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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowtown_murdersquote:The Snowtown murders – also known as the Bodies-in-Barrels murders – were a series of homicides that took place in South Australia between August 1992 and May 1999. The name "Snowtown murders" refers to the town where the bodies were found, despite the fact that only one of the eleven victims was killed there, and none of the victims or the perpetrators were from Snowtown. The crimes were uncovered when the remains of eight victims were found in barrels of acid located in a rented former bank building on 20 May 1999, hence the other name. quote:The final murder was conducted in the bank building after the barrels had been moved there for storage. Of the scene encountered in this building, one Snowtown officer said: "It was a scene from the worst nightmare you've ever had; I don't think any of us was prepared for what we saw." The building was littered with tools used by the killers to torture and murder their victims, including:  quote:The pathologists report later revealed that prolonged torture had taken place using everyday tools such as pincers, pliers and clamps. Examples of all of these implements were found in the vault. Wendy Abraham QC, the deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, reported at the Supreme Court of South Australia that the victims were forced to call their torturers 'God', 'Master', 'Chief Inspector' and 'Lord Sir'. There's a movie about it called Snowtown, which is actually quite good but I felt uncomfortable the whole time.
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Dec 21, 2012 10:35
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The Monkey Man posted:Is it just me, or does Australia have way more than its share of serial killers? The wikipedia list for American serial killers lists 191, while the Australian list has 31, despite the fact that the US has more than ten times the population. Time for a post about Ivan Milat. Apparently during the investigation, the police realised that all these other cases of random people sexually harassing backpackers were all actually just this guy. I suppose the Snowtown murders I linked to on the last page are a bit exceptional in terms of sadism, but for whatever reason this guy is much more well known within Australia than John Bunting (ringleader of the Snowtown murders). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Milat_(serial_killer)  Please be careful indeed.
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Dec 21, 2012 20:38
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Since I've posted nothing but murder and torture in this thread thus far I'll try to post something a bit different. Torpedo Juice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice quote:Torpedo juice is American slang for an alcoholic beverage, first mixed in World War II, made from pineapple juice and the 180-proof grain alcohol fuel used in United States Navy torpedo motors.[1] Various poisonous additives were mixed into the fuel alcohol by Navy authorities to render the alcohol undrinkable, and various methods were employed by the U.S. sailors to separate the alcohol from the poison. Aside from the expected alcohol intoxication and subsequent hangover, the effects of drinking torpedo juice sometimes included mild or severe reactions to the poison, and the drink's reputation developed an early element of risk. Voynich manuscript http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript quote:The Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript",[3] is a work which dates to the early 15th century (1404-1438), possibly from northern Italy.[1][2] It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912. Lichtenberg figure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure quote:Lichtenberg figures (Lichtenberg-Figuren, or "Lichtenberg Dust Figures") are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or the interior of insulating materials. They are named after the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who originally discovered and studied them. When they were first discovered, it was thought that their characteristic shapes might help to reveal the nature of positive and negative electric "fluids". In 1777, Lichtenberg built a large electrophorus to generate high voltage static electricity through induction. After discharging a high voltage point to the surface of an insulator, he recorded the resulting radial patterns by sprinkling various powdered materials onto the surface. By then pressing blank sheets of paper onto these patterns, Lichtenberg was able to transfer and record these images, thereby discovering the basic principle of modern Xerography.  Rear view of a lightning strike survivor displaying Lichtenberg figure on skin Edit: grammar police. Vladimir Poutine has a new favorite as of 09:17 on Dec 22, 2012 |
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Dec 22, 2012 09:08
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TurboTax posted:I normally don't get that excited by tattoos, but one made from that design would be really impressive. I pretty much thought the same thing when I saw it. That's one of the only injury scars you could get which actually looks really cool. Not only does it tell a story (  I got hit by lightning y'all), it also has an awesome organic and fractal quality to it.
