WEIRD WEDNESDAY

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FROM HISTORY . . .

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The Cadaver Synod (also called the Cadaver Trial) was the ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus, who had been dead for about seven months, in Rome in 897.[

Formosus was succeeded by Pope Boniface VI who in turn was succeeded by Pope Stephen VI. Stephen accused Formosus of perjury, of having acceded to the papacy illegally, and illegally presiding over more than one diocese at the same time. He had Formosus's corpse exhumed and brought to the papal court for judgment. At the end of the trial, Formosus was pronounced guilty, and his papacy retroactively declared null.

After pronouncing him guilty, he cut off Formus’s fingers (so he couldn’t issue posthumous blessings) and threw6 his body in the Tiber. Formusus ended up on shore and people started attributing miracles to it. Stephen was quickly deposed, later died in prison and the Catholic church was all like, "let's just pretend this never happened."

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Wilmer McLean (1814 – 1882) was an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. His house, near Manassas, Virginia, was involved in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. After the battle, he moved to Appomattox, Virginia, to escape the war, thinking that it would be safe.

Instead, in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's house in Appomattox, pictured below:

His houses were, therefore, involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American Civil War. Later, McLean is supposed to have said, "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

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The Battle of Malvern Hill, also known as the Battle of Poindexter's Farm, was fought on July 1, 1862, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, and the Union Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan.

By Captain Conyngham, shortly after the battle:

When charging at Malvern Hill , a company was posted in a clump of trees, who kept up a fierce fire on us...

Their officer seemed to be a daring, reckless boy, and I said to Sergeant Driscoll, ‘if that officer is not taken down, many of us will fall before we pass that clump.’

‘Leave that to me,” said Driscoll; so he raised his rifle, and the moment the officer exposed himself again bang went Driscoll,and over went the officer, his company at once breaking away.

As we passed the place I said, 'Driscoll, see if that officer is dead - he was a brave fellow.'I stood looking on. Driscoll turned him over on his back. [The officer] opened his eyes for a moment, and faintly murmured 'Father,' and closed them forever.

I will forever recollect the frantic grief of Driscoll; it was harrowing to witness. [The dead officer] was his son, who had gone South before the war.

And what became of Driscoll afterwards? … he rushed up, with his coat off, and, clutching his musket, charged right up at the enemy, calling on the men to follow. He soon fell, but jumped up again. We knew he was wounded. On he dashed, but he soon rolled over like a top. When we came up he was dead, riddled with bullets."

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The largest man made explosion prior to the atomic bomb led to innovations in ocular surgery and the founding of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Two ships colliding in Halifax harbour during on 6 December 1917 during WW1 caused many to rush to their windows to see what the commotion in the harbour was about, one of the ships carrying munitions which were going off like fireworks.

There was then a big detonation which resulted in a 2.9 kiloton explosion that caused a 40 ft tsunami, killed nearly 2,000 people and resulted in about 200 eye removals. Nearly one out of every fifty people in town lost an eye due to flying debris and shattered glass.

Innovations in the treatment of burn victims and pediatric surgeries also resulted from the explosion.

For many years afterward, the Halifax Explosion was the standard by which all large blasts were measured. For instance, in its report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Time wrote that the explosive power of the Little Boy bomb was seven times that of the Halifax Explosion.

Mont Blanc anchor site

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The dancing plague of 1518, or dance epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks. There are many theories behind the phenomenon, the most popular being stress-induced mass hysteria.. Some believe the dancing could have been brought on by food poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi, that fungus being related to LSD. Contemporaneous explanations included demonic possession and overheated blood. There is controversy concerning the number of deaths.

This is known and believed by some to be a perfect example of a nocebo effect which can make some feel ill simply by being under the expectation of being ill. By August, the "dancing plague" had claimed 400 victims. Dancers were beginning to collapse. It is said some even died from a stroke or heart attack. The victims' movements were described as spasmatic with many convulsions and their bodies were left drenched in sweat. Their arms would thrash violently and some noted that their eyes were vacant and expressionless. Blood would pool into their swollen feet and they would eventually bleed into their shoes. Often, there would also be cries for help from the affected. If the victims did not succumb to a heart attack, they would collapse from extreme exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. There were as many as 15 deaths per day during the outbreak’s peak, but the final number of fatalities is unknown today. No one knew what caused this reaction, which meant no one understood how to remedy it. By early September, the outbreak began to subside.

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Chief Mkwawa

Signed on 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ended the war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Between the War Guilt Clause and the Financial Clauses, Article 246 stated:

‘Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty […], Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the skull of Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of British East Africa and taken to Germany.’

Mkwawa had been the chief of the Hehe tribe in German East Africa (now Tanzania), and opposed German rule. In 1895, he declared that ‘rather than submit to German rule he would fight them to the utmost limit, and rather than surrender he would die by his own gun’. He was shot in 1898 after being surrounded by German soldiers.

His head was cut off, dried and taken to Germany.

In 1918 it was suggested that the skull of Mikwawa be recovered and transported back to East Africa as a mark of respect and as a symbol to the populace of German defeat. There was debate about including a provision to that effect in the Treaty but it ended up being included as part of a schedule of various objects, mainly of artistic and archaeological interest, which had been seized by the Germans and which were to be restored.

The Germans searched for it and said they couldn’t find it.

In 1921, Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote ‘in the circumstances I do not propose to take further action in the matter’.

The skull was located in storage in a German museum in 1953 and the Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining, was tasked with its return. The Foreign Office was anxious for the Treaty of Versailles not to be mentioned at all, as it didn’t want to offend the Germans, and insisted heavily that it was Twining’s responsibility to make sure of it. Twining found it rather irritating and wrote:

‘the facts are that the Germans should not have cut his head off, they should not have sent it to Germany when they had cut it off and if they did not want to return it they should not have lost the war.’

 

Sir Edward Twining delivering his speech, 19 June 1954, on return off the skull