Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 280
April 10, 2019
April 9, 2019
The Curious Skull Binding Rituals Of New Britain
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Cranial manipulation and deformation can be found throughout the world. While some cultures elongated their skulls to seemingly impossible lengths, others sought a flatter forehead or more modest change.
On the island now known as New Britain within the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, skull binding was once a common practice. The practice, however, has slowly disappeared under the influence of Christian missionaries on the island. Even when Oxford researchers arrived in the 1930s, the skull binding was beginning to decline.
The people of New Britain began head binding their children at birth, often just after they were first washed. The practice wasn’t done for religious reasons or as any sort of rite of passage. According to villagers, the practice was solely for beauty and fashion.
Women in these villages gave birth in enclosed huts, and an attending woman or sometimes the mother herself would begin the binding process almost immediately. First, the newborn’s head would be covered in a black paste made from charcoal and water mixed in a coconut. Then, a long strip of bark cloth was tied around the head. The ears were often bound as well. Tighter bandages meant a more elongated skull, but children didn’t seem bothered by the procedure, rarely crying at all.
The entire process was mostly up to the mother and grandmother. There was no prescribed amount of time for a child to wear the binding. Some wore it up to the time they could walk on their own, while other mothers gave up if their child became fussy about it. Bandages were changed at irregular intervals, or whenever the mother had time. The arrival of a new child would often divert attention from an older child, and they would no longer wear the binding
Some families bury a child’s first bandages under coconut trees for prosperity, but anthropologist Beatrice Blackwood noted that the ritual wasn’t very important and that parents had no problem giving her bandages for study.
This seemingly haphazard process for skull binding left many children open to bullying. Blackwood noted that one child’s parents had missed binding one of her ears and that it stuck out as a result. Children teased each other for protruding ears, or if their heads weren’t long enough. An un-bound skull was said to “look like a stone,” according to chortling children.
April 8, 2019
Boston’s Bodega Is The City’s Best Worst-Kept Secret
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
BOSTON—Jamel Alvarez just had to see it for himself.
“Is this it?” he asked, peering down the alley. “No way!”
His voice displayed his disbelief. “Oh, man! No WAY!” he said again.
The construction worker from Providence, Rhode Island, had heard about Bodega on the Internet, and he thought it was so cool he made the hour drive north just to check it out.
Of course, finding it is half the fun.
“You know, I heard about it, and they hid it pretty good,” Alvarez said, laughing.
Welcome to Bodega, Boston’s high-end retail clothing shop for men and women that is conveniently hidden in a typical, coffee and newspaper corner store.
Located on the corner of Clearway Street and Massachusetts Avenue, you wouldn’t know it was there if you weren’t looking for it. Sitting on the corner is a very plain store façade, advertising things like drinks and toilet paper.
Once inside, nothing looks that much different. Want to snap into a Slim Jim? You can. Want to pop open a cold soft drink? Feel free.
Just don’t expect to get a Snapple. That’s where the secret door is.
Toward the back of the shop sits the Snapple machine, or at least what looks like one. Walk too close and you realize the front of the machine is actually a secret, sliding door, which will move aside and allow you to enter a whole new world.
Of modern fashion.
“Aww, dope man!” Alvarez said.
Once you’ve passed through, you find yourself surrounded by various high-end brands that aren’t typically found in New England, but are still made for average folks.
“It don’t matter how cool you think you are,” one manager told me. “You’re welcome here.”
And it feels that way. Whether you’re looking for the newest releases of Nikes, or the most up-to-date trends in Japanese cult brands, you’ll find it here.
Created in 2006 by three friends who wanted to sell hard-to-find clothing, Bodega started with sneakers, which resulted in customers lining the streets for their exclusive releases. Through word-of-mouth, the secret store began to gain notoriety, which allowed them to expand their goods to hard-to-find international brands.
Now they’ve opened two other stores — one in Tokyo and another in L.A.
“It’s just cool, man,” Alvarez said. “It makes you feel like you’re part of a club. Like you’re getting something really special.”
