For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?"
Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.
What’s the weirdest thing you saw on your commute? I once sat next to a man who pulled a baked potato out of a briefcase and ate it like a apple
Now thinking about how fucked up it was how excited I got when I managed to get myself a seat on the luggage rack and then sitting there like a fucking bag
Just remembered there was a guy with no trousers going down the train inspecting everyone’s tickets. Me and my friend showed him ours rather than risk trouserless confrontation.
I regret to inform you that chainsaws were originally invented for childbirth
(close your legs and prepare ye for a thread, sources here: bit.ly/3jMoOdl)
When you see a chainsaw hacking down a tree, the thought probably furthest from your mind is "I bet that would work well on my junk".
Well, get ready to think that forevermore, because it turns out that chainsaws were first designed for hacking away at genitals, before being applied to oak.
Medical history is full of unsung heroes who put in that little bit extra effort for science and humanity, with different degrees of success.
Take for example 19th-century American doctor Stubbins Ffirth, who believed that yellow fever wasn't an infectious disease, and set out to prove it in the most disgusting manner imaginable.
Between the years of 1993 and 2009, police in Heilbronn, Germany were tracking just about the most elusive serial killer since Ted Cruz.
Known as the Phantom of Heilbronn, or occasionally The Woman Without A Face, she was implicated in so many crimes that the police eventually put out a reward of €300,000 for any information leading to her arrest.
Good news! My (cheap!) paperback is out soon and Britain has been a bellend so many times since the hardback came out that I get to write an extra story it.
I would like you to help me choose the topic (see tweet below) amzn.to/39nUW3f
a) English men used to sell their wives instead of getting a divorce
b) We recommended breathing in toilet smells to ward off the plague
c) We solved the problem of homeless children by shipping them overseas to become labourers
So far you all seem to be giant fans of deporting homeless children. Very on brand, England.
While we're talking about £500 incentives, I thought it would be fun to look back at one that backfired spectacularly and likely led to an outbreak of bubonic plague.
In Hanoi, Vietnam, rats were a huge problem around the turn of the 20th century.
The doctor, for reasons he didn't take time to note down, believed that the soul had physical mass and thus it should be possible to weigh it.
He had the imagination to believe that a piece of soul magically departs your body when you die, possibly to live in a heaven-like place for eternity, but thought it unrealistic that this couldn't be weighed like a bag of flour.
You've probably heard the urban legend about what happens if you sneeze with your eyes open.
Well, you'll be pleased to have it confirmed that your eyeballs do not pop out of your sockets like champagne corks.
The air spaces in the nose and throat aren't connected to anything behind the eye, meaning that there's no way a sneeze can create pressure that would force your eyes to shoot out and dangle around like a game of swingball.
For a limited time only you can have my book taking the piss out of the worst bits of the Sun for half price.
If you like my tweets and would like to help me out, getting this will help SO much. Thank you all! amazon.co.uk/Sunburn-unoffi…
Due to the sale it now costs the same as about two fancy coffees you used to have when we were allowed to go outside linktr.ee/SunburnJamesFe…
And (just because people keep asking me this) when it’s reduced like this I still make normal royalties, so it’s great for me and cheap for the reader (but bad for Amazon)
When Big Ben bonged for Brexit, Mark Francois came so loud he startled the pigeon that lives atop his hobbit hole. He was never heard from again.
When the German car manufacturers failed to show, Davis cracked. After years spent walking Europe attempting to negotiate with individual member states, he went missing. There are rumours if you believe enough in Brexit he emerges from the hills of Austria like a yeti.
Untethered by the human rights act, Priti Patel’s reign of terror was only ended when she accidentally ate Italian food and was forced to deport herself.
You may not have heard of l'Inconnue de la Seine but there's a good chance you've kissed her on the mouth, in a manner of speaking.
In the late 1880s, a body was discovered drowned in the Seine in Paris. Nobody really knows what happened to her, though it's speculated that it was by suicide. More importantly, nobody knew who she was either.
Quick thread on why the third best Christmas film (Gremlins) is so goddamn good
I didn't watch Gremlins until last year when Empire (go buy Empire, it is great) made me watch it. Despite years of outraged insistence that I should see it, I refused to add another Christmas film to my already massive list. Especially not Gremlins.
Why?
A Muppet Christmas Carol is the perfect Christmas film. It's even the definitive version of a Christmas Carol and Charles Dickens was an idiot to think he could novelise it.
What a profound thought there Melville, first thing tomorrow I’m off to spit in a pensioner’s mouth safe in the knowledge that everything is fine again
He’s only gone and bloody solved Covid. Probably why he didn’t asked for retweets on this one, knew it was a banger as is.
Oh good the James Melville defending virus nonces have found this tweet
Nowadays if you want to complain it's as easy as tagging Coca Cola and calling them a cunt. You move on with your day safe in the knowledge that you made some poor social media manager out there a bit sad.
Before this you'd have to fax them, and call them "ye olde cunt", as was the custom of the 1980s. Way back in 1750 BC, however, you'd have to really be pissed in order to complain, because it involved taking a chisel and twatting it into a stone.
Whilst Winston Churchill is trending, a short thread from my first book about how he helped cause a famine that killed more than 3 million people: amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07…
If in the Avengers Thor flew down, killed Thanos and saved the universe, then turned around and started twatting orphans with his hammer there would many articles written about how "ok bravo on killing Thanos but I think we need to talk about how Thor is a bit of a mixed bag".
Well, Churchill, one of Britain's greatest heroes, who stood up to Hitler (with the help of many allies) and won, also caused the death of 3 million people in India, and we should probably acknowledge that a bit.
Imagine being a scientist, studying for years, working for more, discovering a vaccine for a new disease, rigorously testing it and producing all the data, getting it through peer review and then being told the public won’t trust it until they hear the phrase “Biggins is in”
Look I’m happy that you got to play with your little test tubes and “trial phases” but I’m afraid I just have too many concern- what’s that you say? The man who played the second ugly sister every year in the Dartford Christmas panto since 2003 is taking it? PUMP IT INTO MY BLOOD
I’m aware this is a good way to reach people who might distrust the vaccine. Once again I must beg you to stop trying to fact check a joke.
In 1990, a plane really did land whilst the pilot was hanging out of the window by his ankles.
(THREAD. For non sweary version and sources see here: bit.ly/36IK7X1)
As the viral tweets explains, in 1990 most of a pilot got sucked out of the window, leaving just enough pilot inside the plane for others to hold onto (specifically the leg part).
Then, the other pilot was forced to attempt to land the plane while being quite distracted by all of the air and colleague being shot out of the window.
I’ll give this to The Sun, they know how to sell a newspaper. I see the title ‘WEREWOLF SEIZED IN SOUTHEND’ I’m coughing up 20p to find out what the fuck they’re talking about.
Either werewolves are real or somebody’s haired up a man, and I need to know which.
‘A CRAZED ‘werewolf’,’ the story started, already implying with quotation marks that this isn’t the confirmation of werewolves I / readers were hoping for, ‘with amazing strength was seized yesterday after fighting a four-hour battle with eight terrified police’.
3 added to My Authors