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Dec 22, 2012 09:42
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One of the most unnerving things about that is the fact that bestgore dot com exists. Here are a few more Wiki pages: Capgras delusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_delusion quote:The Capgras delusion (or Capgras syndrome) is a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. The Capgras delusion is classified as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of delusional beliefs that involves the misidentification of people, places, or objects (usually not in conjunction)[1]. It can occur in acute, transient, or chronic forms. Cases in which patients hold the belief that time has been "warped" or "substituted" have also been reported.[2] Fermi paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox quote:The Fermi paradox (or Fermi's paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations.[1] The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart, are: Surafend affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surafend_affair quote:In December 1918, a New Zealand soldier, 65779 Trooper Leslie Lowry, was woken from his sleep by an Arab man attempting to steal his bag which he was using as a pillow. The soldier pursued the thief and called for assistance from the picket guards on the camp's horselines. As he caught up, the thief turned and shot him with a revolver. Lowry was found lying in the sand, bleeding from a bullet wound to the chest. He died just as a doctor arrived, having said nothing. The camp was roused, and a group of New Zealand soldiers followed the footprints of the thief which ended about a hundred yards before the village of Surafend.[1] Soldiers set up a cordon around the village, and ordered the Sheikhs of the village to surrender the murderer, but they were evasive and denied any knowledge of the incident and its perpetrator. In addition, the death was brought to the attention of the staff of the division the following day, but by nightfall there had been no response on what action, if any, should be taken.[3] According to the police report, there was no evidence linking anyone from the village to the murder. The report states: Sadako Sasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki quote:Sadako Sasaki (佐々木 禎子 Sasaki Sadako?, January 7, 1943 – October 25, 1955) was a Japanese girl who was two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, near her home by Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima, Japan. Sadako is remembered through the story of a thousand origami cranes before her death, and is to this day a symbol of innocent victims of war.  if you don't already know about it, but worth a read.
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Dec 28, 2012 03:42
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Ringo Star Get posted:The whole story on those that died in Everest and heir bodies still being there is creepy. I can't fid the link but there are some incredible pictures of corpses, each from different times of hiking style, just littering the path the climbers take. You're very likely to see them if you go hiking, and they're likely to be there for a while considering that its tough as hell to recover bodies. You have to hope hat a strong wind or an avalanche brings your body down. You're possibly thinking of this link, which was posted in GBS a while back. Obviously a little for dead people: http://godheadv.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/abandoned-on-everest.html It's really like another planet up there; if you run into trouble, you're really hosed.Also a video on the discovery of Mallory's body on Everest, which still looked fresh nearly 80 years after his death (again, potentially ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFr1KdY6aiw. I had to link it in case anybody has video embeds turned on, since the preview was literally just a picture of his body. It's a bit of a grey area whether or not he reached the summit before Hillary but he obviously didn't survive.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
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Dec 30, 2012 22:47
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Andrias Scheuchzeri posted:As I recall (from that one undergrad archaeology class, you know how it is) there have also been Neanderthal skulls found that clearly represent old folks whose teeth had long since worn down and/or been lost to the point where they would have found it very difficult to eat well, so that's another case where other people would have been feeding and caring for a helpless group member. People doing people things a long time ago. Incidentally, I went to a seminar a couple of months ago where a guy posited that the rise of agriculture was responsible for tooth decay. Basically the shift from protein-based diets to much more carbohydrate-rich wheat-based diets let to a radical shift in which phylogenetic groups of bacteria are represented in the mouth. There was a shift towards Lactobacillus and Streptococcus mutans; the primary species of bacteria involved in tooth decay. So hunter gatherers wouldn't have had teeth that were that bad, despite the absence of toothbrushes. The main problem was physical wear. I did my undergrad in microbiology and there are plenty of examples from that field that can be posted here. One of my favourites is B virus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_B_virus quote:In the natural host, the virus exhibits pathogenesis similar to that of herpes simplex virus (HSV) in humans. Conversely, when humans are zoonotically infected with B virus, patients can present with severe central nervous system disease, resulting in permanent neurological dysfunction or death. Severity of the disease increases for untreated patients, with a case fatality rate of approximately 80%. Early diagnosis and subsequent treatment are the linchpins of surviving the infection. And of course, for any post on pathogens I really can't go past Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_unilateralis quote:Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasitoidal fungus that infects ants such as Camponotus leonardi, and alters their behavior in order to ensure the widespread distribution of its spores. This is a prime example of such a parasitoid. quote:The fungus's spores enter the body of the insect likely through the cuticle by enzymatic activity, where they begin to consume the non-vital soft tissues. Yeast stages of the fungus spread in the ant's body and presumably produce compounds that affect the ant's brain and change its behaviour by unknown mechanisms, causing the insect to climb up the stem of a plant and use its mandibles to secure itself to the plant. Infected ants bite the leaf veins with abnormal force, leaving dumbbell-shaped marks. A search through plant fossil databases revealed similar marks on a fossil leaf from the Messel pit which is 48 million years old.[5][6]  Here's a short and creepy video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8
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Jan 2, 2013 01:32
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Promethea posted:Yikes. What happened with previous survivors then? No it's just the primary infection that's dangerous, unless you become immunocompromised. I'm not to sure but if I recall correctly the survivors are put on an anti-viral called Aciclovir for the rest of their lives and that allows them interact with other people etc. Not that there still isn't a risk of them transmitting the virus though.
