Ripley Entertainment Inc.'s Blog, page 286
March 5, 2019
Preserved Sailor Skin With Tattoos
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
For as long as people have been tattooing themselves, they have also sought methods to remove ink from their bodies. Today, lasers provide some of the most common forms of removal for unwanted tattoos. Lasers, however, are a fairly recent arrival in the tattoo removal game. For millennia, mankind has had to remove tattoos by burning them off with acid or by cutting them off surgically.
In modern times, surveys say that about 20% of American adults regret getting tattoos. The most common reasons cited are embarrassment, problems with clothes, life events or people that were no longer important, and inhospitably in the workplace.
People in the 1930s seemed to share some of these same reasons. Obtained from a vast collection of removed tattoos from W. K. Foster of Winnipeg, Canada, this patch of skin inked with several tattoos now resides in the Ripley’s collection.
The skin was cut off a sailor in the 1930s. The skin has long dried, but has remained eerily preserved. Besides the ink of the tattoos, fine hair still juts out from its long-dead pores. A mermaid, a harp covered in branches, as well as a what appears to be a beaver on a log, make up a majority of the figures. The heart with a cross atop it likely represented a departed friend, as is typical among sailor tattoos.
The person who this patch of skin came from was likely a seaman that transitioned to river work in southern Canada—hence the beaver tattoo. It’s unknown why he would have had his tattoos removed, or if he was alive when the process took place.
Tattoos have long been collected as curiosities by medical, forensic, and artistic reasons. Mr. Foster appears to have kept his collection of dried human skin as a testament to their artistic merits, framing tattoos he found beautiful.
March 4, 2019
The Tragic Origins Of Peter The Wild Boy
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
His headstone simply reads “Peter the Wild Boy, 1785.” For his entire odd life, that was his moniker. Was Peter a feral child or was he afflicted with a rare genetic condition that had not yet been discovered?
CC Neale Monks
Peter was about 11 years old when he was found, naked and disheveled, living alone in a forest in Hanover, Germany. He could not speak, walked on all fours, ate with his hands and disliked wearing clothes. The boy immediately caught the attention of King George I of Great Britain, himself of Hanoverian stock. Peter was brought to London and became a “human pet” at Kensington Palace.
Nature Versus Nurture
It was speculated that Peter had been raised by wolves or bears, and his wild appearance and erratic behavior caused quite a sensation in England. It was 1725 and, at that time, Peter’s presence brought up questions of nature versus nurture and the delicate line between humans and wild animals. Is it our genetics or our environment and upbringing that determines our behavior? Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, even created a new category of human in his Systema Naturae just for Peter called Juvenis hanoveranus.
Upon arriving in England, Peter became the ward of Princess (later Queen) Caroline who saw to it that he got an education. Despite all efforts, Peter never learned to speak and was only able to repeat a few words, although he seemed to understand what was being said to him. Peter also had a propensity to wander off and get into trouble. One summer in 1751, Peter went missing. Advertisements were placed in newspapers offering a reward for his safe return. When he was found and returned home a few weeks later, his caretaker fitted Peter with a special leather collar inscribed with his name and address.
CC Matt Brown
Diagnosis
Later studies of the case theorize that rather than being feral, Peter was severely mentally disabled and had been abandoned by his parents. In more recent years, Peter’s case was reexamined and he was diagnosed with Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome (PHS). A vital clue to its discovery was Peter’s smile in a portrait that hangs on the grand staircase at Kensington Palace. It was his features such as his Cupid’s bow lips, short stature, drooping eyelids, and coarse hair, along with details of his odd habits and behaviors, that led professors of genetics to diagnose him with PHS.
It is sad to think that centuries ago, people with this and other not yet known genetic conditions, were misunderstood and often mistreated. However, Peter the Wild Boy was well cared for and long outlived his royal patrons. After Caroline’s death, Peter was sent to live on a farm, where he lived into his 70s.
Peter is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary’s at Northchurch in Hertfordshire, England, where people—still today—lay flowers on his grave.
March 3, 2019
March 2, 2019
March 1, 2019
Rare Whale Mysteriously Ends Up In The Amazon
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
[February 24th-March 2nd, 2019] A whale in the Amazon, an underground mansion, and headless mummy in this week’s weird news from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Amazon Whale
Early this week, marine biologists in Brazil were stunned to find a humpback whale washed 50-feet ashore on a remote island in the mouth of the Amazon River. The 10-ton whale would have been a rare sight off the tropical coast, as both humpback populations in the Atlantic usually only head to warm waters near the equator to give birth. Scientists theorize it may have become sick and then gotten very disoriented and lost. As to how it got so far ashore, experts believe the high tides caused by the recent super snow moon may have been to blame.
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Bunker Mansion $18 Million
If you’re looking for a home built to last, a bomb shelter’s probably a pretty safe bet. A five-bedroom, six-bathroom home with a pool is now for sale in Las Vegas. Located underground, it even has a fake yard with trees and grass that never needs to be watered. The whole estate can be yours for the asking price of $18 million.
Chubby Rat Rescued By Firefighters
Though rats are typically renowned for their ability to infest any number of places and squeeze their entire bodies through an opening as small as a quarter of an inch, one rat has seemingly grown too large to keep up with his vermin brethren. While trying to climb out from under a manhole cover in Bensheim, Germany, a chubby rat got stuck. Firefighters eventually arrived on the scene to free the critter who was pinched between two lobes of fat it had put on for the winter.
