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STRANGE IRISH CURSES

June 25th 2009 19:49
grave
May your obituary be written in weasel's piss.

May the lamb of God stir his hoof through the roof of heaven and kick you in the arse down to hell.

May the devil swallow him sideways.

May the snails devour his corpse And the rains do harm worse May the devil sweep the hairy creature soon!

May your hens take the disorder(the fowl-pest), your cows the crippen(phosphorosis) and your calves the white scour! May yourself go stone-blind so that you will not know your wife from a hay-stack!

May the seven terriers of hell sit on the spool of your breast and bark in at your soul-case

The treatment of the boiled broken little fish to you

The roasting of the salmon to the very end on you

May you be broken over the masons cliff

Six horse-loads of graveyard clay on top of you

May the entrails and mansion of pleasure of this worm fall out

May the devil cut the head off you and make a days work of your neck

No butter be on your milk nor on your ducks a web. May your child not walk and your cow be flayed. And may the flame be bigger and wider which will go through your soul than the Connemara mountains if they were on fire

The curse of the crows on you

May you be afflicted with the itch and have no nails to scratch with!

I bind you by grave injunctions of magic from the river, back to the river, may you fall in a nettle patch and may savage dogs eat your one good foot on a mountain.

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Yesterday while setting up the lesson on lamingtons, I began thinking back to my younger days and the tune of "Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars."

I couldn't remember what is what for exactly as I was pretty young at the time, but thanks to the wondrous combination of the Internet and YouTube, I was able to refresh my memory. It was the jingle used to sell GM Holdens during the 70's (showing my age now aren't I!), and it's stuck with me ever since.

[ Click here to read more ]
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wedding figurines cake
When in 1775 Mrs Martin van Butchell of London died, her husband subsequently chose to have her embalmed, along with glass eyes and dressed in her wedding gown, and put on display in a glass case at his home.

Your first thoughts may be "Ahhh, such a devoted husband, unable to part with his loving wife...", but the behind the truth lies the ulterior motive. Mrs van Butchell was a woman of considerable wealth, and in the event of her being 'dead and buried', it was to have been bequeathed to a distant relative!

[ Click here to read more ]
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Once bitten, twice shy they say when it comes to certain affairs of the heart, but in this case one bite it seems was plenty!

In Britain during 1837, one Mr Thomas Saverland took one Miss Caroline Newton to court.

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Top Hats! A Menace To Society!!!

July 9th 2008 10:30
top hat
James Heatherington, the inventor of the top hat, introduced his design to the world in London during 1797.

Upon leaving the shop wearing his unusual headwear he was surrounded by a crowd of onlookers where some pushing and shoving ensued, resulting in women fainting and a young boy having his arm broken.

[ Click here to read more ]
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IT FELL From The SKY! MEAT!!!

July 3rd 2008 10:15
meat
All sorts of strange and bizarre items have fallen from the sky in the past, but how would you feel if a lump of fresh meat landed in your lap?

In 1851 soldiers at a base out near San Francisco were practising drills when they were hit by blood and pieces of meat, from a cloudless sky.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Levi's are NOT Really Jeans!

February 13th 2008 10:15
denim jeans
When Levi Strauss invented jeans during the late 1800's, he did not call his 'strange' pants denim jeans or even jeans at all.

Supposedly these strange trousers were originally made out of sailcloth and canvas for miners and prospectors to wear as they had been complaining about how their ordinary pants would stretch and split while on the job.

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I'LL BET YOU 50 WORDS To Be PRECISE!

January 10th 2008 21:08
book
The founder of Random House book publishing, Bennett Cerf once made a bet after 30 years in the company with a gentlemen by the name of Theodor Geisel, known better by his Nom-de-plume of Dr Seuss.

Cerf bet Geisel that he couldn't write a book with exactly 50 words in it.

[ Click here to read more ]
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A White Christmas For England???

December 13th 2007 00:05
snowflake
There is really only one present my 8 year old daughter wants for Christmas this year having now relocated to the UK.

In short, after a number of smelly, sweaty, stinky Christmases in the Great Land Downunder, she wants to experience a 'White Christmas' ie. snow on Christmas day.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
In 1939, the management of the Chicago based Montgomery Ward department store decided to ask one of their employees, Robert L. May, to compose a story book for the children visiting their store that Christmas.

Drawing on his own experiences as a child and drawing on the line of thought from Hans Christian Anderson's "The Ugly Duckling", Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer was composed, published and handed out to a total of 2.4 million children.

[ Click here to read more ]
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A REAL Eye For Detail!

August 7th 2007 00:23
In the 1800's, a convicted forger by the name of A. Schiller was serving time in Sing-Sing prison.

After 25 years, the guards eventually found him dead in his cell. On his body they found seven regular straight pins whose heads measured the typical 47/1000ths of an inch or 1.17 millimetres in diameter.

[ Click here to read more ]
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Paraskevidekatriaphobia - try saying that 3 times fast!

Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the name for the phobia or fear of Friday the 13th.

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Guide To Hiring Women During 1943

June 19th 2007 00:30
The following originated from a 1943 magazine written for the male supervisors of women going into the workforce during World War II.

Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees:

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Notable Superstitions

June 14th 2007 00:25
black cat
Superstition - it's everywhere, but if you're the superstitious sort then you're certainly not alone. There have been some very notable figures of times past and present who are affected by their superstions.

One example is Queen Elizabeth II who upon being presented with a gift of cutlery gave a half-penny in return as to accept knives without some form of payment risks cutting the 'ties of friendship'.

[ Click here to read more ]
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