The Dancing Plague of 1518

A strange thing happened in Strasbourg, France, during the summer of 1518. A woman began to dance – uncontrollably, incessantly. Thus began the Dancing Plague of 1518.

She was still dancing several days later. Within a week about 100
people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance. The
authorities were convinced that the afflicted would only recover if they
danced day and night.

So guildhalls were set aside for them to dance in, musicians were
hired to play pipes and drums to keep them moving, and professional
dancers were paid to keep them on their feet. Within days those with
weak hearts started to die.

By the end of August 1518 about 400 people had experienced the madness.
Finally they were loaded aboard wagons and taken to a healing shrine.
Not until early September did the epidemic recede.

Theories abound as to the epidemic’s source. Some point to ergot, the hallucinogenic fungus common to wheat crops during the Middle Ages, as the culprit. Others, such as historian John Wallis (who notes “that the event took place is undisputed”), suggest mass hysteria – specifically, “‘mass psychogenic illness,’ a form of mass hysteria usually preceded by
intolerable levels of psychological distress, caused the dancing
epidemic.” Whatever the cause, this well-documented incident remains bizarre. And it wasn’t isolated, either: “At least seven other outbreaks of the dancing epidemic occurred in medieval Europe, mostly in the areas surrounding Strasbourg.”

You can read more here and here.

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Malaria caught on camera breaking and entering cell

This is incredible. Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia have managed to capture a malaria parasite on film – in the process of infecting a human red blood cell. Check it out:

Honestly, this gives me the creeps – especially at the end, when the malarial offspring burst from the host cell.

You can read more here.

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Gigantic hidden planet could be hurling comets at Earth

Artists rendering of the Kuiper Belt and Oort ...

Image via Wikipedia

Following up on our Dec. 6 article (“‘Dark Jupiter’ may haunt the edge of the solar system“), we bring you word from University of Louisiana-Lafayette astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire. From io9.com:

Far away in the frozen outermost depths of our solar system, there
might be a hidden planet four times the size of Jupiter. This secret
companion to the Sun could be responsible for sending comets into the
inner solar system.

This idea is an intriguing variation on the
old Nemesis theory, which holds the Sun has a smaller companion star
orbiting the outer reaches of the solar system. The Nemesis star was
thought to be either a pint-sized red dwarf of a failed brown dwarf, and
either way its movements through the Oort Cloud at the furthest edge of
our solar system would cause comets to hurtle out of their obits. Some
of these would hit Earth, leading to mass extinction events. The
presence of Nemesis would explain why these extinctions occur in an
apparently cyclical fashion.

That’s the old theory, which fell apart because (among other things)
it turns out Nemesis could not have a stable enough orbit to account for
the regular mass extinctions, which is the main reason such an object
was hypothesized in the first place. But now University of
Louisiana-Lafayette astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire have
a new theory that holds a rather different kind of companion object is
out in the Oort Cloud. Fittingly, they’ve named it Tyche, who in
mythology is the good sister of the evil Nemesis.

You can read more here.

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The world’s largest scale model of the solar system

… is located in Sweden.

The sun is represented by the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm,
the largest hemispherical building in the world. The inner planets can
also be found in Stockholm but the outer planets are situated northward
in other cities along the Baltic Sea. It was started by Nils Brenning and Gösta Gahm. It is in the scale of 1:20 million.

More at Wikipedia. On another note, we return triumphantly from our holiday hiatus!

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Why are there 60 minutes in an hour?

This is something I’ve always wondered. The answer may surprise you.

It
is easy to see the origins of a decimal (base 10) number system. Our
hands have 10 digits to count on, so a decimal system follows naturally.
With the addition of the toes on
our feet a vigesimal (base 20) number system, like that of the Maya,
also makes sense. But understanding a sexagesimal (base 60) number
system, as used by the Sumerians, takes a little more thought.

A quick glance at a hand shows us four fingers and a thumb that can
be used for counting. But the human hand is a complex machine consisting
of 27 bones
.

By
using the thumb as a pointer, and marking off the distal phalanx,
middle phalanx and proximal phalanx of each finger, we can count up to
12 on one hand […] by using the other hand to mark five multiples of 12 we can extend the count up to 60.


Read more here

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Thousands of dead birds fall from the sky in Arkansas

The new year is off to a strange start. From Reuters:

State wildlife
officials were going door-to-door on Sunday in the town of Beebe,
Arkansas, to collect dead birds after thousands of mostly blackbirds
mysteriously fell from the sky.

Workers were searching Beebe, a
town of about 4,500 people located 30 miles northeast of the state
capital, to collect what officials estimated as between 4,000 and 5,000
birds which began falling from the sky late on New Year’s Eve and
continued into the next day.

Officials are at a loss to explain this. You can read more here. (Credit to our friend Donna for linking us to this story!)

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The woman with no fear

A brain-damaged Iowan woman who apparently does not feel fear has helped scientists to identify some of the brain structures responsible for that emotion. From The Telegraph:

The mother-of-three, who experiences all other emotions, is thought to be
unique in the world in her ability to be completely unfazed by danger.


Her condition means she constantly puts herself at risk and in her 44 years
has been threatened with a knife, held at gunpoint and assaulted on
different occasions.


Yet she has come away completely untouched emotionally by her experiences.


She often just strolls away from the scene and has to be told to report them
to the police.


Known simply as SM, the woman from Iowa in America, suffers from a condition
called Urbach-Wiethe disease which has destroyed a part of her brain known
as the amygdala.

Fascinating stuff. Read more here.

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Tió de Nadal: perhaps the world’s strangest Christmas custom

Photograph of a typical contemporary Tió

Image via Wikipedia

Christmas is far stranger than it seems, even in America. Add in foreign traditions like Krampus or Zwarte Piet, and it gets even weirder. Probably the most bizarre Christmas custom I’ve heard of, though, is that of the Tió de Nadal (the “Christmas log”), also known as the “Caga tió,” meaning – I’m not making this up – the “pooping log.”

The Tió de Nadal, according to Wikipedia, is a popular character in Catalan mythology in Catalonia, Spain. Basically, it’s a small, hollow log, typically adorned with legs, a face, and a festive hat. Sounds cute, maybe, but it gets weirder. Wikipedia goes on:

Beginning with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), one gives the tió a little bit to “eat” every night and usually covers him with a little blanket so that he will not be cold at night.

On Christmas day or, depending on the particular household, on Christmas Eve, one puts the tió
partly into the fireplace and orders it to “poop” (the fire part of
this tradition is no longer as widespread as it once was, since many
modern homes do not have a fireplace). To make him “poop”, one beats him
with sticks, while singing various songs of Tió de Nadal.

The tió does not drop larger objects, as those are brought by the Three Wise Men. It does leave candies, nuts and torrons.
Depending on the part of Catalonia, it may also give out dried figs.
When nothing is left to “poop”, it drops a salt herring, a head of
garlic, an onion or “urinates”. What comes out of the tió is a communal rather than individual gift, shared by everyone present.

Catalans even sing carols to the Tió de Nadal. Here’s one such song (translation included):

caga tió,

caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!”

poop log,

poop turrón,
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don’t poop well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
poop log!

giving log,

give us treats,
give us sweets!
if you don’t want to give,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
give it up!

If you’d like to participate in this strange, ancient tradition with your own family, there is a helpful how-to guide here.

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