Adela
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Yama God of Death
Yama or Yamarāja, also called Imra, is a god of death, the south direction and the underworld, belonging to an early stratum of Rigvedic Hindu deities. In Sanskrit, his name can be interpreted to mean “twin”. In the Zend-Avesta of Zoroastrianism, he is called “Yima”. According to the Vishnu Purana, his parents are the sun-god Surya and Sandhya. In Hinduism he is the twin brother of Yami, brother of Shraddhadeva_Manu and the step brother of Shani. He is sometimes depicted riding a buffalo. In Hinduism, Yama is the lokapala (“Guardian of the Directions”) of the south and the son of Brahma. He has two dogs with four legs and wide…
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Götz of the Iron Hand
Gottfried “Götz” von Berlichingen was born around 1480 into the noble family of Berlichingen in modern-day Württemberg. In 1497, Gotz entered the service of Frederick I, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. In 1498, he fought in the armies of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, seeing action in Burgundy, Lorraine, and the Brabant, and in the Swabian War the following year. By 1500, he had left the service of Frederick, and formed a company of mercenaries, selling his services to various Dukes, Margraves, and Barons. In 1504, Gotz and his mercenaries fought for Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria. During the siege of the city of Landshut, a cannonball hit the knight’s sword, moving…
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Eostre
She is the Germanic Goddess of Spring. She is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where he states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre’s honor called Eosturmonath. However, Bede is our only source for the historical Eostre. There are no other mentions of the goddess prior to that. There are theories that Eostre is derived from the same Indo European goddess of the dawn like that of the Greek Goddess Eos. Another theory is Eostre is a local goddess worshiped in Southeastern England. The latest theory by Philip Shaw is that she is linked to a…
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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…
