The HOLODOMOR aka The 1933 Ukrainian Famine Genocide

In the early 1930’s, the Soviet Union created a policy in an attempt to increase the food supply. Stalin was convinced an agricultural collectivization that forces farmers to give up their private land, equipment and livestock, and join state owned, factory-like collective farms would not only feed the industrial workers in the cities but could also provide a substantial amount of grain to be sold abroad, with the money used to finance his industrialization plans. The policy turned out to be devastating as it helped spawn one of the biggest famines in history.

The most affected areas included Ukraine, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, the South Urals, and West Siberia. The famine was extremely bad in Ukraine, and became known as the Holodomor, which many historians felt was an actual genocide, carried out by Joseph Stalin and comparable to the Holocaust.

Holodomor - Death by starvation

The Holodomor (translated: death by starvation) refers to the famine of 1932–1933 in the Ukrainian SSR during which millions of people starved to death as a result of the economic and trade policies instituted by the government of Joseph Stalin. The famine was a part of wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933. There were no natural causes for starvation and in fact, Ukraine - unlike other Soviet Republics - enjoyed a bumper wheat crop in 1932. The Holodomor is considered one of the greatest calamities to affect the Ukrainian nation in modern history. Millions of inhabitants of Ukraine died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. Estimates on the total number of casualties within Soviet Ukraine range mostly from 2.6 million to 10 million.
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The GRAUBALLE Man

The Grauballe man is one of the best preserved bog bodies in the world. He was found on April 26, 1952, in a bog near the village of Grauballe in Jutland, Denmark, by a person digging for peat. Carbon dating has determined him to be from around 290 BC. Grauballe Man is currently on display at the Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, Denmark.

The Grauballe Man is very well preserved with nails and hair in evidence. His fingers were even in good enough condition to allow his fingerprints to be taken. While his hair and beard is well preserved, it has been discoloured by time, as is his skin. No clothing or jewellery was found on or near the body.

The CHINCHORRO Mummies of South America

Chinchorro Mummy 

The Chinchorro mummies are mummified remains of individuals from the South American Chinchorro culture found in what is now northern Chile and southern Peru. The Chinchorro mummies (named in the 1960s for a beach in Arica where similar mummies had been found), are the oldest examples of mummified human remains, dating to thousands of years before the Egyptian mummies. They are believed to have first appeared around 5000 B.C. and reaching a peak around 3000 B.C. Often Chinchorro mummies were elaborately prepared by removing the internal organs and replacing them with vegetable fibers or animal hair. In some cases an embalmer would remove the skin and flesh from the dead body and replace them with clay. Shell midden and bone chemistry suggest that 90% of their diet was seafood. Many ancient cultures of fisherfolk existed, tucked away in the arid river valleys of the Andes, but the Chinchorro made themselves unique by their dedicated preservation of the dead.
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The Chinchorro mummies are significant because during the periods of these mummies, everyone who died was mummified, including children, newborns and fetuses. This shows that it was not reserved for those of high rank or high status - mummification was not a sign of social stratification.
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OGOPOGO - Canada's Lake MONSTER

The origins of the monster

Ogopogo 2 Lake Okanagan Ogopogo Monster.
Photo by Dan Basaraba

Indian legend has it that the large lake creature, Ogopogo, was originally a demon possessed man who had murdered a well known and respected local man named "Old Kan-He-Kan." In memory of this man, his people named Our beautiful lake "Okanagan." To pay for his sins, the Indian gods changed the murderer into a lake serpent so he would forever be at the scene of his crime and suffer eternal remorse. The creature's name became "N'ha-A-Itk" which roughly translates into sacred creature of the water, water god or lake demon.

His mind was full of dark thoughts and the demons spoke to him. His wild eyes and words frightened his people, and he became an outcast, shunned by all. One day in a fury of rage and pain, he attacked old Kan-He-Kan, a local wise man. The demon-possessed man killed the venerable sage on the shores of a beautiful lake near his home, and then ran away, afraid of what the people would do to him when they found out.

Daniel Tammet - The Man with the INCREDIBLE BRAIN

Daniel Tammet

British high-functioning autistic savant, Daniel Paul Tammet is gifted with a facility for mathematical calculations, sequence memory, and natural language learning. He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy and has been "studied repeatedly" by researchers in Britain and the United States. He was the subject of several peer-reviewed scientific papers. Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University has said of Tammet: "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can describe what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the 'Rosetta Stone'."

His 2006 memoir, Born on a Blue Day, about his life with high-functioning autism and savant syndrome, was named a "Best Book for Young Adults" in 2008 by the American Library Association. Tammet's second book, Embracing the Wide Sky, was one of France's best selling books of 2009. Thinking in Numbers, Tammet's third book, was published by Hodder in the UK on 16 August 2012, and by Little, Brown in the United States and Canada on 30 July 2013. His books have been published in 20 languages. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2012.