galapagos tortoise, has finally mated with 47-year-old "Tammy" after spurning her advances for 15 years! Their 7 eggs are due to hatch in 8 to 12 weeks.

Follow-ups and followers 1/9/09 In the follow-up to my frozen reindeer post, I added the photo of the moose that got strung up on a telephone pole. In the weird news recently was the story of a live ram that was rescued from a telephone pole in Norway when his horn got caught and he abseiled down the wire!

Internal decapitation 12/28/08 Chris Stewart, a 14-year-old boy from Hampshire, England, is the first person to completely recover from (and only the 6th to survive) having his skull separated from his spine, and is back on the track - but in a go-kart rather than a racecar.

Albinos 11/18/08 More albino animals: A porcupine named "Blondie" lives with her sister at the London Zoo. A rare albino swallow made an appearance in Aberdeenshire, England.

Fatal tiger maulings 11/10/08 The 2 brothers who survived the Christmas Day 2007 tiger attack described in this post were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and giving false identification to police after they were stopped when swerving on the highway and found with an open bottle of vodka in the car.

Zeppelin 10/26/09 Here is a great slideshow of the construction and destruction of the dirigible Hindenburg.

Amputation 10/19/08 Riam Dean of London has won an employment suit against Abercrombie & Fitch. The 22-year-old amputee had been taken off the sales floor and made to work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not meet with the store's image.

Alive! 9/25/09 The survivors of the plane crash in the Andes, whose survival cannibalism was documented in books and films, are urging fellow Uruguayans to sign up for a government-run organ donation program.

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Phew, I've got to do my follow-ups more often...

Vlad the Impaler

A reader thoughtfully informed me last night that I had impugned the integrity of Lucrezia Panciatichi by mistaking her portrait for that of Countess Elizabeth Báthory (thanks, Beth). I revised my post and - as promised - follow up with a post about the even more heinous Vlad the Impaler. Vlad Ţepeş (1431-1476) was Prince of Wallachia (in present-day Romania). He was also known as Vlad Drăculea after his father Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil). Vlad the Impaler was given his nickname during his 3 reigns, since his favorite method of torture and execution was to have stakes inserted into the bodies of his victims - the height of which indicated their rank - and arrange them in geometric patterns, such as concentric circles around a besieged city. He killed tens of thousands of people at a time in this way, causing them to suffer for days before dying and then leaving their bodies to decay on the stakes. The number of his victims ranges from 40,000 to 100,000, and a contemporary woodcut depicts him sadistically feasting in the midst of their agony. Vlad was also fond of skinning, roasting, and boiling people; feeding people the flesh of their friends or relatives; and nailing their hats to their heads. It is no wonder that Bram Stoker (1847-1912) - when writing his novel based on Slavic folklore - used the name of the region's most notorious villain, Vlad Dracula.

Zombies!?!

Today a guest post by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of certification for geriatric nursing:

In January 2009, pranksters hacked into warning signs in Austin, Texas, cautioning drivers about “zombies ahead.” While there was actually no plague of the undead in the capitol city of the Lone Star State, this occurrence brings some interesting issues to light regarding zombies and popular culture.

In the movies, zombies bring people of various races, cultures, and creeds together for one purpose: to kill the zombies that are after them. Zombies represent not only death and the possibility of an afterlife, but the unknown as well. When zombies begin to appear in movies, people move through the stages of grief. Denying the evidence right in front of them, the characters wait until there is a full-on epidemic before doing anything at all to remedy the situation. But when that time comes, the characters work together to defeat a common enemy. They shed their prejudices and differences and operate as a cohesive unit for the sole purpose of eradicating the zombies and restoring order in the world. Just when things look as bad as they can be, someone steps in and helps make things right again.

Is it really any wonder that zombie movies have maintained their popularity over time? Even with the same plot and scenario, they remain relevant to viewers over the years. Looking in context at their rise in popularity, it is easy to see the parallel between zombie films and the state of the society that produced them. Looking back at the caution sign in Austin, perhaps it was a wake-up call to people in that town, urging them not to become part of the undead, but to once again think and feel as individuals. There is always time to prey on the flesh of the living later...

Custom of the sea

The so-called "custom of the sea" was the understanding that, in dire circumstances, sailors would be forgiven for resorting to survivor cannibalism. There were several true accounts for Edgar Allan Poe to draw on for his fictional novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, first published in magazine form in 1837. His story describes the desperation of three castaways who reach the point of drawing straws to see who would be sacrificed to save the others from starvation. Ship's mate Richard Parker draws the short straw. Fifty years later, in 1884, fact mirrored fiction. Two survivors of the yacht Mignonette were brought up on charges, and eventually sentenced to death, for killing and cannibalizing their shipmate. The case, Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, was intended to set an example and put an end to this barbarous tradition. The name of the cannibalized shipmate: Richard Parker.

The Raft of the Medusa

I sought out this enormous oil painting, "The Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), when I visited the Louvre. The 23' x 16' canvas depicts the survivors of an 1816 shipwreck off the coast of Mauritania. Of the 149 people who piled aboard the raft, only 15 survived--by means of cannibalism. To prepare for the painting, Géricault sketched bodies at the morgue and brought home severed limbs to study their decay. A bas relief of the image adorns his grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Fortean Times review

A review of Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West that I wrote appears in the current issue of Fortean Times. Coincidentally, I have a cabinet card of the 19th c. Tocci Twins--depicted on this issue's cover--in my collection and I have held in my own hands a drawing of a horse that they drew. The drawing was in the files of the Mütter Museum, where I was researching Conjoined Twins.

In other news, one of my followers Antler told me, after seeing my Jeremy Bentham post, that she bought a house from his great-great-nephew John Bentham! She calls it Bentham's Forge because it was once a blacksmith's shop.

Franklin Expedition

I just watched a very interesting program about the ill-fated Franklin Expedition airing on Discovery HD. Sir John Franklin, his two ships, and 128 men disappeared in the 19th c. in search of the Northwest Passage. This documentary brings the story up-to-date, including rumors of cannibalism, the cause of the crew's death, and the numerous archaeological expeditions over the years. I first learned of this Victorian mystery when I bought a copy of Frozen in Time, which features color photographs of three members of the expedition excavated from the permafrost by forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie 138 years after their deaths (which evidence suggests were caused by lead solder from their canned provisions). Neither Franklin's body nor his logbook have ever been found--and some are still looking. Brrrrr.

Alive!

A couple of years ago, I went to a National Geographic Society lecture by a survivor of the plane crash of Uruguayan rugby players in the Andes in 1972. The story has been told in books and the movie Alive!, but surfaced again in 2006 when the owner and guide of Alpine Expeditions Ricardo Peña retraced the survivors' route out of the Valle de las Lágrimas (Valley of Tears). On the initial expedition, Peña found the identification papers of Eduardo Strauch in a jacket in the snow. He tracked him down and now Strauch (below right) accompanies Peña (left) and his clients on expeditions including to the site of the crash in the Andes. When I heard them speak, Peña translated for Strauch, who told the story--best known for its cannabilistic element--plainly and eloquently. He spoke of the cannibalism as an agreed upon sacrament, without which they all would have died. Instead, the dead saved the lives of the 16 survivors. To put it loftily, I heard a firsthand account of a harrowing story of survival. To put it bluntly, I shook the hand of a cannibal.