The Monster of Ravenna Posted: 30 Nov 2013 11:51 AM PST
A monster was said to have been born at Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of
A later account of this being was published in 1906:
A Famous Monster
An Old Time Wonder That Had an Eye In Its Knee
In the writings of both Licetus and Zahn may be found descriptions and illustrations of a monster born at Ravenna, Italy, in the year 1511 or 1512, the exact date being somewhat uncertain. This monster had a body and shoulders like those of a young woman. There was but one leg, gradually tapering from the hips down and terminating in an immense scaled claw, like that of a turkey buzzard. There were fourd toes, each tipped with a bony nail, three of them pointing to the left and one to the right. The creature had wings in place of arms and always held them in an erect position, as though ready to take flight at the slightest provocation. From the hips to the single knee the flesh was covered with large, well arranged feathers. From the knee joint to the foot the leg was scaled, like that of the common barnyard fowl, the spot where the feathers left off and the scales commenced being marked with a large lidless eye, which seemed to be altogether incapable of involuntary motion. The neck, head and general outlines of the face were those of woman, but the ears were large and set very low, almost on the neck.
The head was covered with a queer mixture of scales, feathers and hair, but the oddity of the whole upper story was a pointed horn, which rose just in the edge of the hair on the center of the forehead. This horn was three inches in length, and, according to Zahn, even a farmer would have mistaken it for the horn of a two-year old heifer had it been removed and shown to him.
The old time wonder mongers all give pictures and descriptions of this horned Italian monster, but none tells how long it lived or what was done with the body after death. - Indiana Weekly Messenger, Indiana, Pennsylvania - 7 March 1906
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In March 1512, a Florentine apothecary named Lucca Landucci was writing his diary. War had come to northern Italy. Maximillian of Germany and Louis XII of France were locked in combat with the Spanish, English and Pope Julius II for control of the Venetian Republic. Ravenna was ravaged and fell eighteen days after the monster's birth. 'It was evident,' wrote Landucci, 'what evil the monster had meant for them! It seems as if some great misfortune always befalls the city when such things are born.'
Landucci's account is of a drawing that was on public display in Florence, after the monster had been starved to death by order of Julius II. Printed woodcuts and engravings spread the news of the monster throughout Europe. The monster acquired a new, posthumous, existence. When it left Ravenna it had two legs; by the time it arrived in Paris it had only one. In some prints it had bat wings, in others they were more like a bird's; it had hermaphrodite genitalia. It became mixed up with the images of another monster born in Florence in 1506, and then fused with a medieval icon of sinful humanity called 'Frau Welt' - a kind of bat-winged, single-legged beast who grasped the globe in her talons.
As the monster travelled it continued to mutate. Italians took it as a warning of the horrors of war. Some said that it was the child of a respectable married woman; others that it was the product of a union between a nun and a friar. But it seems likely that it was simply a child who was born with a severe, rare, but quite unmysterious genetic disorder. One can even hazard a guess at Roberts's Syndrome, a deformity found in children who are born with an especially destructive mutation. That, at least, would account for the limb and genital anomalies, if not the two serpents on its waist and the supernumerary eye on its knee. - Histoires prodigieuses (édition de 1561)
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Described, among others, by Ambroise Paré, this being was meant to have been born in Italy in 1512, contemporaneous with the bloody Battle of Ravenna, in which King Louis XII and Pope Julius engaged in combat. It survived to grow into a hulking brute which, naturally enough, terrorized the countryside. It was considered an omen of God's anger with the Italian people and, as such, it various disjointed parts could be "read" metaphorically. The arms never developed, scholars claimed, because the Italians showed a conspicuous lack of good deeds. Because the Italians had no firm dedication to any cause, their fickle, flighty nature was reflected in the Monster's wings. The beast was a biological hermaphrodite, and its double set of genitals illustrated sexual immorality: lust, sodomy, bestiality. The great ugly claw was greed, and the knee-mounted eyeball betrayed a covetous love of material things; the single horn-- overweening pride. The only positive side to this scaly abomination, which was in fact not always mentioned (note its exclusion from the above illustration), was a cruciform marking on the beast's trunk. This, of course, was interpreted as Christ's willingness to save all His people-- if they would only reform. - Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body
Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750
Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy
On Monsters and Marvels
Posted: 30 Nov 2013 08:28 AM PST
Scientist Has Proof of Alien Life?
