Keeping it cool

I'm not sure why our generation has gone refrigerator crazy, we seem to think it makes everything last longer, but it doesn't. Putting some things in the refrigerator is flat out detrimental to their health. I'm not suggesting you do any of these things based on my meager experience but their is always more research that you can do. So, how did people survive before refrigerators?

Eggs
 Working at a living history museum I learned that eggs do not need to be refrigerated. Of all things I would think eggs do, but nature has provided for them so when their is a baby chick growing in side they wont go bad, duh, makes sense or their wouldn't be any chicks. Eggs have a substance called bloom on them that helps protect them for any bacteria or nastyness getting inside of the shell so unwashed eggs will last well out of the fridge I think we kept ours for about two weeks. Washed eggs that you have bought from the store are more questionable. They have been washed really good to get rid of the bacteria but sitting on your counter the could acquire more, they could acquire more in your refrigerator if it isn't clean but the temperature will make the bacteria grow more slowly.

Butter
Unless it is hot enough to melt your butter flat out you don't need to refrigerate it. We have kept better on my counter at home for my entire life and I have never seen it go bad. We keep the sticks we aren't using in the freezer and the stick we are on the counter in a butter dish to keep out the fuzzes and bacteria. Margarine will last forever but in a lot of cases it will puddlize at a lower temperature than butter.

Hard Cheese
Here is another dairy product you don't need to refrigerate, in fact, as long as the skin has been left on it is pretty hard to do anything to a good hard cheese. The skin of cheese was not for eating, unless you had to. The skin was to protect the yummy part from the everything else. We stored our cheese on a board in a cheese closet and while we kept our house clean at the museum dust gets everywhere. I have never seen this happen but if you have a true hard cheese and you get a moldy spot supposedly you can cut it off and the rest of the cheese will not have been effected.

Bread
Keeping bread in your refrigerator will make it stale. Bread starts to dehydrate as soon as you take it out of the oven and the refrigerator only speeds this up to six times faster.

Onions and Garlic
These two vegetables do not approve of moisture, it makes them get yucky. You have probably noticed that most of your produce from the store is a bit damp. Storing these in a drawer in the fridge together is not good for your onions and garlic, they would prefer to be left out where there is good circulation at room temperature.

Eating scientists

In highschool science one of the first things they teach us is NEVER EVER PUT YOUR SCIENCE EXPIREMENT IN YOUR MOUTH! Well apparently this is one of those cases of do as I say not as i do because scientists have put some pretty weird stuff in their mouths over the years.

Their are a lot of stories of people sampling mammoth, but as far as I can tell none of them have been confirmed officially, however in the 80's some scientists at the University of Alaska, specifically Dr. Guthrie decided to sample their 36,000 year old bison. Of coarse they ate "extra" neck meat, that wouldn't show when they displayed the ice preserved find. Apparently the meat was "well aged but still a little tough, and it gave the stew a strong 'Pleistocene' aroma"p258  What did the Pleistocene smell like?

Some geologists lick rocks, they say that you can tell the difference between different types of sediment with your taste that you can not tell apart by sight. Mole from Atlantis anyone?

Marine biologist Win Watson, a big proponent of eating what you study brought home some bio luminescent jelly fish to show his family. He left them out and the dog ate them creating glowing dog throw up. 

First Female Serial Killer?

Sometimes the most interesting stories are the ones we may never know that truth of.  Lavinia Fisher was purportedly the first convicted female serial killer in the United States, however, she was actually arrested on the charge of highway robbery. The story goes that Lavinia and her husband ran a hotel in about six miles outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Lavinia and her husband would quiz the people staying in their hotel to find out of they had money, or were expected anywhere. Lavinia would give the unwary travelers a sedative in their tea. Depending on the story they would either stab the sleeping visitor or drop them through a trap door under the bed. One night a John Peeples became suspicious of the questioning. He really did not like tea but the hostess was generous so he dumped it when she wasnt looking. When he went to bed he decided to watch the door from his chair in case they tried anything. He woke up to hearing the bed fall through the trap door, high tailed it out the window, and alerted the authorities. Fortunately or unfortunately their is no proof of almost any of this. Lavinia and her husband lived or at least met at some place with the same name as the hotel in their story. They were part of a gang and they assaulted a man named John Peeples at that place. Lavinia assaulted atleast one man choking him and smashing his head into a window. She was hanged for highway robbery as part of the gang in 1820. Just before being hanged it is reported that Lavinia yelled to the crowd "If any of you have a message for the devil, tell me now - for I will be meeting him soon" but the truth of these words, along with many other parts of the story are lost to history.

Into the box

Imagine sleeping in a room the size of your bed, with a much lower ceiling. At one time box beds were one of the best sleeping options in Britain. Sleeping in essentially a large cabinet with holes carved for air the beds conserved body heat in the winter, offered privacy in one roomed homes, and kept unwanted chickens and children out of  your bed. Sometimes these box beds would be in a bunk bed style where the nimbler young people slept upstairs.

The original sky door: Make the bad men fly

Defenestrate is a word I would like to use in my every day life. It is a verb meaning to throw out a window, most often referring to a person. I have only ever heard this word twice. Once when learning about the Defenestrations of Prague, and one in reference to a spell in dungeons and dragons. Of course if anyone is going to pick up on an amazing obscure vocabulary word it is going to be those guys. So how does a word like this come to exists? It appears to have been created specifically for the second Defenestration of Prague as a historic event. The Emperor had guaranteed the protestants of Bohemia freedom to practice their religion. When two protestant church constructions were shut down by Roman Catholic officials the people were upset. The men who were set by the Emperor to protect protestant rights called a meeting in Prague. The two men found responsible for stopping construction were tried and found guilty of defying the emperors law, and along with their secretary were ejected from the third story window of Hradčany castle where the meeting was held. After falling 70 feet all three men survived. The Catholics claimed the virgin Mary and the Angels rescued them and the Protestants claimed it was because they landed in a pile of horse poo. This took place in 1618 and was involved in the beginning of the 30 years war. The first know written account including this word is from 1620 in a collection of letter. The Latin routes make sense, conveying the words meaning perfectly, de-- down from, fenestra-- window.

 Hradčany castle in Prague, site of second Defenestration of Prague
 DigitalExtropyCreative Commons Attribution 3.0

Trial by combat: Dog Vs. Maquer

In early 1400s France it was acceptable to have trial by combat. Presided over by  royalty, the idea was that God would let the innocent live. In this same time period and man named Montdidier and his gentle greyhound lived happily together, until someone murdered Montdidier, buried him, and left a very unhappy Greyhound to his own devices. The hungry, lonely dog journeyed to London and sought out Montdidiers friend Ardilliers. Ardilliers finding it strange that the dog would show up alone payed a visit to Montdidier, and the dog lead Ardilliers to the grave site. The dog dug at the site until Ardilliers got the idea and exhumed the body of his friend. When the dog later saw Maquer, his masters killer, he attacked him. Each time the dog saw this man he would attack with a vengeance, which was strange for a dog that had always been so well tempered. The dogs attacks made Ardilliers suspicious and so he brought the matter before the king. The king ordered a trial by combat, Dog Vs. Maquer, mono a mono. When the dog attacked Maquer couldn't stand it and admitted to murder, leading to his hanging.

J. Wootton, 1738, A Grey Spotted Hound