M.J. Rose

There’s something about second hand finds that are exhilarating – but what if those bargain treasures were available to you as a direct result of someone else’s misfortune? Lost airline baggage, for example, which then becomes  eternally unclaimed luggage on a carousel far, far away. If you’ve ever had the displeasure of such a baggage tragedy, you will know that it is pretty much the most irritating thing a traveler can experience other than the stomach flu.

It may seem like a destination on the way to the Twilight Zone, but the Unclaimed Baggage Center is very, very real and it resides in the deep South –

“A bride-to-be slides out of the passenger side of her mama’s car, right next to the businessman who needs gear for his hike on the Appalachian Trail. Across the parking lot, a burst of laughter erupts from a mini-van of women stretching their legs and hedging their bets on the best bargain of the day.

It’s another day at Unclaimed Baggage Center…”

Find out more about this mysterious place, here.

Cranial deformation techniques in infancy do not expand cranial volume – and these mysterious skulls are much larger than typically human. That is just one of the bizarre anomalies present in these ancient skulls from Peru. New DNA analysis suggests that whomever these ancient peoples were, they were possibly not completely human…

Initial DNA analysis of Paracas elongated skull released – with incredible results

“Paracas is a desert peninsula located within the Pisco Province in the Inca Region, on the south coast of Peru. It is here were Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, made an amazing discovery in 1928 – a massive and elaborate graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. These have come to be known as the ‘Paracas skulls’. In total, Tello found more than 300 of these elongated skulls, which are believed to date back around 3,000 years. A DNA analysis has now been conducted on one of the skulls and expert Brien Foerster has released preliminary information regarding these enigmatic skulls…”

See more here, and a video below.

Somehow we missed this last year…

Forgotten fairy tales? Yes please!

The Forgotten Tales of the Brothers Grimm

(The Public Domain Review 2012)

“To mark the 200th year since the Brothers Grimm first published their Kinder-und Hausmärchen, Jack Zipes explores the importance of this neglected first edition and what it tells us about the motives and passions of the two folklorist brothers…

The greatest irony of the numerous world-wide celebrations held this year to honor the 200th anniversary of the first edition of the Grimms’ Kinder-und Hausmärchen, published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815, involves the discovery that most people really don’t know the original Grimms’ tales or much about their lives. That is, most people have no clue that the Grimms’ first edition of 1812/15 is totally unlike the final or so-called definitive edition of 1857, that they published seven different editions from 1812 to 1857, and that they made vast changes in the contents and style of their collections and also altered their concept of folk and fairy tales in the process. Even so-called scholars of German literature and experts of the Grimms’ tales are not aware of how little most people, including themselves, know about the first edition, and ironically it is their and our “ignorance” that makes the rediscovery of the tales in the first edition so exciting and exhilarating…”

See the rest here.