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Jan 2, 2013 12:27
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SC Bracer posted:Me too 
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Jan 31, 2013 12:20
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magic pantaloons posted:More horrific killers from the Land Downunder: The interesting thing about that wiki page was that because it was a thorough investigation it describes every event in such detail. For example, the murders in Broad Arrow cafe only took 15 seconds but they get given 12 paragraphs describing where/how everyone got shot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War On that note, Tasmania in general has an incredibly violent history. The genocide there was even more thorough than mainland Australia. quote:In combination with epidemic impacts of introduced Eurasian infectious diseases, to which the Tasmanian Aborigines had no immunity, the conflict had such impact on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population that they were reported to have been exterminated.[4][5][10] quote:H. G. Wells, in Chapter One of his novel The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, wrote:
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Feb 11, 2013 04:50
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Yeah, when the truck first came to Africa it did change the dynamics of disease spread. That's always an important factor to consider when you're talking about diseases which seemingly emerged out of nowhere in the second half of the 20th century.
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Feb 14, 2013 00:43
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Actually, the toxoplasmosis kills him because he's immunocompromised by AIDS 
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Feb 25, 2013 00:21
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summerquote:The Year Without a Summer (also known as the Poverty Year, The Summer that Never Was, Year There Was No Summer and Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death[1]) was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F),[2] resulting in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.[3][4] It is believed that the anomaly was caused by a combination of a historic low in solar activity with a volcanic winter event, the latter caused by a succession of major volcanic eruptions capped by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), the largest known eruption in over 1,300 years, which occurred during the concluding decades of the Little Ice Age, potentially adding to the existing cooling that had been periodically ongoing since 1350 AD.
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Feb 26, 2013 01:14
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Mescal posted:The difference between lowest and highest estimates on these are mostly saying "It could have been 2x or 4x of that number." But look at the European colonization of the Americas. Maybe two million Indians died, maybe a hundred million? How is that... our estimate? Didn't the conquest of the Aztec empire (including smallpox) kill about 11 million on its own? How is 2 million even close to an estimate for both continents?
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Feb 26, 2013 02:34
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Heavy Lobster posted:Do cryptids count? While we're on criptids, I'm not sure any of them (except maybe the random big cat sightings) are necessary believable or even physically possible but I do have some favourites from my part of the world. I basically just like them because they're usually fairly surreal. Bunyips  Bunyip (1935), artist unknown, from the National Library of Australia digital collections. quote:The bunyip, or kianpraty,[1] is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia.[2][3][4] However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. quote:Descriptions of bunyips vary widely. George French Angus may have collected a description of a bunyip in his account of a "water spirit" from the Moorundi people of the Murray River before 1847, stating it is "much dreaded by them… It inhabits the Murray; but…they have some difficulty describing it. Its most usual form…is said to be that of an enormous starfish."[10] Robert Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria of 1878 devoted ten pages to the bunyip, but concluded "in truth little is known among the blacks respecting its form, covering or habits; they appear to have been in such dread of it as to have been unable to take note of its characteristics."[11] However, common features in many 19th-century newspaper accounts include a dog-like face, dark fur, a horse-like tail, flippers, and walrus-like tusks or horns or a duck-like bill.[12] Yara-ma-yha-who Seriously, do a GIS of this is you like weird poo poo  quote:The Yara-ma-yha-who is a creature from Australian Aboriginal folklore. This creature resembles a little red man with a very big head and large mouth with no teeth. On the ends of its hands and feet are suckers. It lives in fig trees and does not hunt for food, but waits until an unsuspecting traveler rests under the tree. It then drops onto the victim and drains their blood using the suckers on its hands and feet, making them weak. It then consumes the person, drinks some water, and then takes a nap. When the Yara-ma-yha-who awakens, it regurgitates the victim, leaving it shorter than before. The victim's skin also has a reddish tint to it that it didn't have before.[1][2] It repeats this process several times. At length, the victim is transformed into a Yara-ma-yha-who themself. According to legend, the Yara-ma-yha-who will only prey upon a living person, so (hypothetically speaking) you could survive an encounter with this monster by "playing-dead" until sunset; the creature only hunts during the day.  Yowie quote:The origin of the term "yowie" in the context of unidentified hominids is unclear. Some nineteenth century writers suggested that it simply arose through the aforementioned Aboriginal legends. Robert Holden recounts several stories that support this from the nineteenth century, including this European account from 1842;
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Feb 26, 2013 05:58
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I somehow managed to avoid those beheading videos for years until my brother randomly showed me his new phone and enthusiastically said "check this out" and showed me a guy getting his head sawn off in Afghanistan on his tiny phone screen  I've successfully steered clear of the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs video though. gently caress that.
