Curious History's Best Post Links for July, 2013

Curious History’s (odditiesoflife) Top Ten Posts for July, 2013

1. Life in the Woods - 20,678 notes
2. The Abandoned Sanzhi UFO Houses - 11,274
3. Growing Your Own Bridge - 10,696
4. Rare Ethiopian Opals - 10,647
5. The Case of Emilie Sagée & her Doppelgänger - 10,487
   
6. The Amazing Colored Petrified Forest - 10,148
7. Poveglia Island - Haunted, Abandoned & Terrifying - 9,348
8. The Butterfly of the Sea - 6,277
9. Becoming One With Nature - 6,005
10. Underwater Secrets of the Ancient Maya - 5,003

Posts on Radar:

• The Curse of the Corinth Canal - 4,723
• The First Apple Computer - 2,070

Top Posts for Curious History!

Curious History’s (odditiesoflife) Top Ten Posts for June, 2013

The following links will take you to the most popular posts for the month of June. Curious History had an excellent month. Or come and see what is new at Curious History.com!

1. Devil’s Bridge - 61,675  Reblogs & Likes
2. The Astonishing Annual Red Crab Migration - 41,517
3. Abandoned Enchantment - 29,153
4. Montaña Mágica Lodge (Magic Mountain Lodge) - 28,095
5. Dreams in Blue - 23,927
6. Mount Roraima - 21,280
7. Abandoned (Haunted) Hotel in Colombia - 15,954
8. Living Plant Sculptures - 13,044
9. Moving Through Color - 12,157
1. The Ancient Ones: Oldest Living Organisms - 10,361

Star Trails in Australia

Many photographers like to experiment with long exposure photography techniques, but an Australian Lincoln Harrison gives a new definition to the word “long”. The 37-year-old Victorian showcases a portfolio of mesmerizing long exposure star trail photography, with some of his photo shoots taking up to 15 hours. The photos are made at his personal favorite spot over Lake Eppalock, in the Australian outback.

The star swirls are the result of the rotation of the Earth, and makes you think you’re witnessing the stars traveling across the sky. “With no buildings for miles, the sky is so clear and it’s amazing to be able to capture the beauty of the night’s sky on camera,” says Lincoln.

Ancient Dentistry - A Tooth Extraction

The drawing shows us an expert, sitting behind the patient lying, extracting a tooth and helped by two assistants. The man on the left pokes fire with bellows, and the other on the right, holds fire with a grip near the “dentist”.

Charaf-ed-Din (1404-1468) left us his famous Chirurgie of Ilkhani, an ancient dental manuscript, written and illustrated by him in 1465. This Turkish manuscript of ancient dentistry is preserved at the BNF (National Library of France).

Babies on Exhibit — Come One, Come All! See the Tiny Babies!

 Many are still shocked to hear the story of how tens of thousands of people paid to see an exhibit of tiny babies in incubators in Long Island, New York at Coney Island in the early 19th century. But there was a very important reason for this, one that continues to save lives every day.

 Incubators, while now standard in any hospital, were once an untested technology. Their developers needed a way to prove their worth and get the word out. So Dr. Martin Arthur Couney did the only thing he could to show the world that this technology was indeed needed and could save many lives. And that is how premature babies were put on display at Coney Island, as the “Baby Incubator Exhibit”.

 The attraction resembled a normal hospital ward, with babies, nurses providing specialized care, and the doctor over-looking everything. The only difference was that they were on display as a paid exhibit. His medical staff consisted of five wet-nurses and fifteen highly trained medical technicians including his daughter Hildegarde, a nurse. By 1939, he had treated more than 8,000 babies and saved the lives of over 6,500. Dr. Couney never charged parents a fee for the care he gave their infants. His clinic was financed strictly through entrance fees.

The exhibit on Coney Island was a spectacular, and seemingly successful, affair. Outside of the attraction, carnival barkers, including a very young Cary Grant, pulled people into the exhibit. The sign over the entryway proclaimed, “All the World Loves a Baby.” Any child who was prematurely born in the city would be rushed over to Coney Island to be placed in the exhibit, including Couney’s own daughter, who spent three months there.
Over time, the ‘graduates,’ of the program came back to visit Couney and see the new crop of premature babies. In 1939 towards the end of the attraction’s run, an article in the New Yorker mentioned that a few of the male graduates became doctors themselves. By the time his Luna Park exhibit closed in 1943, incubators were being used in hospitals across the world.