Wisconsin Groundhog Bites Mayor

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Wisconsin groundhog bites mayor in brutal, but ultimately futile, protest of ridiculous tradition.
Wisconsin groundhog bites mayor

Jimmy the Groundhog doesn’t care about your frivolous attempts to divine weather patterns with his shadow. Yesterday, during Sun Prairie, Wisconsin‘s Groundhog Day celebrations, after being dragged from his hole, Jimmy did what any self-respecting Wisconsinite would do – he tried to eat the mayor.

Jonathan Freund narrowly escaped Jimmy’s gaping maw with his ear intact.

Wisconsin groundhog bites mayor on live TV

We can only hope that, since Jimmy now has a taste for blood, next year’s festivities will be even more exciting.

Watch: Groundhog Bites Wisconsin Mayor Video

London Cotton to Gold Exhibit Displays Cursed Peruvian Mummy

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An 800-year-old haunted Peruvian mummy is currently on display in London for the Cotton to Gold exhibit, which showcases the extraordinary treasures of 19th century Lancashire cotton magnates.
Mummy of a 12th century Incan nobelman on display at the Cotton to Gold exhibition in London
Mummy of an Incan Nobleman from Chaplanca, Peru, 12th Century

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cotton was booming in Lancashire. Industrialists and entrepreneurs were pouring their fortunes into priceless relics, art and oddities that ended up in the collections of local museums.

Many of these items can currently be seen on display as part of the Winter Exhibition at Two Temple Place in London called Cotton to Gold. The exhibit includes rare Roman coins, priceless medieval manuscripts, JMW Turner watercolours, Tiffany glass, Japanese prints, Byzantine icons, ivory sculptures, stuffed birds, preserved beetles and…a Peruvian mummy.

An electrical engineer by the name of William T Taylor unearthed the mummy, a 12th century Peruvian nobleman, during his travels in 1913. In his llama fur-bound diary, Taylor details the perilous journey into the dark, bat-and-bone-filled cave in the Andes to extract the mummy, crate it and send it to Towneley Hall.

It is there that the supposedly haunted remains still normally reside, tucked away in a cardboard box. It is rumored that there is bloodshed every time the mummy is moved.

Due to budget cuts, many of these extraordinary items are rarely ever seen anymore. Curators of Cotton to Gold hope to renew interest in them, and save the languishing institutions that house them. Find more info at www.twotempleplace.org

via The Guardian

50th Anniversary of the Warminster Thing: What Really Happened That Day

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Warminster UFO sighting inspired the 1951 film The Thing
The Thing: Movie Poster

It has been 50 years since the onset of the mysterious phenomena that concerned the English town of Warminster. In its memoriam, here’s what happened, once again.

It all started when an anonymous housewife reported hearing mysterious noises on the Christmas morning of 1964. She said it was a crackling noise that kept getting louder, like branches being pulled over gravel. The sound allegedly came from above her, probably the sky. The Warminster Journal reported the whole account in January.

This, in turn, was followed by a host of UFO activity.People began seeing things. In the sky. Cigar-shaped aircrafts and stuff. In fact, there was a whole Town Hall Council meeting dedicated to the subject, where local scientist David Holton was to prepare a report on it to read to the crowd. Allegedly, he flipped at the last moment and refused to read his paper, saying that he didn’t want to make a joke of the matter in front of the press.

More and more people came forward, and it seemed that the Christmas day noise had “killed pigeons in flight, peppered dormice with holes and stuns animals, partridges and pheasants. Some people say they have been knocked down by the force”.

The Vicar of Heytesbury himself bore witness to this strange phenomenon, after he saw a cigar-shaped UFO lighting the sky.

Gordon Faulkner, a local, managed to photograph the bizarre “Thing” that plagued Warminster. The photo showed up in the Daily Mirror:

The Thing Warminster UFO photo

“Within weeks, thousands of people began to converge on the town to see this strange phenomenon for themselves.”

It is said that weird happenings surrounding the Warminster Thing continued until the 1970s, one of the longest continuing UFO phenomena to have ever occurred.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Warminster Thing, and as we stand today, it still remains one of the greatest unresolved mysteries of history.

via Open Minds