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Mar 12, 2013 05:11
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NaturalLow posted:If you die in a prominent spot, climbers might even start using your corpse as a landmark! (Don't worry, no photos on this one) It's called "Rainbow Valley". Just before the summit there's a pretty sketchy thin ridge you have to walk along the top of, and it's just below that.
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Mar 19, 2013 00:13
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The worst prion to have in my opinion would be Fatal familial insomnia. (again, apologies if this is a repeat, there have been a few disease tangents itt)quote:Fatal familial insomnia (FFI) is a very rare autosomal dominant inherited prion disease of the brain. It is almost always caused by a mutation to the protein PrPC, but can also develop spontaneously in patients with a non-inherited mutation variant called sporadic Fatal Insomnia (sFI). FFI has no known cure and involves progressively worsening insomnia, which leads to hallucinations, delirium, and confusional states like that of dementia.[1] The average survival span for patients diagnosed with FFI after the onset of symptoms is 18 months.[1] quote:It has been proven that sleeping pills and barbiturates are unhelpful; on the contrary, in 74% of cases they have been shown to worsen the clinical manifestations and hasten the course of the disease.[13] Arsenic Lupin posted:As long as we're on diseases, I've always been freaked out by the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness. It showed up in England 1485, killed a whole bunch of people, moved from place to place (including repeated trips back to the homeland), and then vanished after 1551. It often killed within hours. For what it's worth, I was talking about this with two virology academics recently and they were both convinced it was Hantavirus. While we're doing diseases: Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever quote:Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a widespread tick-borne viral disease, a zoonosis of domestic animals and wild animals, that may affect humans. The pathogenic virus, especially common in East and West Africa, is a member of the Bunyaviridae family of RNA viruses. Clinical disease is rare in infected mammals, but commonly severe in infected humans, with a 30% mortality rate. Outbreaks of illness are usually attributable to handling infected animals or people.
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Apr 6, 2013 11:07
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BoyG posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster The idea of a wave of molasses travelling at 35 mph (56 km/h) is equally terrifying.
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Apr 14, 2013 13:23
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Oliver Cromwell's head was buried 310 years after he died and changed owners quite a few times. I tried to break the article down into a timeline of sorts.quote:Following the death of Oliver Cromwell on 3 September 1658, he was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey, equal to those of monarchs before him. quote:In 1685 a storm broke the pole upon which his head stood quote:A sentinel guarding the Exchequer's Office came across it, after which he hid it under his cloak and stored it, hidden, in the chimney of his house. The loss of the head was still significant in London at the time, and many searched for it, hoping to claim the “considerable reward”[16] being offered for its safe return. The guard, however, after seeing “the placards which ordered any one possessing it to take it to a certain office...was afraid to divulge the secret”. quote:However, only circumstantial evidence has been established for the whereabouts of the head following its fall from Westminster Hall until 1710, when it was in the possession of Claudius Du Puy, a Swiss-French collector of curiosities, who displayed it in his private museum in London quote:By Du Puy's death in 1738, the head had shifted in importance and status. When it was atop Westminster Hall high above the London skyline, it gave a sinister and potent warning to spectators. By the 18th century, it had become a curiosity and an attraction, and it had lost its original sinister message. quote:The head fell out of prominence until the late 18th century, when it was in the possession of a failed comic actor and drunkard named Samuel Russell. quote:Russell did not take the correct care with the head, however; in drunken gatherings, he passed the head around, leading to “irreparable erosion of its features”.[24] Russell possibly had some connections with Sidney Sussex College, as he offered the head to the Master of the college. However, the Master was not interested, and Cox connived to get the head using a different approach. He offered Russell small sums of money, gradually reaching the total of just over Ł100, and Russell could not pay when the loan was recalled. Thus his only option was to give up the head quote:Cox sold the head in 1799 for Ł230 (about Ł7,400 in today's money)[18] to three brothers named Hughes. Interested in starting their own display in Bond Street, the brothers acquired the head as part of other Cromwell-related items quote:Failure to sell to public museums forced the daughter to sell it privately, and in 1815 it was sold to Josiah Henry Wilkinson, in whose family it would remain until its burial. Maria Edgeworth, attending breakfast with Wilkinson in 1822, was shown the head, and she wrote with great surprise that she had seen “Oliver Cromwell's head—not his picture—not his bust—nothing of stone or marble or plaister [sic] of Paris, but his real head”.[30] quote:Horace Wilkinson died in 1957, bequeathing the head to his son, also called Horace. However, Horace Wilkinson wished to organise a proper burial for the head rather than a public display, so he contacted Sidney Sussex College, which welcomed the burial. There it was interred on 25 March 1960, in a secret location near the antechapel, preserved in the oak box in which the Wilkinson family had kept the head since 1815. The box was placed into an airtight container and buried with only a few witnesses, including family and representatives of the college. The secret burial was not announced until October 1962.
