r/HistoryUncovered

George and Willie Muse performed in traveling sideshows all over the world, including the famous Ringling Bros. They even performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden — yet the Muse brothers were only there because they had been taken from their parents and were being held against their will.

Because these brothers were born both Black and with a rare form of albinism in the Jim Crow South, they were subjected to particularly brutal exploitation. Billed as the "missing link" between apes and humans, they were forced to eat raw meat in front of white crowds who tugged on their hair in disbelief that it was real. And when they were billed as the “White Ecuadorian Cannibals Eko and Iko,” they were made to bite the heads off of snakes for the audience's amusement.

They soon became unprecedented stars capable of drawing in audiences as large as 10,000 while their white handlers raked in untold sums — yet they never saw a dime. And when the brothers finally escaped the circus in 1927, Ringling Bros. actually sued them for “depriving the circus of two valuable earners with legally binding contracts.” But the brothers fought the suit with the help of a small-town lawyer — and won. This is their story: https://allthatsinteresting.com/george-and-willie-muse

Thomas Paul Simanek is a convicted murderer who was arrested in August 1983 for killing his wife in Dallas, Texas, and subsequently attempting to hide her body in Wisconsin. [1, 2]

The Crime and Arrest

• The Murder: In August 1983, Simanek murdered his wife in Dallas, Texas, later claiming to acquaintances that he killed her after finding her in bed with another man. [1]
• The Cover-Up: Following the murder, Simanek wired the trunk of his car shut with his wife's body placed inside a plastic bag. He drove from Texas to his hometown of Racine, Wisconsin, where he confessed to an acquaintance and buried the body in a residential yard. [1]
• The Arrest: Local police discovered the body after receiving tips regarding Simanek's suspicious behaviour and long-distance phone calls, leading to his arrest by Wisconsin authorities before he was extradited to face a Texas grand jury. [1, 2]

Legal Outcome

• Conviction: In February 1984, he was officially convicted of the crime in the state of Texas.
• Charges: His case was processed under the category of Murder-Voluntary Manslaughter. [1]

Notable Connections

• Simanek was notably identified as the brother of Stephen A. Simanek, who served as a prominent Racine County Circuit Court Judge in Wisconsin. [1, 2]

The Kashmirian Saiva tradition in its non-dualistic form in particular is one of the richest philosophical traditions of India. It is among the few that have survived to our days.

The small East Anglian village of Woolpit was by no means exceptional, a prosperous little farming community. Then, sometime in the mid-12th century, something "strange and prodigious" supposedly happened.

One autumn day, villagers checking the wolf pits found two children unlike any they had ever seen. They looked perfectly ordinary except for one unmistakable detail: "the whole surface of their skin was tinged in a green colour."

The terrified boy and girl spoke an unknown language, wore unfamiliar clothing, and refused every food they were offered. They simply cried. Then they discovered fava beans growing in Sir Richard de Calne's garden and devoured them.

Sir Richard took the children into his household, patiently caring for them until they gradually accepted ordinary food. As they did, their green skin slowly faded. The boy, who had always been frail, soon died, but the girl survived, learned English, was baptized, and remained "very wanton and impudent."

Asked where they had come from, she claimed they were from St. Martin's Land, a country where the sun never truly shone, only perpetual twilight. In one version, the children had followed their father's cattle into a cave, heard the ringing of church bells, and suddenly found themselves in England.

This was written down as history by two near-contemporary chroniclers: William of Newburgh, writing in the 1180s from "trustworthy sources," and Ralph of Coggeshall, whose source was supposedly Sir Richard de Calne himself. While William admitted he was skeptical, neither man dismissed the event as fiction.

Many historians today suspect there is a real event buried beneath the legend. One theory is that the children were Flemish orphans. East Anglia had a large Flemish immigrant population, and after the Battle of Fornham in 1173, anti-Flemish violence may have left children wandering the countryside.

Speaking Flemish, dressed differently, and suffering from chlorosis, “green sickness," a form of anemia that can give the skin a pale greenish tint, they would have appeared incredibly strange to the villagers. Fed and cared for by Sir Richard, they recovered, while the story itself grew stranger with every retelling.

If you’re interested, there’s more about the story of the Green Children of Woolpit here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-108-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Source and more here: 55 Photos Of Alcatraz Prison, America’s Most Notorious Lockup

On October 16, 1869, two men digging a well on a farm in Cardiff, New York, unearthed what appeared to be an impossibly large human foot sitting just below the surface. As they kept digging, the men discovered what they could only call an ancient Biblical giant, just as described in the Book of Genesis. And by the time people had started to gather, the men had excavated this 10-foot-tall man "contorted as if in a death struggle."

