March 31, 2009, 8:30 pm
From the Drowning wiki page:
As a method of execution
In Europe, drowning was used — more often than hanging, even — as capital punishment, at least for a time. In fact, during the Middle Ages, a sentence of death was read using the words “cum fossa et furca,” or “with drowning-pit and gallows.” Commonly, women who were convicted of theft were drowned[citation needed]. Furthermore, drowning was used as a way to determine if a woman was a witch. The idea was that witches would float and the innocent would drown. For more details, see trial by drowning. It is understood that drowning was used as the least brutal form of execution, and was therefore reserved primarily for women, although favorable men were executed in this way as well.
Drowning survived as a method of execution in Europe until the 17th and 18th centuries. England had abolished the practice by 1623, Scotland by 1685, Switzerland in 1652, Austria in 1776, Iceland in 1777, and Russia by the beginning of the 1800s. France revived the practice during the French Revolution (1789–1799) and was carried out by Jean Baptiste Carrier at Nantes. [6]
March 31, 2009, 8:06 pm
From the Battle of Ramree Island wiki page:
On 26 January in Operation Sankey, a Royal Marine force landed on the Island of Cheduba, which lies to the south of Ramree, to find that it was not occupied by the Japanese. On Ramree the Japanese garrison put up tenacious resistance. The 4th, 26th, 36th and 71st Indian Brigades landed, with RAF and Royal Marine units, and when the Marines outflanked a Japanese stronghold, the nine hundred defenders within it abandoned the base and marched to join a larger battalion of Japanese soldiers across the island. The route forced the Japanese to cross 16 kilometres of fetid mangrove swamps, and as they struggled through the thick forests the British forces encircled the area of the swampland. Trapped in deep mud-filled land, tropical diseases soon started afflicting the soldiers, but worse was the presence of huge numbers of scorpions, tropical mosquitoes and thousands of, on average, 4.6-metre-long (about 15 feet) saltwater crocodiles[1].
Repeated calls by the British for the Japanese to surrender were ignored: the Marines holding the perimeter shot any Japanese attempting to escape, while within the swampland hundreds of soldiers died over the course of several days for lack of food or drinking water. Some, including naturalist Bruce Wright, claimed that the crocodiles attacked and ate numerous soldiers:
“That night [of the 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [motor launch] crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left…Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive.”[2]
March 31, 2009, 7:16 pm
From the Female Husbands section of wiki’s Lesbians page:
Some historians view cases of cross-dressing women to be manifestations of women seizing power they would naturally be unable to enjoy in feminine attire, or their way of making sense out of their desire for women. Lillian Faderman argues that Western society was threatened by women who rejected their feminine roles. Catharine Linck and other women who were accused of using dildos were punished more severely than those who did not.[82] Two marriages between women were recorded in Cheshire, England in 1707 (between Hannah Wright and Anne Gaskill) and 1708 (between Ane Norton and Alice Pickford) with no comment about both parties being female.[84][85] Reports of clergymen with lax standards who performed weddings—and wrote their suspicions about one member of the wedding party—continued to appear for the next century.
March 31, 2009, 6:19 pm
From the Prypiat, Ukraine wiki page:
Prypiat (Ukrainian: При́п’ять, Pryp”jat’; Russian: При́пять, Pripjat’), or Pripyat, is an abandoned city in the zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. The city was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.
Cultural references
March 31, 2009, 4:45 pm
From the List of violent spectator incidents in sports wiki page:
On May 15, 1912, Detroit Tigers outfielder Ty Cobb assaulted Claude Lueker, a heckler, in the stands of Hilltop Park in New York during a game against the New York Highlanders. Lueker and Cobb traded insults with each other throughout the first three innings, and the situation climaxed when Lueker called Cobb a “half-nigger.” Cobb then climbed into the stands and attacked the handicapped Lueker, who due to an industrial accident had lost all of one hand and three fingers on his other hand. When onlookers shouted at Cobb to stop because the man had no hands, Cobb reportedly replied, “I don’t care if he has no feet!” The American League suspended him indefinitely, and his teammates, though not fond of Cobb, went on strike to protest the suspension prior to the May 18 game against the Philadelphia A’s. For that one game, Detroit fielded a replacement team made up of college and sandlot ballplayers, plus two Detroit coaches, and lost, 24-2. The strike ended when Cobb urged his teammates to return to the field. Cobb’s suspension lasted for 8 days.[1]
More choice violent spectator incidents after the jump!
