Today’s Shrieking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On June 29, 1929, twelve-year-old Forest Case of Burlingame, California had just hiked with Edward Shoemaker to the top of Vernal Fall at Yosemite National Park. It being a hot day, Case leaned over the river’s edge to get a drink of water. It tasted great. The boy next waded out into the river about twenty feet.
As have so many other visitors to Vernal Fall, Case seemed mesmerized by his surroundings. John Muir wrote of this spot:
The Vernal, about a mile below the Nevada, is 400 feet high [actually 317 feet], a staid, orderly, graceful, easy-going fall, proper and exact in every movement and gesture, with scarce a hint of the passionate enthusiasm of the Yosemite or of the impetuous Nevada, whose chafed and twisted waters hurrying over the cliff seem glad to escape into the open air, while its deep booming thunder-tones reverberate over the listening landscape. Nevertheless it is a favorite with most visitors, doubtless because it is more accessible than any other, more closely approached and better seen and heard.
Still enthralled by the view but feeling no jitters about Muir’s “staid, orderly, graceful, easy-going’ fall, young Forest Case stopped in midriver. There he simply stood in the current and admired the scenery. He yelled over to his buddy Shoemaker on shore, “Look at those mountains up there, with the white clouds floating around them!”
At the instant these words left his mouth, Case lost his footing and fell. The flow instantly pushed the struggling lad toward the brink of Vernal Fall.
Shoemaker rushed into the shallows to grab the runaway boy. For an instant this would-be rescuer succeeded in gripping his friend’s fingers as the water swept him along. Maddeningly, the flow tore Case away from Shoemaker’s grip. Mere seconds later, it swept Case “shrieking” over the 317-foot drop. Several witnesses watched Case fly into space. Three women fainted. The boy’s body was finally found on August 19, at the very spot where he had landed, after the raging river that had held it in place dried up enough to allow his recovery.
Poor Plunging Forest.
Culled from: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite
Isn’t it interesting how women were always (allegedly) “fainting” back in the day? When is the last time you saw a woman faint?
Torture Device Du Jour!
Shrew’s Violin (aka Shrew’s Fiddle)
The Shrew’s Violin is a portable pillory, with a single or double version, specifically designed to inflict torture on female victims.
A single violin
The function of this instrument was not limited to immobilizing the victim’s waist and head. Its phallic shape was directed at heaping even more ridicule on the women who were forced to wear it. More than physical torture, this instrument subject its victims to psychological torture.
The many instruments still in existence today are all so light that they enabled the victim to move. In fact, were it not for the degree of psychological torture they inflicted, it would be hard to define them as an instrument of torture.
This device also came in a double version that intensified psychological torture by imprisoning two women at a time, and compelling them to face one another.
Misery Loves Company
Culled from: Torture – Inquisition – Death Penalty
I fainted once, when I was about 18. I was slicing cucumbers for a salad and I started to feel very strange but didn’t realize what was going on. I just kept on working and then suddenly I hit the floor. Lucky for me I didn’t fall on the knife. Since then I have had a few episodes where I felt the warning signs and knew what they meant and so sat down. I only ever had the problem due to standing too long with knees locked. A singing teacher in college told me it’s a very common problem, and that you should always keep your knees loosse when you have to stand for a while, especially if you’re singing or otherwise using up a lot of air. I never fainted due to fright so I imagine there’d be no warning. People do faint at frightneing sights; you ran a MFDJ years ago about a hockey player who accidentally got his throat slashed by another player’s skate during a game; apparently several fans in the stands fainted, along with a couple of fans having heart attacks, and several players threw up on the ice.
I have fainted as well, although in my case it was due to near-zero blood pressure. I am pretty sure I also died during that first faint, and I know I flatlined multiple times in the ambulance on the way to the emergency Room after I lost consciousness again. Once they transfused about 4 quarts of blood into me I was fine though. The bleeding ulcer causing the trouble even started closing up once there was no more blood to pour out of it, so I kept most of what they ran into my IV…