In today's poetry feature, Brit gives us some decidedly unsettling children's verse... There are many horrific poems, nursery rhymes and stories aimed at children, but for true terror we need look no further than the words and illustrations of Heinrich Hoffman, and his famous 1845 collection of 'Merry Tales and Funny ... Read More...
Oddities
Another strange wikipedia article for this saturday's Wikiworm, and disappointingly nothing to do with George Melly... Mellified man, or human mummy confection, was a legendary medicinal substance created by steeping a human cadaver in honey. The concoction is mentioned only in Chinese sources, most significantly the Bencao Gangmu of the 16th-century Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen. Relying on a second-hand ... Read More...
Imaginary minerals are the topic of today's bizarre Wikipedia article, brought to you by the Wikiworm, ceaseless miner of useless knowledge... Unobtainium is a word used in engineering, fiction, and thought experiments, to describe any fictional, extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a ... Read More...
Today would be the 89th birthday of comic actor Charlie Drake. But did you know he once appeared alongside Peter Gabriel, Sandy Denny, Robert Fripp and Phil Collins in one of the weirdest prog rock line-ups ever?... Born on this day in 1925 was the diminutive comic Charlie Drake, who was, ... Read More...
No sniggering at the back, please, as we plunder Wikipedia for this week's unusual article about a village in Dorset that probably never appeared in any of Thomas Hardy's novels... Shitterton is a hamlet in Dorset, England. It has attracted worldwide attention for its name, which dates back at least a thousand years and ... Read More...
Crumbling châteaux and closet gay Counts - here's Gaw's terrific tale of some strange lodgings he took whilst playing rugby in South-West France.... Being a professional sportsman isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's actually very boring. Training isn't mentally stimulating and professional sportsmen tend not to be that interesting; ... Read More...
One of those very divisive bits of folklore gleaned from the wonderful world of Wikipedia for today's Wikiworm - which side are you on? The five-second rule is a widely repeated belief that food dropped on the ground will not be significantly contaminated with bacteria if it is picked up within five seconds of being ... Read More...
Next time you complain about your GP, spare a thought for the Victorians... From The Reverend Prince And His Abode Of Love by Charles Mander (1976): As a doctor his bedside manner was startling. He seemed more intent on reducing his patients to gibbering mental wrecks over the state of their souls ... Read More...
This week's weird Wikipedia article uncovers the silly student japes that brought the Bloomsbury Group to national attention... The Dreadnought hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of ... Read More...
In the early 1960s two behavioural psychologists attempted to bring up a child in an environment devoid of pictures. But what, exactly, did they prove?... Imagine if, in infancy, your parents made every effort to ensure that you never saw a picture. This is what happened to the anonymous subject of ... Read More...