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Apr 29, 2013 05:29
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So Wu Zetian was a pretty interesting historical figure, but man was she brutal.quote:Wu Zetian eliminated many of her real, or potential, or perceived rivals to power by means of death (including execution, suicide by command, and more-or-less directly killing people), demotion, and exile. And, in some cases her methods were even more extreme, such as in case of the "human pig" (referring to Wu's method of making an example out of a rival by blinding her, cutting out her tongue, amputating her arms and legs, and keeping her alive by feeding her slops and letting her wallow in her own excrement, like a pig). Wu targeted various individuals, including many in her own family and her extended family. In reaction to an attempt to remove her from power, in 684, she massacred 12 entire collateral branches of the imperial family. She was responsible for significant changes to Chinese society so that Wiki article is really extensive.
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May 4, 2013 23:29
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Cordyceps Headache posted:If I remember though, at least some of the terrible things popularly attributed to her reoccur often as attacks against powerful women in Chinese history. It's most likely that she was vilified after her death, the way most previous monarchs from a different dynasty are (especially female ones). That's an interesting point actually. It's been taken further in other parts of the world. After her death, people tried to remove all records of Hatshepsut's existence. Her name and pictures of her were chiselled off stone walls leading to archaeologists finding "very obvious Hatshepsut-shaped gaps in the artwork"
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May 4, 2013 23:48
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Sargs posted:There was some of the same "soldiers a bit too close to nuclear tests" malarkey that everyone pulled back then as soon as they got the bomb, only with added loving over the Aborigines, and those lovely chaps at Porton Down tested any amount of hilarious chemical weapons on Squaddie volunteers, sometimes telling them it was all about "research into the common cold". Oh, this happened in the state I grew up in (probably explains a lot). The whole thing was hosed, especially how they didn't bother to tell the Indigenous population that they were dropping atomic bombs. During Operation Brumby, the British investigation, they flew over the area in helicopters and saw the skeletons of a group of Indigenous Australians. Apparently their deaths had not been recorded, but they were probably killed when the wind changed direction during a nuclear test. Also, the waste wasn't really buried properly, it was just dumped in shallow holes in the ground. Wikipedia posted:Parkinson, a nuclear engineer, explains that the clean-up of Maralinga in the late 1990s was compromised by cost-cutting and simply involved dumping hazardous radioactive debris in shallow holes in the ground. Parkinson states that "What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land." Of course, the problem how to warn people of dangerous nuclear radiation is a pretty interesting field, known as nuclear semiotics. quote:When atomic or fusion bombs are detonated in a war, or nuclear power plants are used in times of peace, an unnaturally high amount of radioactive waste is produced. This material will threaten human life and health for thousands of years. Consequently, nuclear technology necessitates the creation of a secure means of terminal storage for such materials for an unusually long time period. quote:Three parts of any communication about nuclear waste must be conveyed to posterity: There are some really surreal ideas in that article but my favourite would have to be: quote:French authors Francois Bastide and Paolo Fabbri proposed the breeding of so called "radiation cats" or "ray cats".[5] Cats have a long history of cohabitation with humans, and this approach assumes that their domestication will continue indefinitely. These radiation cats would change significantly in color when they came near radioactive emissions and serve as living indicators of danger. In order to transport the message, the importance of the cats would need to be set in the collective awareness through fairy tales and myths. Those fairy tales and myths in turn could be transmitted through poetry, music and painting.
