blacksundae

Sweating sickness:

Sweating sickness, also known as the “English sweate” (Latin: sudor anglicus), was a mysterious and highly virulent disease which struck England and later Europe in a series of epidemics, the first beginning in 1485 and the last in 1551, afterwards apparently vanishing. The onset of symptoms was dramatic and sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Its cause remains unknown.

Read on.

Polybius (game):

Polybius is a supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress and horrific nightmares. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. No evidence for the existence of such a game has ever been discovered.

[...]

According to the story, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981, something of a rarity at the time. The game, Polybius, proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and lines formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide in some versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist. The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg, and the company named in the urban legend is Sinneslöschen (German for sense-delete), often named as either a secret government organization or a codename for Atari. The gameplay is said to be similar to Tempest, a shoot ‘em up game utilizing vector graphics.

Read on.

List of terms for gay in different languages:

This is a list of terms which are widely used today to refer to “gay” in different languages and which derive from concepts unrelated to homosexuality (e.g. the words “gay” or “pederast”) or its common stereotypes. Their original meanings are also given.

My favorite is the Italian, frocio: “old term for the Swiss Pope guards in Rome.” LINK!

Issei Sagawa:

Issei Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. In June 11, 1981, Sagawa was studying avant garde literature. He invited her to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. In interviews, Sagawa describes himself as a “weak, ugly and small man” and claims that he wanted to “absorb her energy.”

He said he fainted after the shock of shooting her, but awoke with the realization that he must carry out his desire to eat her. He did so, beginning with her hips. In interviews, he noted his surprise at the “corn-colored” nature of human fat. For two days, Sagawa ate various parts of her body. He described the meat as “soft” and “odorless”, like tuna. After two days, he dumped the mutilated body in a park, but was seen in the act. Five days later, he was arrested by the French police. However, the French psychologists found him legally insane and unfit to stand trial. Instead, he was deported back to Japan, where he was put in a mental institution. However, the deportation order did not specify how long Sagawa must remain in the institution. Fifteen months later, Sagawa checked himself out, and has been a free man ever since.

Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator. He also writes restaurant reviews [emphasis mine] and in 1992 he appeared in Hisayasu Sato’s film Sisenjiyou no Aria (The Bedroom) as a sadosexual voyeur. He admits to still having fantasies about cannibalism, but says he never wants to realize them again.

Whoa. Crazy.

Flehmen response:

The flehmen response, also called the flehmen position, flehmen reaction, flehming, or flehmening (from German flehmen (of animals) meaning to curl the upper lip), is a particular type of curling of the lips in ungulates, felids, and many other mammals, which facilitates the transfer of odorant chemicals into the vomeronasal organ. In the flehmen reaction, animals draw back their lips in a manner that makes them appear to be “grimacing”. The pose, which is adopted when examining scents left by other animals of the same species, helps expose the vomeronasal organ and draws scent molecules back toward it. This behavior allows animals to detect odorants, for example from urine, of other members of their species. Flehming allows the animals to determine several factors, including the presence or absence of estrus, the physiological state of the animal, and how long ago the animal passed by. This particular response is most recognizable in stallions when smelling the urine of a mare in heat.

Courtesy of srah, from her comments in the first installment of this feature.

USS Tang (SS-306):

USS Tang (SS-306) was a Second World War era Balao-class submarine. She was launched in 1943 and had a brief but successful career before being sunk by one of her own faulty torpedoes in 1944.

I found this via MetaFilter, which also links to two other subs that met the same fate. Be sure to scroll down to Steven C. Den Beste’s comment, which details the bugs in the Mark XIV torpedo.

Being a chemist, and one with a childish sense of humor at that, I was filled with glee upon discovering this Wikipedia entry:

Cummingtonite
Cummingtonite or magnesium iron silicate hydroxide is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition
(Mg,Fe)₇Si₈O₂₂(OH)₂.

My preferred definition: What The Thing’s…um…thing is made of.

Thanks to Bill Peschel from the CC for the Straight Dope link above.

I almost didn’t want to create this as a recurring feature, since I’d be surprised if other blogs have not done this before. Then I said, “Screw it. We all find different things interesting.”

So! The very first Neat Wikipedia Entry on blacksundae:

Pica (disorder)
Pica is an appetite for non-nutritive substances (e.g., coal, soil, chalk, paper etc.) or an abnormal appetite for some things that may be considered foods, such as food ingredients (e.g., flour, raw potato, starch). In order for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month, at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate. The condition’s name comes from the Latin word for the magpie, a bird which is reputed to eat almost anything. Pica is seen in all ages, particularly in pregnant women and small children, especially among children who are developmentally disabled, where it is the most common eating disorder.

I think what I like most about this entry is the very non-medical sounding name, and it’s made all the better by the lovely etymology.

15th Ward! Feel free to contribute installments of this feature, as I know you’re a total Wikipedia geek and probably frequent it even more than I do. Keep track of the numbering, though. Otherwise I’ll be getting hate mail from obsessive compulsives.