The Weird and the Wonderful
The Chongqing Business Daily is reporting an unpleasant story of a Chinese man applying burning cotton to his granddaughter’s body in order to exercise her of evil ghosts.
The girl had been turning gradually yellow after she was born on July the 5th. The condition, however, was typical neonatal jaundice and not uncommon.
The ritual involved inserting burning cotton threads into the girl’s nose and laying them over her stomach. She was admitted to hospital and released on the 21st.
The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century is due July 22nd.
The event will last 6 minutes and 26 seconds and it’ll be 2132 until a solar eclipse of a similar length is visible from Earth. The eclipse’s shadow will stretch up to 258km.
The eclipse will be visible from the world’s most densely populated countries; China and India.
Stargazers in the Indian state of Gujarat will be able to see the solar event first at (at about 4.30pm GMT). The path of the eclipse will mean that the shadow will race across India next; effecting the holy city of Varansai, touching Bangladesh, Nepal, most of Bhutan and then along China before it reaches the sea off Shanghai.
Seeing the number 9 everywhere? Discover the spiritual meaning, symbolism, and mythology behind this powerful number of completion and wisdom.
A Scottish city is set to burn a 16th century witch and is giving people the chance to meet the gaoler before hand.
The re-enactment will be held on Saturday the 18th of July at 11am, 12 noon, 2pm and 3pm at The Tolbooth Museum, Castle Street, Aberdeen.
The council’s press release notes that burnings were rare in Aberdeen except in 1597 when King James the VI encouraged a witch hunt. That year 20 people were executed for witchcraft.
A typical Cancerian is protective, often stubborn and sometimes moody. Cancerians have highly attuned intuition and reliable decision making skills and reactions however they are also prone to worrying too much.
The Australian town of Bundanoon has raised the bar of ecological wisdom by voting to ban bottled water. Why? A tremendous amount of resources goes into bottled water; there’s the extraction, the packaging and then the transport. In many cases there’s the litter afterwards too.
In many countries the health quality standards of tap water are stricter than bottled water ones. For example, in the UK the quality of water form the tap is held to a higher standard than from the bottle. The reason is simple; problems with the mains supply are a horror to fix, effect thousands of people and are best detected and prevented early. Bottled water is easier to deal with.
Bundanoon is a small town with less than 2,500 in population but perhaps this is the starting moving in a more popular trend.
A family in Hartlepool rushed to St Paul’s Church after their 13 year old son was found huddled outside their locked front door.
Daniel Wilkins claims that he was alone in the house, listening to music when he was pulled upright, dragged across the living room before being thrown out onto the street.
The teenage said the ordeal lasted for five minutes during which time the entity – which wasn’t seen but who’s heavy breathing made it sound male – first tried to get the boy into the kitchen.
Beverley Wilkins found her son outside the locked front door after returning from collecting her 5 year old son from school. They tried to re-enter the house but where chased out by constant banging and knocking.
Authorities investigating the case of a child’s body being found by two fishermen in the Passaic River at Clifton, new Jersey, have suggested a religious ritual may be to blame but have not explained why.
The body has been identified as Imani Joyner due to a bracelet on her wrist. Imani died of pneumonia in 2007. She was buried in Stamford in April 2007.
Imani was born with semilobar holoprosencephaly. The condition prevented her brain from developing fully and doctors predicted she would survive only a few days. She survived years and became known as the “miracle baby”.
A recent Indian court ruling which legalises gay sex has been challenged by Swami Baba Ramdev. The TV star and popular yoga expert claims that the Delhi courts have made a mistake in decriminalising – what he describes as – “unnatural sex acts”.
Writing to the Indian Supreme Court, Ramdev said, “It can be treated like any other congenital defect. Such tendencies can be treated by yoga, pranayama (breathing exercises) and other meditation techniques,”
Soay sheep have lived on the island of Hirta on the western coast of Scotland for a millennium. As a breed of cheep they’re smaller than the average sheep however research from the Imperial College in London suggests they’re getting smaller.
Very often natural selection favours larger sheep. The odds of the survival go up as the body size increases as the extra reserves of fat allow the sheep to survive through the winter.
In Hirta, however, climate change has been making winters shorter and milder. This is allowing generation after generation of sheep to spend more time grazing and less time dependant on the fat reserves.
In the past only the larger lambs would survive; having reached the size necessary to survive the winter. These days even the smaller lambs will survive the winter.
