Blesschaos: oktober 2013

A forgotten profession:

In the days before alarm clocks were widely affordable, people like Mary Smith of Brenton Street were employed to rouse sleeping people in the early hours of the morning. They were commonly known as ‘knocker-ups’ or ‘knocker-uppers’. Mrs. Smith was paid sixpence a week to shoot dried peas at market workers’ windows in Limehouse Fields, London. Photograph from Philip Davies’ Lost London: 1870-1945.

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Starved to death

Famous Mathematician Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. He had an obsessive fear of being poisoned; he would eat only food that his wife, Adele, prepared for him. Late in 1977, Adele was hospitalized for six months and could no longer prepare Gödel's food. In her absence, he refused to eat, eventually starving to death. He weighed 65 pounds (approximately 30 kg) when he died.

Today's shocking, provocative, disturbing

This rather unfortunate woman suffered from bilateral hypertrophy of both breasts. Amazingly she survived an operation to remove them both. After removal the left breast weighed seventeen pounds and the right weighed forty-three pounds.