Aliens are living above the clouds, a team of British scientists says.
University of Sheffield researchers launched a balloon 27km into the stratosphere on July 31, using microscopic studs to act as a kind of "fly paper" to harvest samples from the edge of space.
When the balloon landed, it had carried back small biological organisms.
Professor Milton Wainwright said he was "95 per cent convinced" they originated from space.
"There is no known mechanism by which these life forms can achieve that height. As far as we can tell from known physics, they must be incoming," he said.
The team's findings are published in the Journal of Cosmology. - MSN
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Norway's 'Vertical Cemetery'
A "vertical cemetery", in which the dead are buried in a modular high-rise tower, has been commended as "a highly original contribution" at an Oslo conference for Nordic cemeteries and graveyards.
"Existing cemeteries will slowly be removed to provide land to the city's living souls," Martin McSherry, a student at the Royal Danish School of Architecture, wrote explaining his proposal.
"The vertical cemetery, with its open front, will become a significant part of the city and a daily reminder of death's existence. In time, the city's tallest and largest building will become a grave for all its citizens - the city's ever-changing monument."
The tower was one of nineteen submissions in a competition held for young architecture and design students by the Nordic Association for Graveyards and Crematoria, prizes for which were given out at the Nordic Congress of Cemeteries and Crematoria in Oslo this September.
McSherry envisages the the city's different communities each having their own floor, with Jewish, Muslim and Christian cemeteries slotted on top of each other, alongside memorial areas for non-believers, and floors holding the urns of those cremated.
At the side of the building, a crane would be permanently installed to deposit new layers as the old cemeteries are removed or new burial space is required.
The competition was won by McSherry's classmates Katrine Harving Holm and Henriette Schønheyder van Deurs, who proposed replacing individual graves and tombstones with a collective place of memorial. - TheLocal
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Growing Dandelion Removed From Girl's Ear
A dandelion seed that had sprouted and had been growing in the ear of a 16-month-old girl was removed Monday by a doctor who said the roots had embedded themselves in the tot's ear canal, Beijing Morning Post reported today.
The parents of the girl, who live in the Tongzhou District in Beijing, went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist at the Capital Institute of Pediatrics.
The parents said something like a seed fell into the left ear of their daughter about four months ago, but they didn’t pay too much attention to it until recently, when the girl started scratching the ear.
It took Gu Qinglong, director of the department, about 10 minutes to remove the plant with the help of several assistants.
The dandelion seed was tenacious and not easy to remove, the doctor said.
Gu reminded parents that they need to pay attention to all parts of a child's body to spot problems before they become serious. - ShanghaiDaily
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Vannucci's Bizarre UFO Experience
The Killers' drummer has recounted his own experience with a UFO during a recent magazine interview.
Now a staple part of one of the world's biggest pop-rock bands, it's difficult to imagine that Vannucci once worked as a luggage carrier for an airline. In a recent interview for Q Magazine he revealed that during his stint at the job he experienced something that he was never able to explain.
He had been on a road trip to Nevada as part of the job when he saw something strange in the sky. "I was driving to the middle of Nevada on (Route) 95 North and I saw this red dot in the sky, almost like a laser pointer kind of red but it was bigger and it was doing all these motions like normal flight patterns and then it would zip down and go really quick," he said.
Perplexed by the spectacle, Vannucci pulled over and watched it for a while. "It went behind this mountain range. It was night so the sun was going down and there was this giant flash of light afterwards, like a strobe, and it was gone," he said. - Gigwise
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