Continue reading ‘List of violent spectator incidents in sports’ »
March 31, 2009, 4:28 pm
From the dryly named List of fictional books from non-print media wiki page:
- Angelica Button and The Deadly Denouement
- Angelica Button and The Dragon King’s Trundle Bed
- Angelica Button and the Teacup of Terror
- Astonishing Prices Comic Book Price Guide
- Baby’s First Pop-Up Book
- Backdoors to Citizenship, nonfiction
- The Big Book of British Smiles, photo book
- Bordello Repair Vol. I
- Bork on Sex
- A Child’s Garden of Cons by Grampa Simpson, under the pseudonym Grifty McGrift
- Curious George and the Ebola Virus, a children’s book
- Forgotten Lore
- Happiness Is a Naked Steve Allen
- The Harpooned Heart by Marge Simpson
- The Harpooned Heart 2: Trouble Down Under by Marge Simpson
- How to Cook for Forty Humans, cookbook
- How to Get Rich Writing Cartoons by John Swartzwelder
- How to Loot Brazil
- How to Make Love to Steve Allen
- How to Seduce Your Lousy, Lazy Husband
- How to Talk to a Drunken Father
- How to Tunnel out of Prison
- A trilogy of autobiographic books by Leonard Nimoy (the first two of which are real)
After the jump: more fictional books from the Simpsons, Family Guy and Monty Python.
Continue reading ‘List of fictional books from non-print media’ »
March 31, 2009, 4:23 pm
From the Rip Torn wiki page:
While filming Maidstone, Torn, apparently unhappy with the film, struck director and star of the film Norman Mailer three times in the head with a hammer.[8] With the camera rolling, Mailer bit Torn’s ear and they wrestled to the ground. The fight continued until it was broken up by cast and crew members as Mailer’s children screamed in the background. The fight is featured in the film.[9] Although the scene may have been planned by Torn, the blood shed by both actors is real and Torn was reportedly truly outraged by Mailer’s direction.[8]
In 1999, Torn filed a defamation lawsuit against Dennis Hopper over a story Hopper told on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.[4] Hopper claimed that Torn pulled a knife on him during pre-production of the film Easy Rider. According to Hopper, Torn was originally cast in the film but was replaced with Jack Nicholson after the incident. According to Torn’s suit, it was actually Hopper who pulled the knife on him. A judge ruled in Torn’s favor and Hopper was ordered to pay $475,000 in damages. Hopper then appealed but the judge again ruled in Torn’s favor and Hopper was required to pay another $475,000 in punitive damages.[3]
March 31, 2009, 4:21 pm
From the Human rights in Saudi Arabia wiki page:
The treatment of women has been referred to as “gender apartheid.”[8][9][10] Implementation of a government resolution supporting expanded employment opportunities for women met resistance from within the labor ministry,[11] from the religious police,[12] and from the male citizenry.[13]
These institutions and individuals generally claim that according to Sharia a woman’s place is in the home caring for her husband and family. It is a country where culture and religion make women live mostly restricted segregated lives. There is also segregation inside their own homes as some rooms have separate entrances for men and women. [14]
In the legal system, women face discrimination. An example of this is the requirements for testifying in criminal proceedings; The witness must be deemed sane, the age of an adult, and a Muslim. Non-Muslims may not testify in criminal court. Women may not testify unless it is a personal matter that did not occur in the sight of men. The testimony of a woman is not regarded as fact but as presumption. The reasons women are forbidden to testify in proceedings are (quote):[15][16]
- Women are much more emotional than men and will, as a result of their emotions, distort their testimony.
- Women do not participate in public life, so they will not be capable of understanding what they observe.
- Women are dominated completely by men, who by the grace of God are deemed superior; therefore, women will give testimony according to what the last man told them.
- Women are forgetful, and their testimony cannot be considered reliable.