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Fight against “Yellow Jack”
In the early 19th century, the scourge of Yellow Fever was prevalent in the southern United States. It had originally come over from Africa with the slave trade. They called it “Yellow Jack” and it was relentless. The death toll was huge as outbreaks happened in the south and people fled north. Trains full of people trying to escape sickness were met at stations by armed men and forced to move on. These were called “shotgun quarantines”. No one knew how it spread. They burned bonfires to disrupt “miasmas” that they thought caused sickness. Patients were quarantined and doctors believed contact with sick people and anything contaminated with their…
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Green children of Woolpit
The village of St. Mary’s of the Wolf Pits, or Woolpit for short, was a quiet little place in Suffolk, East Anglia. In the Middle Ages, the village belonged to the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, which had great wealth and power in the area. It was in a very densely populated agricultural area of England. So imagine the villager’s surprise when they came out to work their land and found two green children. A strange story, one that was told by two 12th century chroniclers- Ralph of Coggestall and William of Newburgh. The place the story of the green children within the reign of either King Stephen or…
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The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic
Sometimes laughter isn’t the best medicine. We’ve all been there- laughing until our sides hurt. Thinking if we laughed anymore we might never stop. Now imagine a laughing epidemic. The laughter epidemic is rumored to have begun on January 30, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls in Kashasha, on the western coast of Lake Victoria in the modern nation of Tanzania near the border of Uganda. The laughter started with three girls and spread throughout the school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 12–18. Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days in those affected. The teaching staff were not affected, but reported that students were…
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Tarrare – The man with the insatiable appetite
****WARNING- this post may contain some unpleasant descriptions for some.**** We all know that one person who seems to have a hollow leg. In this case, Tarrare really could eat anything and usually did. Tarrare was born around 1772 in France, and as a child was noted for being able to eat vast quantities of food. Despite this he was always hungry. His family was not rich and could not afford to feed him, so they kicked him out of the house when he was a teenager. Homeless, Tarrare traveled the French countryside and fell in with a band of thieves and prostitutes. Later he became the warm-up act for…
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The Harem Conspiracy
The royal court is never an easy place. Its full of intrigue and deception and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is true today as it was in ancient times. In Egypt, no one was more powerful than the Pharaoh. However, in the Twentieth Dynasty, Pharaoh Ramses III was getting old. He had ruled Egypt for a little over thirty years, and people were getting antsy. Since he wasn’t vacating the throne on his own power, perhaps it was time to help him along. Ramses had many wives like most pharaohs, however, unlike most pharaohs he did not name a Great Royal Wife. This left the harem open to scheming and…