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May 14, 2013 00:41
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into the void posted:This is probably a stupid question but can anyone explain why it doesn't seem to go the other way? Why don't these researchers or explorers walk away with some horrible disease the tribe is used to. Or do they? The most deadly diseases are often zoonosis, which are diseases which spread from animals to humans. Europeans and Asians domesticated more animals and therefore had more Zoonotic diseases. quote:Partial list of zoonoses Please not that there is one massive exception to this rule, which happened to kill 5 times the combined death toll of both world wars in the 20th century: smallpox. That said: quote:Many modern diseases, even epidemic diseases, started out as zoonotic diseases. It is hard to be certain which diseases jumped from other animals to humans, but there is good evidence that measles, smallpox, influenza, HIV, and diphtheria came to us this way. The common cold, and tuberculosis may also have started in other species.
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May 18, 2013 23:26
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires This heatwave and 400 or so fires associated with it always unnerved me, especially since most of the fatalities happened on the same day. quote:The Black Saturday bushfires[7] were a series of bushfires that ignited or were burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire-weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest ever loss of life from a bushfire;[8] 173 people died[5][9] and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.  quote:Wednesday, 28 January 2009 quote:5:00 pm – wind direction changed from northwesterly to southwesterly in Melbourne (see Fawkner Beacon Wind chart for 7 February 2009). quote:Wednesday, 4 March This is the worst part I think. The fire front was pretty fast (possibly too fast to evacuate from) and I guess 113 people thought their safest bet was to seek refuge in their houses. quote:Location of deaths: And here's a plume of smoke blowing all the way to New Zealand:  Edit: grammar police. Vladimir Poutine has a new favorite as of 15:17 on Jun 23, 2013 |
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Jun 23, 2013 15:11
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Shnicker posted:I was in the Melbourne CBD all day that day and it was one of the most bizarre days I've ever experienced. By 9am the temperature was already up to 35 celsius and when it got up to 47 at 4pm or so, it felt like being continuously bathed in bus exhaust. By 10pm the temperature dropped to 23.  I was in Adelaide during that heatwave and there was a bit of a weird vibe because there were leaves all over the road and paths like it was autumn/fall. Except it was the middle of summer, and there were leaves everywhere because the hot weather had killed every goddamn tree in my neighbourhood. Also, I think this is the most picture of them all:
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Jun 23, 2013 15:54
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boonsha posted:Hope I'm not too late to reminisce about Black Saturday. I started work at 8pm that night and when my shift finished at 2am I noticed a guy was still parked in his car. He was dead and had been baking there in the 46 degree heat all day. I figure it's appropriate for the thread because it was definitely pretty unnerving. Sorry, I'll end the derail now. Well you can't just drop that in a thread like it ain't no thing. I did kind of wonder when I brought Black Saturday up in this thread if is in fact "too soon".
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Jun 24, 2013 12:33
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Good News Everyone posted:This thread is deviating from scary and unnerving to straight-up gross. There are a few interesting examples of supposed "cryptids" in Australia. This is semi-recycled from a post I made in this thread about 6 months ago, but that's ages ago anyway. Bunyips quote:The bunyip, or kianpraty,[1] is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia.[2][3][4] However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. quote:Descriptions of bunyips vary widely. George French Angus may have collected a description of a bunyip in his account of a "water spirit" from the Moorundi people of the Murray River before 1847, stating it is "much dreaded by them… It inhabits the Murray; but…they have some difficulty describing it. Its most usual form…is said to be that of an enormous starfish."[10] Robert Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria of 1878 devoted ten pages to the bunyip, but concluded "in truth little is known among the blacks respecting its form, covering or habits; they appear to have been in such dread of it as to have been unable to take note of its characteristics."[11] However, common features in many 19th-century newspaper accounts include a dog-like face, dark fur, a horse-like tail, flippers, and walrus-like tusks or horns or a duck-like bill.[12] Yara-ma-yha-who quote:The Yara-ma-yha-who is a creature from Australian Aboriginal folklore. This creature resembles a little red man with a very big head and large mouth with no teeth. On the ends of its hands and feet are suckers. It lives in fig trees and does not hunt for food, but waits until an unsuspecting traveler rests under the tree. It then drops onto the victim and drains their blood using the suckers on its hands and feet, making them weak. It then consumes the person, drinks some water, and then takes a nap. When the Yara-ma-yha-who awakens, it regurgitates the victim, leaving it shorter than before. The victim's skin also has a reddish tint to it that it didn't have before.[1][2] It repeats this process several times. At length, the victim is transformed into a Yara-ma-yha-who themself. According to legend, the Yara-ma-yha-who will only prey upon a living person, so (hypothetically speaking) you could survive an encounter with this monster by "playing-dead" until sunset; the creature only hunts during the day. IntelligentCalcium posted:I don't think this particular brand of natural disaster has been posted here, but this always sort of weirded me out: This (much less severe) extinction event has always intrigued me too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event Everwhere humans went, large animals disappeared.
