The oldest natural mummy had tattoos!
The most interesting characteristic about this mummy was the tattoos on its mummified skin. Each of these tattoos was made of carbon. The mummy has short vertical lines along his spine and also a cruciform behind his knee. He also has several marks on his ankles. Underneath the tattoos was obvious bone degeneration and osteoporosis.
This led some experts to theorize that the tattoos were some ancient pain treatment similar to the modern concept of acupuncture. Apparently, the poor guy didn’t just have pain from the issues in his bones.
He also had a parasite known as whipworm in his intestines. By examining his fingernails, scientists also found out that he had been sick three times in six months before he died.
Some numbers are actually illegal.
Oftentimes certain binary numbers are banned to be said, shared or used in any way. The combination of those binary numbers that are banned can form a “pure number,” which is just the number it would be if it were a numerical number.
These numbers are often banned or made illegal by governments because they are codes that represent something classified or used by businesses as encryption codes. For example, the code to decrypt a DVD or Blue-ray is an illegal number. A man named George Hotz got into trouble when he published the key (read: numbers) used to unlock the Playstation 3.
Many groups are in opposition to these bans, seeing them as a limitation of their freedom of speech. They point to examples of illegal binary numbers that actually just form bands of color, that could be banned unnecessarily. They display these sort of banners as a sort of flag for their cause. The greatest fear is of short numbers becoming banned and limiting freedom.
Sweepstakes winners in Canada have to answer a math question to claim their prize!
Abdul-Baki, winner of an Xbox-360 and Ontario resident, was therefore not surprised to find that he had a math problem to figure out before he could claim his prize. The 17-year-old had to figure out what the answer to: multiply 90 by 2, divide by 6 and multiply by 12. The answer to his question was, of course, 360 just like and Xbox-360.
Even though Abdul-Baki was very capable of solving the problem with ease, he still checked his answer with some friends to make sure he didn’t make any mistake and lose his prize. The reason this test is always included is because of Canadian law regarding promotions and sweepstakes.
It is illegal in Canada to sell “chances” to win a prize. For this reason, businesses will require the winner to answer a math question, because then it is not merely a sweepstake of chance, but a competition of some skill.
U.S. soldiers made people say “flash, thunder, welcome” to weed out German spies.
Using shibboleths, you can determine to a reasonable degree of accuracy whether a person is or is not from a certain area based on word sounds. Shibboleths are sometimes used in military operations to distinguish out spies and people from different areas that might be enemy territory. Throughout history, language has been used to sort people out into their regions for political purposes.
Each test used a phrase or series of phrases to listen for a difference in pronunciation. Say something wrong, and you might be in big trouble! The U.S. soldiers used shibboleths in the Second World War. In particular, during the Battle of Normandy, they used the phrase “flash, thunder, welcome” to make sure a person was a native English speaker.
A German speaker would pronounce welcome as “velcome”, therefore giving up the fact that he was the enemy. The British sometimes used the word “squirrel” to pick out Germans.
Residents in a Peruvian village have a day to beat each other up!
Ironically, they take the opportunity to take a whack at each other on Christmas morning. The festival of fighting is called Takanakuy. Everyone fights one another, from the youngest kids to the oldest of the elderly. Some people just fight because they’re drunk or for the sake of the festival. Other people have real disagreements to sort out.
In general, people who fight out disagreements in the festival tend to accept the final result. Whoever wins the fight, has won the fight they had in the previous year. Only on a rare occasion does someone appeal the results of the fight. The festival of fighting is a good way to solve problems, since they are so isolated and getting to a real judicial court would be very difficult.
There are some precautions put in place to keep it from getting deadly. For example, there are referees with whips to keep fights from getting to one-sided as well as a crowd to rush in and prevent someone on the ground from getting beaten up. It’s still pretty brutal though.
