Robyne's Corner - Did you Know

Dutch mystic Dr Bart Hughes declared in 1962 that having a hole drilled through through the cranium enabled people to reach a higher state of consciousness. The operation was known as trepanning. Dr Hughes was committed to a mental hospital but visited the UK in 1966 to spread his ideas. He was extradited from the country by the Home Office and banned as an undesirable alien.

In Burma, Padaung tribeswomen amour their necks in brass coils which weigh about nine kilograms, signaling elegance, wealth and position. Loops of a brass rod a centimeter in diameter are worked around a girl's neck at about five years of age by a medicine man. Additional loops are added periodically. After years of being straitjacketed in brass, the neck muscles atrophy. Constrained from drinking in the usual head-back position, a ring-wearer leans forward to sip through a straw. And the voices of wearers sound as if they were speaking up the shaft of a well.

The US Customs Service regularly confiscates planes used by drug dealers and sells them at auction for prices way below their market value. The biggest customers for these aviation bargains are drug smugglers.

In March 1962 Bill Gales died in Broadmoor Prison aged 87. He had been incarcerated there in 1886 at the age of 11. A Broadmoor spokesman said, "He got on well with everyone. He was never any trouble and knew the daily routine so well that he often corrected new nurses if they did not keep strictly to the timetable". He spent his first five years in the women's wards as a child and then was allowed to enter the men's wards to live with murderers and rapists. Bill's crime: he had set fire to a haystack.

Montpelier, Vermont plays host every year to the American Rotten Sneakers Contest.

Drinking a toast at a formal occasion derives from early Greece where the host at a gathering would sip his drink first to prove that it was not poisoned. The Romans adopted the custom adding toasted bread to their wine to reduce its acidity.

The International astronomical union recently named four asteroids in outer space John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Screaming Match A Polish woman out-screamed 300 rivals from four countries to defend her title as champion screamer. The screaming contest, which took place in the northern Polish town of Goldap, pitted about 300 contestants from Poland, the United States, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Organizers of the screamfest say the event is "the only such contest outside of Japan." Dagmara Stanek, from the Baltic resort of Sopot, won the women’s division for the second year in a row with a scream measuring 126.1 dB, about as loud as a jackhammer. The best male screamer, Pawel Dabrowski, also defended his title. But Dabrowski, with only a 125.3 dB scream, could not out-scream the female winner.

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