Crusader Mummy Decapitated
For 800 years, a mummy dubbed “The Crusader” has sat in peaceful rest under St. Michan’s Church in Dublin, Ireland. According to church leaders, however, his rest was disturbed when vandals broke in this week. The Crusader, along with several other centuries-old mummies, were destroyed by people who broke through the church’s heavy steel door and dragged the corpses from their coffins, seemingly taking the Crusader’s head as a trophy.
CC Jennifer Boyer
One-Student Schoolhouse
It was once common for children to be educated in one-room schoolhouses that shared a common space and instructor for all grades. Rural Wyoming is taking it a step further, by introducing a one-student schoolhouse. Thanks to a state law requiring schools to be accessible to students who may otherwise face snow or other natural obstacles to make it to class, a teacher and school will be provided for just one student. Believe it or not, this will actually be Wyoming’s second one-student school.
February 28, 2019
The Incredible Challenge Of Going To The Moon In 1969
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Humankind had plans for traveling to the Moon as early as the 17th-century, but it was in 1969 that the American space program made this dream a reality.
In the 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission put human feet on the lunar surface for the first time, astronauts have only managed five return missions. The last manned mission to the Moon was in 1972. Since the Apollo ended, a tech revolution has taken place, giving NASA engineers access to sophisticated computers, GPS, and an increasingly powerful array of ways to share information. This makes it all the more impressive that scientists were able to send people to the Moon before the advent of laptops and smartphones.
The microprocessor was invented just a year before the Apollo 11 launch. The Apollo 11’s guidance computer used rope for memory, and even then was only able to offer up 72 kilobytes of space—about one-ten-millionth of a modern cellphones storage.
The Raytheon core rope memory from Apollo’s Guidance Computer.
On that guidance computer, the world’s first software engineers had to write instructions for space travel in a world where GPS didn’t exist. Thanks to the hard work of hundreds of scientists and engineers as well as the bravery of three astronauts, however, NASA achieved what seemed impossible. They sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin across 239,900 miles of empty space to land on the lunar surface.
The Eagle lunar lander touched down with just 25 seconds of fuel left, and Neil Armstrong was the first person to step out onto the Moon. Armstrong is credited for his famous, “That’s One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” though he contended for years this was a misquote.
After just 22.5 hours of activity on the Moon, erecting keepsakes and collecting samples, Aldrin and Armstrong returned to the lunar lander. Though the American flag was just one of the many things left by astronauts on the Moon, Aldrin reported that it was knocked over as the lunar module ascended.
Once they returned to orbit around the Moon, the landing crew met back up with astronaut Michael Collins and prepared to make the 239,900-mile voyage home.
Source: The Incredible Challenge Of Going To The Moon In 1969
Are They Real? The Dubious History Of Chastity Belts
Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Most of us heard the story at some point in middle school told by an overzealous peer who had just learned the undefined history of chastity belts. These devices were said to be metal contraptions that Medieval men would force their wives or daughters to wear in order to protect their virtue while their husbands or fathers were away at war.
A wife in a chastity belt reaches into her husband’s coin purse to pay another man to bring her the key.
This may be one of the biggest historical myths most people in the modern era still believe. For although chastity belts are certainly real enough now, they were probably never an actual device used during the Medieval period to keep women abstinent.
The Strong Belief in Chastity Belts
Most people believe that chastity belts were used during this era for this purpose because the belief has been held for so long by many different generations. Also, a number of historians have pointed out the prurient interest in the story, claiming that people always want to talk about the strange, carnal appetites and behaviors of others.
Finally, we also have a tendency to want to see time periods like those of the Middle Ages as backward and the people as foolish. This kind of viewpoint allows us to feel superior by comparison, hence, the long-held belief in chastity belts (which, when you really think about it, would have caused countless health and hygiene problems that would have been difficult to ignore).
Chastity Belts in the Medieval Age
In truth, there are actually no references to chastity belts found in any serious Medieval texts. Most of the texts that even mention the idea clearly discuss it in a metaphorical sense, like a Latin text that told women to “hold the helmet of salvation on your front, the word of truth in the mouth… [and] the girdle of chastity in the body…”
The Bellifortis chastity design belt design.
A text that is often cited as proof of the chastity belt’s use in the Middle Ages is Bellifortis, a 1405 book with designs for a chastity belt as well as torture devices and other wartime items. However, the book also contains several other designs that aren’t meant to be taken literally—like devices that will turn the wearer invisible.
In addition, most images portraying the wearing of chastity belts are satirical, in one from 1590 where the woman’s lovers are clearly waiting for her husband to leave and holding copies of the key to her chastity belt.
A 16th-century example of chastity belt satire.
The man also sports donkey ears and is being compared to a person who is trying to keep fleas inside a woven basket. If Medieval individuals had believed in the benefits of chastity belts, it’s likely we would see more texts extolling their virtues and fewer making them seem like the butt of some joke.
Why Do Chastity Belts Exist?
If Medieval chastity belts didn’t exist, then why do we see evidence of them made in real metal and, often, displayed in museums? The truth is that most the chastity belts we’ve seen probably weren’t fashioned until the late 1700s or the 1800s, likely created based on a misunderstanding of the idea that these were ever effective or serious options for husbands worried about their wives’ fidelity.
By Julia Tilford, contributor for Ripleys.com
Source: Are They Real? The Dubious History Of Chastity Belts
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