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Jul 27, 2013 02:01
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Oh you bastard. Haha. I just knew that video was coming! It's legitimately creepy.
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Jul 27, 2013 06:44
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Commissar posted:From last page, but Australian fairy tales tend to be based around a central practical core. Every Australian (at least everyone where I grew up) knows the story of dropbears, it's something you tell tourists to scare the poo poo out of them when they're camping in the bush. Essentially, the dropbears live in the bigger and older trees, and when you're sleeping they fall on you and kill you. Not only does this scare tourists, but it means that people who don't know much about the bush don't sleep under trees which might have branches which can break off in the night and kill you. When I was a kid I always found it a little odd that a particular species of tree (I think redgums) were casually referred to as "widow makers" in rural Australia.
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Jul 30, 2013 14:32
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AlbieQuirky posted:The US boarding schools for Native children were also terrible; this documentary is Yeah, it was pretty extensive in Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations quote:The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1909[1] and 1969,[2][3] although in some places children were still being taken until the 1970s.[4][5][6] quote:By around the age of 18 the children were released from government control and where it was available were sometimes allowed to view their government file. According to the testimony of one Aboriginal person:
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Aug 5, 2013 00:46
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freebooter posted:This may have been posted, but I've always found this really disturbing: Yeah, that was a pretty big deal in Australia in the 90s, along with the Snowtown Murders ( for descriptions of torture). The investigation began after 8 bodies were found dissolved in acid in barrels in a disused bank vault. In short, 12 torture-murders were carried out by 7 people, 3 of which end up getting murdered themselves. It always creeped me out growing up, partly because it happened in the city I live in.The article is quite interesting because it talks about all of the victims and perpetrators and how they knew each other and what their motivations were.
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Aug 8, 2013 09:01
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Bryant was a weird dude; apparently he would go on long flights from Australia to Europe just so he'd have someone next to him cornered and stuck talking to him for ~24 hours.quote:With Harvey and his father dead Bryant became increasingly lonely. From 1993 to late 1995, he visited various overseas countries 14 times and a summary of his domestic airline travel filled three pages. He hated the destinations he travelled to, as he found that people there avoided him just as they did in Tasmania. However he enjoyed the flights, as he could speak to the people sitting adjacent to him who had no choice but to be polite. Bryant later took great joy in describing some of the more successful conversations he had with fellow passengers. In late 1995, he became suicidal after deciding he had "had enough": "I just felt more people were against me. When I tried to be friendly toward them, they just walked away". Although he had previously been little more than a social drinker, his alcohol consumption increased and, although he had not had a drink on that day, had especially escalated in the six months prior to the massacre. Bryant's average daily consumption was estimated at half a bottle of Sambuca and a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream supplemented with Port wine and other sweet alcoholic drinks.[5] According to Bryant, he thought the plan for Port Arthur may have first occurred to him four to twelve weeks before the event quote:Bryant sold the Copping farm for $143,000 and kept the Hobart mansion.[5] While living at Copping, the white overalls he habitually wore were replaced with clothing more in line with Harvey's financial status. Now that he was alone his dress became more bizarre. He often wore a grey linen suit, cravat, lizard skin shoes and Panama hat while carrying a briefcase during the day, telling anyone who listened that he had a well-paying career. He often wore an electric blue suit with flared trousers and a ruffled shirt to the restaurant he frequented. The restaurant owner recalled: "It was horrible. Everyone was laughing at him, even the customers. I really felt suddenly quite sorry for him. I realised this guy didn't really have any friends." Wow, I can't even imagine what it would be like to witness something like that in childhood.
