The Magical "Today in Weird History" Thread

[Suzanne]

June 15

St Vitus Day

His bones were supposed to be able to cure St Vitus' Dance, a sort of violent chorea. His nurse Crescentia, who supposedly converted him to Christianity, seems an emblem of the Moon goddess, the crescent moon, and his name ('life' in Latin) indicates that he too is a spurious saint. He was especially venerated in Westphalia, where bones said to be his had rested since the ninth century AD., though his legend assigned him to the time of Diocletian, six hundred years earlier.

(via ForteanTimes)

[klav]

«Back in the good old dance when dancing meant exploding
The idea was simple for a decent overloading
And for a multiple flash with no cords attached
He came up with a more remote flash trigger
It's connected to an accessory in his hip
Which automatically fires in perfect synchro
But perhaps his most exciting development is his angle
They call it the dance
It's the St. Vitus dance
Such flexibility
What an accessory
See his soft bounce
What flexibility
Such a soft bounce
What an accessory

And for special effects he has six filters
Three coloured red with the others pilfered
And if you really want to know what that means
He could throw a blue flash from eighty-five feet
Of course you might want to check out your own little output
So we devised a few simple and easy to crack contortions
So you can bump and scrape all the day through
With the dance.
It's the St. Vitus dance, the St. Vitus dance
Such flexibility
What an accessory
Such a soft bounce
What flexibility
Such a soft bounce
Check his hot shoe
Feel his output
He's a light machine, see his angle
He's a light machine»

Bauhaus : "St. Vitus Dance"

[Suzanne]

Guess who's just been to the waste.org website looking for those lyrics?  

Btw, have you ever heard of the Swiss band Veitstanz?

"When the mists of the old days of ours faded away,
the companions - who drunk mead in the dark forests -
decided to bring the dance back to its pure form,
and do it right..

decided to play you the ancient music
of the middle ages...

...and even more!"

[klav]

Is that some sort of Swiss' Schandmaul?

[Suzanne]

Yup, male-only though... *coughs*...

I heard them playing at Mittelalterfest in Lucerne some years ago. Either they were totally drunk, or their instruments are really mediaeval!  

[Suzanne]

June 16

Bloom's Day

The entire action of James Joyce's Ulysses took place on 16 June 1904. Also... The foreman of the Novelty Iron Works at Dubuque, Iowa, observed two hailstones from a storm in 1882, which melted to reveal 'small living frogs'. On this day two years later, stones fell around George and Albert Sanford as they hoed a field near Trenton, New Jersey. When stones fell again the next day, the men fetched over 40 people from Trenton who saw more falling from a point overhead.

(via ForteanTimes)

   BBC's Cheat's Guide to Joyce's Ulysses

[Suzanne]

June 22

The Council of Ephesus

The Council of Ephesus opened today in 431, to sort out whether Christ's human and divine natures were independent. Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople, said yes, but his men turned up nine days late due to traffic problems to find they'd already been excommunicated. They set up a rival council next door.

(via Ship of Fools)

[Suzanne]

June 23

Vox piscis

In 1626 Mr Mead of Christ's College, Cambridge, passing through the city's market, noticed a battered book which had just been found by a fishwife inside the belly of a plump codfish from King's Lynn. Mr Mead bought the book, a religious tome written by John Firth, who had spent some time imprisoned inside a fish-cellar in Oxford for his religious beliefs. The book was reprinted by the Cambridge Authorities under the title Vox piscis and illustrated with a woodcut showing the book, the fish stall and the knife which had cut open the fish.

  Read more on Vox piscis

(via ForteanTimes)

[Suzanne]

July 6

Feast Day of St Sexburga

St Sexburga was a daughter of King Anna of the East Angles. Despite her name, she was a paragon of virtue and founded and governed a convent at Minster-in-Sheppey.

Also, Andrew Crosse, electrical experimenter, died 1855. One of his experiments in which dissolved flint and potassa were subjected to an electrical charge apparently resulted in the birth of bristly insects, proving to some that spontaneous generation was possible, to others that ova had been present in the liquid or that the man was mad.

(via ForteanTimes)

  The Catholic Encyclopedia on St Sexburga

  BBC History on Andrew Crosse

[Suzanne]

July 13

Earthworm?

In 1984, a street in Fort Worth, Texas, developed a 20ft long, two-foot-wide bulge. It moved from side to side like a giant worm before disappearing after about one hour. 'It seemed almost alive,' said a fireman. 'What spooked me was that there wasn't even a crack in the road.' Street crews used jackhammers to break through two inches of asphalt and four inches of concrete, but found no evidence of a gas build-up that might have caused the bulge. Six months later the story emerged in an American tabloid under the headline: 20 Foot Earthworm terrorizes City ... Swallows Dog

(via ForteanTimes)

[Suzanne]

14th July 1789

Mais oui, c'est le Jour de la Prise de la Bastille!

A mob of 20,000 people storms Bastille Prison in Paris, killing its personnel and freeing all seven prisoners incarcerated therein: four forgers, an accomplice to murder, a nobleman jailed for incest, and an insane Irishman. The warden is decapitated and his head carried around on a pike. So begins the French Revolution.

(via rotten.com)

Let's celebrate this glorious day by watching two of my favourite francophile flashes:

  From Chaoskitty with Love

  Bonjour monsieur!

Mais quelle horreur...  

[klav]

a nobleman jailed for incest

And it was not even Monsieur le Marquis de Sade (although he made it in there too, for "poisoning" prostitutes, the funny sod).

[Suzanne]

a nobleman jailed for incest

And it was not even Monsieur le Marquis de Sade (although he made it in there too, for "poisoning" prostitutes, the funny sod).

Blah, they ASKED for it!  

[Suzanne]

July 15

General Tom Thumb

July 15 in 1883 saw the death of the world's most famous dwarf, General Tom Thumb, aged 51. He was 40 inches tall.

(via ForteanTimes)

  Read more on General Tom Thumb

[Suzanne]

July 16 1998

James Dean's tombstone

An inattentive deputy sheriff in Lafayette, IN, drives his automobile into the stolen tombstone of actor James Dean. The 400 pound tombstone, which was stolen two days prior from Dean's gravesite at Park Cemetary (and later abandoned on a country road), ripped the transmission out of the deputy's vehicle.

(via rotten.com)

... and...

July 16 1969

The ET Law

In 1969 the United States Congress created a whole new category of criminals by passing the so-called ET law, part 1211 of the Aeronautics and Space Federal Guidelines. Anyone who has 'touched directly or been in close proximity to (or been exposed indirectly to) any person, property, animal or other form of life which has been extraterrestrially exposed,' can be fined $5,000 and jailed for a year, even though NASA have been maintaining for years that UFOs and the like do not exist. UFO contactees, beware!

(via ForteanTimes)