Category:
Body

Wallace Rossall, the “Upside Down Boy”

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Poor Wallace Rossall. With his "twisted insides" he was obviously doomed to an early death.

But maybe not!

If this death record pertains to our Wallace--correct birth date; still living in California at time of death--then he lived to the decent age of 65 or 66.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 16, 2012 - Comments (10)
Category: Body, Diseases, Stomach, Freaks, Oddities, Quirks of Nature, 1930s

Crippled Children

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Sometime we forgot how much civilization has advanced in 90 years. What was common becomes weird.

Of course, at my age I still recall childhood polio as a danger.

Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Aug 13, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Body, Feet, Medicine, Advertising, Children, 1920s

Nostril Dominance

People are either right-handed or left-handed. But are people also left-nostriled and right-nostriled? Yes, they are — as reported in an article published in the journal Laterality (Mar 2005). From the study:

we sought to determine which nostril has the greater airflow most of the time. In line with the notion of a biological preparedness for sidedness consistency, it was hypothesised that left-handers have their left nostril as the dominant one (defined as the nostril with the greater airflow) significantly more often than their right nostril. For right-handers the opposite was predicted: the right nostril would most often experience the greater airflow...

Result: The present data support these predictions: for both left-handers and right-handers the nostril that had the significantly greater airflow was ipsilateral to the preferred hand almost 60% of the time.

The researchers also discovered that people are pretty much useless at self-determining their own nostril dominance. (i.e. It's very hard to tell which nostril you're breathing more air through.) So they used a gadget that measured airflow into each nostril to get an accurate measure of nostril dominance.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 04, 2012 - Comments (7)
Category: Body, Science, Experiments

Whiz Soap



Perhaps you recall the commercials with Madge the Manicurist, where she recommended Palmolive soap for its skin-softening qualities.

Well, Madge had nothing on a campaign from early in the century, for Whiz Soap, which informed customers that they could use Whiz to clean, oh, filthy farm equipment, and then use the same stuff for their personal bathing.

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There seem to be lots of antique Whiz containers around for sale, if you want to commemorate this product in your home.

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Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Jul 01, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Body, Business, Advertising, Products, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, 1910s

Darwin’s Point

Do you have a Darwin's point? According to wikipedia (which refers to it as "Darwin's tubercle"), about 10% of the population has one:

The feature is present in approximately 10.4% of the population. This acuminate nodule represents the point of the mammalian ear. This atavistic feature is so called because its description was first published by Charles Darwin in the opening pages of The Descent of Man, as evidence of a vestigial feature indicating common ancestry among primates. However, Darwin himself named it the Woolnerian tip, after Thomas Woolner, a British sculptor who had depicted it in one of his sculptures and had first theorised that it was an atavistic feature.

In some people, such as myself, the point projects outwards rather than inwards, making a kind of elf ear. My wife calls mine my "Spock ear."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jun 30, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Body

The Employment

El Empleo / The Employment from opusBou on Vimeo.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 23, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Body, Humor, Products, Surrealism, Science Fiction, Cartoons

Finger-Lopping

Anthropologist Holly Wardlow did extensive fieldwork among the Huli people of Papua New Guinea. She offers this account of a curious way that Huli women get the upper hand (so to speak) in marital disputes:
many women when falsely accused [of adultery by their husbands] will lop off their index or pinky fingers at the first or second joint. This practice is quite common: of the fifty women with whom I conducted life history interviews, ten of them had one or two finger joints missing. Indeed this practice by Huli women is so pervasive that children say they make a point of hiding all knives and axes whenever their parents argue, not only to prevent them from injuring each other, but to prevent their mothers from lopping off their fingers. Like suicide, finger-lopping is motivated by anger and indignation, but it is highly performative as well; for example, one is supposed to maintain enough presence of mind to hurl the finger at one's accuser and yell something like, "keba biba haro, inaga ki bi pugu ngerogoni" (In order to cut off/finish my anger, I'm cutting off my finger and giving it to you.)

Source: Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 16, 2012 - Comments (9)
Category: Body, Body Modifications, Domestic, Misbehavior, Rebellion, Acting-out and General Naughtiness, Foreign Customs

Subtle Body



"To the strains of Fila Brazilia's 'Subtle Body,' a video of consensual power exchange by an Icelandic rubber fetishist freely bound."

Warning: vinyl-swathed Icelandic butt is spanked.

My questions:

1) Did you folks spontaneously interrupt the meal seen upon the table, or is this punishment perhaps either an appetizer or dessert?

2) IN THE DINING ROOM?!? YOU'VE GOT YOUR S&M EQUIPMENT SET UP IN THE DINING ROOM!?!

Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 05, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Body, Performance Art, Europe

Follies of the Mad Men #176

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Here's my concern. Is this a human Sherlock Holmes wearing a can disguise? If so, it's not one of his masterstrokes.

Or is this a living tin can with fleshy appurtenances? In which case, the ad is the stuff of nightmares!

Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 26, 2012 - Comments (5)
Category: Body, Business, Advertising, Products, Literature, Surrealism, 1930s, Fictional Monsters

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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