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Category / Obscure history

What’s Up with all the Lady Parts in Medieval Prayer Books?

Let’s say you’re flipping through a medieval Christian prayer book (as you do), and suddenly you come across a curious illustration amongst the prayers and psalms of something that looks unmistakably like female genitalia. A scolding voice in your head tells you to get your mind out of the gutter. But you wouldn’t be alone.…

He made a Fortune in the 1920’s Transplanting Monkey Testicle Tissue into the Ballsacks of Millionaires

The poet E.E Cummings once wrote of a “famous doctor who inserts monkey glands in millionaires” and in a pre-code Hollywood musical starring the Marx Brothers, they sang the line, “If you’re too old for dancing / Get yourself a monkey gland” performing a number entitled “Monkey-Doodle-Doo”. There was a famous Chicago surgeon who wrote…

Behind the Façade of Potemkin Villages

Who wouldn’t want a library or a museum named in their honour? A namesake to remember us by long after we’re gone. But we can’t all be so lucky with our legacies. Case in point: 18th century Russian military leader and lover of Empress Catherine the Great, Gregory Potemkin, whose name would come to define…

Did Jesus Escape to Japan?

Greetings from Shingo, a rural village, 650km north of Tokyo that is believed by its inhabitants to be the last resting place of Jesus Christ. Make the pilgrimage to its quiet hills, and you’ll find yourself in a veritable slice of the Twilight Zone where the Christian prophet led a double life as a garlic…

Get Schooled by the World’s First Sexology Institute of 1920s Berlin

They called him “the Einstein of Sex”. The German doctor who went (quite literally) where no other had gone before in his research, founding the massive Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or Sexology, just before the Nazis eclipsed bohemian Berlin and its costumed, sexually liberated splendour. His name was Magnus Hirschfeld (see the dude with the glasses…

The Poisoned Paradise Island

We all know that America conducted nuclear bomb testing during the Cold War, somewhere out there, far away from us. Whatever damage was done has probably been healed by now, right? The above picture of a beautiful paradise island, listed as one of the top diving sites in the world, may seem idyllic but it’s…

Here’s What a Futurist World’s Fair Looked like Behind the Iron Curtain

The World’s Fairs used to capture the public’s imagination. From the millions who attended such iconic Fairs as the ones held in New York in 1939 and 1964, to the nostalgia they’re viewed with today, the World’s Fairs were places where people could catch glimpses of a futuristic better world; seeing such technological marvels as…

Girl Friends, Inc: The African American Social Clubs of Yesteryear

It all started over a pot of stew in the summer of 1927. Eunice Shreeves rang a fews friends to come over to her New York home, break bread, and make a few more memories before heading their separate ways for college. The Harlem Renaissance was at its peak, and these ladies were headed to…

Ever Wondered Exactly How an Egyptian Temple Ended up at the Met?

During a visit to The Met in New York, the sight of a full-size Egyptian temple within its walls may no longer faze us amidst the amazing collections that we’re used to seeing in our museums these days. But as you stroll back out into the busy streets, perhaps you might also wonder, hang on…

Inside the Mystery of an Untranslatable 600 Year Old Book

It’s like Medieval Times, with a kiss of psychedelia. A book in which strange globules float freely, alien plants shimmy across the pages, and female figures slide into a pool of green plasma. Binding them all together? A beautiful, albeit entirely indecipherable script by an unknown author. The “Voynich Manuscript,” is an ancient codex that…

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