Soon, the owner of the farm erected a tent around the figure and charged people 25 cents to see the petrified "fossil." But the Cardiff Giant proved so popular that the farmer upped the price to 50 cents within just two days. By November, more than 3,000 people had come from miles around to see it and local businessmen paid the farmer a staggering $30,000 for an ownership stake in the find. Archaeologists, geologists, and theologians all debated the true origins of the giant. Even P.T. Barnum wanted to get in on the action, offering to buy it outright for $50,000.

But the whole thing was a hoax — perpetrated by the farmer’s atheist cousin who wanted to prove how easily he could trick Biblical literalists into believing in a fake giant. Go inside the story of the Cardiff Giant, perhaps the greatest hoax in American history: https://allthatsinteresting.com/cardiff-giant

Researchers had long puzzled over how the vast Pacific island network of Polynesia was first populated. But in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl proposed the radical idea that the islands of the South Pacific had been populated by seafarers from all the way in South America. Heyerdahl noted similarities between the cultures of these two regions, including myths, legends, and even food like the sweet potato. But experts nevertheless disagreed with Heyerdahl, claiming that ancient peoples would not have had the technology to make such a long and arduous ocean voyage. So, Heyerdahl set out to prove them wrong — by sailing from Peru to French Polynesia himself in a homemade wooden raft.

Read more of the unbelievable true story of the adventurer who successfully traveled 4,300 miles across the Pacific on a craft made of logs and rope: https://allthatsinteresting.com/thor-heyerdahl

Full documentary: https://youtu.be/1Dt7NXpHkhU

The Black Mass at Salem Village.

The second and third image depict the field North/North East of the Paris parsonage where the Black Mass allegedly took place.

In the spring of 1692, as the Salem witch trials gathered momentum, several of the afflicted girls and a handful of confessed witches began telling the magistrates about a terrifying gathering they claimed had taken place in an open field beside the home of the Reverend Samuel Parris in Salem Village.

Among those who described parts of the gathering were Abigail Williams, Mary Warren, Abigail Hobbs, and other afflicted witnesses. Betty Parris, whose strange fits had first sparked the crisis only weeks earlier, was one of the original afflicted children and claimed to see spectral figures, but by the time the story of this gathering was told in detail, she had already been sent away from Salem Village. Her surviving testimony does not include a full account of the event.

According to the witnesses, after darkness fell, the quiet pasture adjoining the Parris parsonage became the meeting place of the Devil’s church.
They said figures emerged silently from the darkness. At first there were only a few. Then more arrived, coming from every direction across the moonlit fields of Salem Village. Some were strangers. Others were neighbors whose faces they recognized immediately.

There was Sarah Good, ragged and defiant.

There was Martha Corey.

Then, to the horror of the villagers who later heard the testimony, the witnesses claimed they saw Rebecca Nurse standing among the assembly. Few accusations shocked Salem more deeply. Rebecca was known throughout the village as a devout, elderly woman of unquestioned character, yet the afflicted insisted that her specter had joined the Devil’s company.
As the gathering grew, another figure stepped forward.

It was George Burroughs, the former minister of Salem Village.

According to the testimony, Burroughs presided over the meeting like a minister conducting a church service. One witness later claimed he sounded a trumpet, calling witches from every direction until the field was filled.

Before the assembled appeared a table.
Upon it lay red bread and a red drink.

The witnesses described it as a mock communion, a blasphemous imitation of the Lord’s Supper. Those gathered were invited to eat and drink as a sign of loyalty, not to Christ, but to the Devil.

Then a great black book was opened.
One by one, those present were called forward to place their names—or their marks—inside its pages. The afflicted girls claimed they too were urged to sign but resisted. Others later confessed that they had signed the Devil’s book and entered into his covenant.

According to the testimony, the purpose of the gathering was nothing less than the overthrow of God’s church in Salem Village. The Devil, they claimed, intended to establish his own church beside the home of the village minister.
As the ceremony ended, the company disappeared into the darkness, and the field became quiet once more.

Modern historians do not believe this gathering actually took place. Instead, they view the account as a story that developed over several months through frightened testimony, confessions given under intense pressure, and deeply held Puritan beliefs about witchcraft. Yet to the magistrates and many villagers in 1692, the alleged meeting beside the Parris parsonage became one of the most frightening and influential stories of the Salem witch trials.

Source and more here: 33 Unbelievable Photos Of Hearst Castle, The California Estate That's Like Something 'Out Of A Fairy Story'