For more info, visit https://bdgastore.com/
By Ryan Clark, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: Boston’s Bodega Is The City’s Best Worst-Kept Secret
April 7, 2019
April 6, 2019
April 5, 2019
Typo-Riddled Harry Potter Book Sells For $90,000
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[March 31-April 6th, 2019] Rowling’s typos, a judge’s accidental resignation, cookie boxes filled with spiders, and the rest of the week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone
Though it would eventually have its name changed to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the US release, the first book in J. K. Rowling’s hit series wasn’t a perfect success at the start. British editions were titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and early copies included a few typos. Besides “1 wand” being listed twice in the titular character’s list of necessary school supplies, the likewise title-featured “philosopher” was misspelled on the book’s back cover. A rare copy of this typo-laden book just sold for $90,000 at auction.
Over Before It Began
Former judge Bill McLeod of Houston resigned just three months into the job… on accident. Excited after winning a seat as a county judge, he posted online that he’d love to run for State Supreme Court one day, but despite being an arbiter of the law, he seemed completely unaware of a piece of a provision in the state constitution. If a county judge announces candidacy for another office, it serves as an automatic resignation. Despite his mistake, he has hopes the county commissioners will re-appoint him to his own seat.
Boxes Of Cookies Tarantulas
Philippine customs officials thought they were in for a sweet treat when they opened up some gift-wrapped boxes of cookies from Poland. Instead of oatmeal raisin, however, they encountered 757 live tarantulas! Wildlife laws make it illegal to bring such spiders to the islands, so the owner tried to claim the nearly $6,000 in spiders as a collection.
13-Year-Old Buys His Mom A Car
After weeks of bad luck and heartache, things are looking up for a single mother in Nevada. Krystal Preston’s 13-year-old son bought her a car. She needed transportation to get to work, but wasn’t able to afford it. That’s when her son, William, spotted an ad for a 1999 Chevrolet Metro. He contacted the owner and worked out trading his Xbox and doing yard work all around the neighborhood in exchange for the car.
Skrillex VS Deet
According to research published in the journal Acta Tropica, mosquitoes bite and mate less when listening to Skrillex. The low tones of the dub-step music disrupt female mosquitoes’ sexual appetites and keeps them distracted from finding food. Scientists hope their findings will help pave the way for new ways to control the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses without relying on chemicals.
April 4, 2019
The Great Space Mirage: Stars Don’t Twinkle
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” They must get tired of us saying that to them because the truth is stars actually don’t twinkle. Even though you can look outside at night and see the flashing of different levels of light emanating from the same star, what you’re really seeing is interference from the atmosphere making the stars look like they’re twinkling when they’re not.
What Is Astronomical Scintillation?
Astronomical scintillation is the technical term for what we are seeing when the stars seem to twinkle. It’s actually caused by the atmosphere, which is made up of several different layers. The different layers have different temperatures, densities, and other variables that cause the light coming from a faraway star to bend and refract, causing changes in the way it looks. The star is extremely far away with all of its light coming from a very small, very fixed point. This is why, when we look at the night sky and a star that is shining its light through our atmosphere from very far away, we see the light change and shift.
Why Don’t Planets Twinkle?
If we see stars through the same atmosphere as the planets we see, why don’t planets appear to twinkle? The truth is that planets are affected in exactly the same way as stars, and they do undergo the twinkle or astronomical scintillation effect. But when we’re looking at them, we don’t notice it like we do when we look at the stars.
This is because planets are much closer to us than stars are, so they look bigger, rather than like one pinpoint of light. The scintillation or twinkling rarely happens over the entire surface of the planet in the same way at the same time, so it seems fixed and unmoving. The stars, however, are so far away that we barely see any light from them at all: just a little dot in the sky. This makes them more vulnerable to the refraction effects caused by the atmosphere.
Our Atmosphere’s Effects on Stars
Our atmosphere does a great job of protecting us and making our planet habitable. However, it sometimes annoys astronomers that it’s so difficult to see stars as a stationary point because of the atmosphere. This is why telescopes now exist with technology specifically designed to detwinklefy the stars so scientists can better see them.
The Keck observatory uses data from multiple telescopes to de-twinkle stars.
What’s more, it’s why the famously crisp photos taken by the Hubble telescope are such a phenomenon. It may look strange to see stars that don’t twinkle, but in space, there is no atmosphere, allowing us to see the stars in their natural state, free from that pretty but circumstantial effect.
By Julia Tilford, contributor for Ripleys.com
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