In Madagascar, traditional families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called 'famadihana'. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, ( Read more... )

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Wow, so everybody wants to know the titles ( Read more... )

The ancient Egyptians considered themselves a red race and painted their bodies with red dye for emphasis.

For the ancient Romans, a red flag was a signal for battle.

In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the Tsar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism.

In India, red is the ( Read more... )

"A Girl Like Me" - it's a short 7-minute docu on being black in America where young girls get their say and children are given a black and a white doll to decide which one they like better. 15 out of 21 picked the white doll. What I would like to see is the same experiment with white children and those of other ethnicities. Could it just be " ( Read more... )

The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married at birth.

When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn't understand German.

St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.

Small homemade dinner tonight with S & J and S & T. Went to the Japanese supermarket and the European one and got some yummy things for midnight snacking {a German party tradition, TM}. For the main dish, I'll be making the recipe I posted here yesterday with some Mezze/Dessert-style things before & after. Very happy to have them over ( Read more... )

The Evil Eye in India
taken from "The Indian Luck Book" by Monisha Bharadwaj

'There are many hundreds of Indian languages and dialects, and every one of them has a word for the "evil eye". Loosely translated, this is the ill will wished upon people by detractors jealous of their good fortune. "Good fortune" can mean anything, from healthy children ( Read more... )

Doppelgänger ( Read more... )

Some stats just to keep the info here as well,
x-posted to useless_factsINDONESIA's population is approx. 200 million today {compare USA: 295 mio.}, which means that it has **doubled** since 1960 ( Read more... )