MFS - Strange But True - Places 17

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - places 17

The Uffington White Horse.

The Uffington White Horse is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 374 feet (110 m) long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. The figure is situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington (in the county of Oxfordshire, historically Berkshire), some five miles south of the town of Faringdon and a similar distance west of the town of Wantage. The hill forms a part of the scarp of the Berkshire Downs and overlooks the Vale of White Horse to the north. Best views of the Horse are obtained from the air, or from directly across the Vale, particularly around the villages of Great Coxwell, Longcot and Fernham. The site is owned and managed by the National Trust.Read more about it on MFS.

MFS - Strange But True - Places 17

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Places 17

The Cerne Abbas giant.

The Cerne Abbas giant, also referred to as the Rude Man or the Rude Giant, is a hill figure of a giant naked man on a hillside near the village of Cerne Abbas, to the north of Dorchester, in Dorset, England. The 180 ft (55 m) high, 167 ft (51 m) wide figure is carved into the side of a steep hill, and is best viewed from the opposite side of the valley or from the air. The carving is formed by a trench 12 in (30 cm) wide, and about the same depth, which has been cut through grass and earth into the underlying chalk. In his right hand the giant holds a knobbled club 120 ft (37 m) in length.Read more about it on MFS,with 1 videoclip.

MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / Animals 15

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / Animals 15

The Aye-aye.

The Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth with a long, thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its elongated middle finger to pull the grubs out. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the Striped Possum. From an ecological point of view the Aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within.Read more about this animal on MFS,with 2 videoclips.

MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20

The Tarring and Feathering.

Tarring and feathering was a physical punishment, used to enforce formal justice in feudal Europe and informal justice in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as the early American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance (compare Lynch law).
In a typical tar-and-feathers attack, the subject of a crowd's anger would be stripped to his waist. Hot tar was either poured or painted onto the person while he was immobilized. Then the victim either had feathers thrown on him or was rolled around on a pile of feathers so that they stuck to the tar. Often the victim was then paraded around town on a cart or a rail. The aim was to hurt and humiliate a person enough to leave town and not cause any more mischief.Read more about this strange practice on MFS,with 1 videoclip.

MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / Animals 15

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / Animals 15

The Tibetan Sand Fox.
The Tibetan Sand Fox (Vulpes ferrilata) is a species of true fox endemic to the high Tibetan Plateau in Nepal, China, and India, up to altitudes of about 5300 m. It is sometimes referred to as the Tibetan Fox, or simply as the Sand Fox, but this terminology is confusing because the Corsac Fox (Vulpes corsac), which lives in arid environments north and west of the Tibetan Plateau, is often called the "Sand Fox" or "Tibetan Fox" as well. Rüppell's Fox (Vulpes rueppellii) is also known as the "Sand Fox".Read more about this beautiful animal on MFS,with 1 videoclip how the animal chases his prey.

MFS - Strange But True - People 15

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - People 15
The Cagot People.
The Cagots were a persecuted and despised minority found in the west of France and northern Spain: the Navarrese Pyrenees, Basque provinces, Béarn, Gascony, and Brittany. Their name has differed by province and the local dialect: Cagots, Gahets, and Gafets in Gascony; Agotes, Agotac, and Gafos in Basque country; Capots in Anjou and Languedoc; and Cacons, Cahets, Caqueux, and Caquins in Brittany. Evidence of the group exists back as far as AD 1000.
Cagots were shunned and hated. They were required to live in separate quarters in towns, called cagoteries, which were often on the far outskirts of the villages. Cagots were excluded from all political and social rights. They were only allowed to enter a church by a special door, and during the service a rail separated them from the other worshipers. Either they were altogether forbidden to partake of the sacrament, or the Eucharist was handed to them on the end of a stick, while a receptacle for holy water was reserved for their exclusive use. They were compelled to wear a distinctive dress, to which, in some places, was attached the foot of a goose or duck (whence they were sometimes called Canards). So pestilential was their touch considered that it was a crime for them to walk the common road barefooted or to drink from the same communion cup as non-Cagots. The Cagots were restricted to the trades of carpenter, butcher, and rope-maker.Read more about these people on MFS.

MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20.
To the Struggle Against World Terrorism.
To the Struggle Against World Terrorism (also known as the Tear of Grief and the Tear Drop Memorial) is a 10-story-high sculpture by Zurab Tsereteli that was given to the United States as an official gift of the Russian government as a memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It stands on The Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor in New Jersey and was dedicated on September 11, 2006 in a ceremony attended by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.Read more about this memorial on MFS,with 2 videoclips.

MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Things / Other 20.
The Radium Girls.
The Radium Girls were a group of female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them; some also painted their fingernails with the glowing substance.
Five of the women challenged their employer in a court case that established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers.Read more about them on MFS,with link to Spike : 1000 ways to die.

MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / animals 15

Updated on MFS - Strange But True - Creatures / animals 15.
The Geoduck.
The geoduck (pronounced /ˈɡuː.iːdʌk/ "gooey duck"), Panopea generosa, is a species of very large saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Hiatellidae.
The shell of this clam is large and contains small wings, about 15 centimetres (5.9 in) to over 20 centimetres (7.9 in) in length, but the extremely long siphons make the clam itself very much longer than this: the "neck" or siphons alone can be 1 metre (3.3 ft) in length.
Etymology
The unusual name of the clam is derived from a Lushootseed (Nisqually) word gʷídəq meaning "dig deep", and its phonemically counterintuitive spelling is likely the result of poor transcription rather than anything having to do with ducks. Alternate spellings include gweduc, gweduck, goeduck, and goiduck. It is sometimes known as the mud duck, king clam, or when translated literally from the Chinese characters 象拔蚌, the elephant trunk clam or "penis clam".
Between 1983 and 2010, the scientific name of this clam was confused with an extinct clam, Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849), in the scientific literature.Read more about it on MFS,with 3 videoclips.