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Aug 9, 2013 11:16
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Apologies, this could possibly be classified as a "gross or annoying disease". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatographic_urticaria quote:Dermatographic urticaria(also known as dermographism, dermatographism or "skin writing") is a skin disorder seen in 4–5% of the population and is one of the most common types of urticaria,[1] in which the skin becomes raised and inflamed when stroked, scratched, rubbed, and sometimes even slapped.[2] It is most common in teenagers and young adults, ages 15-30.  Also, this made me chuckle a little: quote:
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Oct 4, 2013 11:24
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowra_breakoutquote:In the first week of August 1944, a tip-off from an informer at Cowra led authorities to plan a move of all Japanese POWs at Cowra, except officers and NCOs, to another camp at Hay, New South Wales, some 400 km to the west. The Japanese were notified of the move on 4 August. hambeet posted:It made me wonder if there was a 'list of stalkers'. There wasn't. I typed it in to see if it was there too. So close, but so disappointingly far.
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Oct 17, 2013 12:26
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raining_animalsquote:Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals "rain" from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis offered to explain this phenomenon is that strong winds traveling over water sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them for up to several miles.[1] However, this primary aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed or scientifically tested. Sometimes the animals survive the fall, suggesting the animals are dropped shortly after extraction. Several witnesses of raining frogs describe the animals as startled, though healthy, and exhibiting relatively normal behavior shortly after the event. In some incidents, however, the animals are frozen to death or even completely encased in ice. There are examples where the product of the rain is not intact animals, but shredded body parts. Some cases occur just after storms having strong winds, especially during tornadoes. quote:The following list is a selection of examples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly quote:“Star jelly” (also called astromyxin, astral jelly, pwdr sęr, star rot, or star shot) is a gelatinous substance sometimes found on grass or even on branches of trees.[1] According to folklore, it is deposited on the earth during meteor showers. Star jelly is described as a translucent or grayish-white gelatin that tends to evaporate shortly after having “fallen.” Explanations have ranged from the material's being the remains of frogs, toads, or worms, to the byproducts of cyanobacteria, to the paranormal.[2][3][4][5] Reports of the substance date back to the 14th century and have continued to the present day.[5][6]
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Oct 18, 2013 10:05
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ultrabindu posted:Is this thing still erupting? Nah, it had died down not long after. The adjacent beach on Tongatapu was covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny black stones from the volcano. Here's one I kept:  It weighs about a quarter as much as you'd expect. 2009 was an odd year for Tonga. There was this volcano, a tsunami (which also decimated Samoa and American Samoa) and the sinking of the MV Princess Ashika. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Princess_Ashika quote:The MV Princess Ashika was an inter-island ferry which operated in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga. This motorized vessel (MV) was built in 1972, and began sailing the Tongan route on 7 July 2009 only to sink less than a month later on 5 August. Official figures released by Operation Ashika on August 19, 2009, confirmed that 54 men were rescued, and 74 persons were lost at sea. These include two bodies recovered and 72 missing (68 passengers and 4 crew), including five foreign nationals. Two of the missing passengers remain unidentified.[4] quote:The distress beacon was sent five minutes after the mayday call.[2] One survivor described a "big wave" and "much water", claiming that it had happened very quickly.[9]] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9RS0A_S_Rc
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Feb 28, 2014 12:12
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Phy posted:Oh awesome the brain-controlling fungus creates a mood-altering chemical I sure want that in my body Eh, drug interactions in insects aren't necessarily that similar to those found in mammals such as humans. For example, caffeine acts as a pesticide that paralyzes and kills many insects, which is probably why plants produce it, but caffeine is one of (if not the) most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs on the planet. Hell, I'm barely human unless I've practically drunk my own body-weight in black magic before 10am.
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Mar 3, 2014 23:20
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Turns out if you remove someone's hippocampus as an experimental treatment for epilepsy they'll lose the ability to form new memories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison quote:After the surgery—which was successful in its primary goal of controlling his epilepsy—he suffered from severe anterograde amnesia: although his working memory and procedural memory were intact, he could not commit new events to his explicit memory. According to some scientists, Molaison was impaired in his ability to form new semantic knowledge,[7] but researchers argue over the extent of this impairment. He also suffered moderate retrograde amnesia, and could not remember most events in the 1–2-year period before surgery, nor some events up to 11 years before, meaning that his amnesia was temporally graded. However, his ability to form long-term procedural memories was intact; thus he could, for example, learn new motor skills, despite not being able to remember learning them.
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Mar 24, 2014 21:02
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