Colleen Displaced

This is a new page that I've added, purely because I read a lot, and stumble across lots of silly or interesting facts and stories.  And I like sharing those stories!  So check back every now and then, you never know what you'll find - but it WILL be interesting!

The Greek Olympia had been held for centuries, before interest waned.  The ancient Olympics were a
festival for men, and men only.  Some of the games were vicious and players could and did die.

One of the ancient sports, pancration, was forbidden to boys since it was a no-rule, wrestling type match
in which the only thing men couldn't do was gouge out an eye, or bite. Anything else was perfectly
acceptable.

Enter pancration's Arrhachion.

In the 564 B.C. games, Arrhachion entered as a two-time winner. His opponent, unknown to history,
got the first grip and held the champ with his legs, squeezing him around the neck to strangulation. 
Not a pretty spectacle.

But hooray for our hero, as with his fading breath, Arrhachion managed to reach his opponent's foot
and dislocate a toe.  This caused his opponent to scream with pain and give up.  Sadly, poor Arrhachion
did not survive the match, he died from the strangulation.  But, good news, the judges still named
Arrhachion the winner because his opponent gave up.  It was only fair.

And they crowned the corpse.

In 1942 a friend of US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt proposed a scheme to bomb the enemy with bats carrying tiny bombs.

The idea was devised by a dentist named Lyle S Adams.  As strange as the plan seems, it gained traction in President Franklin Roosevelt's government, which devoted an extraordinary amount of resources to it.

The idea was that a special bomb casing would hold 1,000 bats, and each of those bats would carry a tiny bomb.  The big bomb would open and release the bats, and off they went flying all over the enemy city. The bats then gnawed off the string holding the tiny bombs and the bombs would drop all over the city starting thousands of fires.

In one test, the bats managed to incinerate the test site.   Not surprisingly, the project was scrubbed.

Many of us spend a lot of time generally faffing about online.  Even when we feel as though we should be doing something more constructive, well, pffft, sometimes we’re just not in the mood, right?  Thinking about that, and doing some of my own faffing about, I stumbled across the sites below.  So when you rreeeaally want nothing to do … these sites all seriously have no use or purpose other than to waste time - can’t say I didn’t warn you!

Umm, not much going on here, just click to spin the letters www.shtuff.com

Who doesn’t like popping bubble wrap?!  You can pop to your heart’s content online at  http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml

Discover different useless websites at  www.theuselessweb.com/

and lastly, ColleenDisplaced's favourite (sad but true) – see your stickman come to life while he goes on an adventure or two at www.drawastickman.com/

NOTE:  apologies but you'll need to copy and paste the addresses into your address bar, as usual for me with anything remotely techy, the links just wouldn't work!

Fumbling around on my laptop on a particularly cloudy Sunday morning I happened to find out much more about this famous fellow, and as I often do, I've decided to share.

Now I’m sure you've heard of Galileo - we all sing along with the Queen song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (Galileo! Galileo!) don’t we? -  but if like me that’s about all you really know then you might be interested to learn the remarkable story surrounding his most noted discovery.

My readings of the story show that in saying the Earth went around the Sun, Galileo had contradicted the church’s teachings and while some members of the church agreed that his observations were correct, the majority were convinced that he was wrong.

At that time, only church priests were permitted to interpret the Bible - it was the 1600s and unthinkable that a member of the public would say any different.  And so, at 68 years of age, and sickly, the unfortunate Galileo was accused of heresy. 

Threatened with torture, and in poor health, Galileo then ‘confessed’ that he was wrong to have said the Earth moves around the Sun:

 “ …  I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church … “.

― Galileo Galilei

After Galileo’s 'confession', legend tells us that he muttered "And yet, it moves".  If that is so, risking torture, we can only assume that he must have been either the most foolhardy man of his time, or one incredibly brave man!

Today, Galileo Galilei remains most recognised for saying that the Earth went around the Sun. 

Showing his sense of wonder at the universe, Galileo is famously quoted:

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”

An amazing man!