kim dracula

The Two Headed Boy of Bengal (Name Unknown)

When the two headed boy was born, the mid-wife who delivered him, threw him into a pit of fire because she thought him to be a demon. He survived with just a few burns. The boy was kept hidden but his fame reached all over India and surrounding areas. Even though the boy received much fame, there wasn’t much scientific research conducted on the boy. Just some basic observations that were recorded. 

Both of the heads were fully functioning. The 2nd head was located on top of the 1st one. When the main head was fed, the top of the head would salivate. It would also accept breast feeding. When the boy slept, the top head would be wide awake and alert–eyes darting about. The 2nd head would also communicate with the main head.

The boy died at the age of 4 from a cobra bite. The skull of the Boy of Bengal can still be seen at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

“Well, everyone seems so interested in Chris, my boyfriend and how we met, so here’s the story.

One night I was in a chatroom just talking and this Chris person private messages me. Normally only freaks & sex pervs message me, so I usually ignore the invitation to chat, but for some reason I answered this one. He told me that he liked my user profile, that he lived in NY and it all went from there. After chatting and playing 20 questions with each other for a while, he said he had to go. Later that night, I get an e-mail from him asking when I’d be in chat next. Well, things developed and we began chatting every night for hours online. Pretty soon it turned into calling each other every night and talking on the phone for hours.

A few days after Christmas, Chris asked me what all I’d gotten. I told him that I didn’t get anything I’d asked for. During the same conversation, he said he was in a band and he wanted to send me a CD. I gave him my address & that was that.

At this point, I still hadn’t seen what he looked like, but I already knew that I was falling in love. I didn’t care what he looked like. He’d seen a few of my pictures though.

A few days later, I check my mail to find a package. Inside are two movies that I had asked for for Christmas and didn’t get (Cats & Rocky Horror Picture Show), a teddy bear for Madison, his CD and a picture. When I saw the picture I was like, "What the hell does this guy want anything to do with a mutt like me for?” He was actually hot!

At this point I knew for sure I was in love with him and driving myself mental thinking things like, “This is ridiculous! How can you be in love with someone you’ve only known like a month or so, that you’ve never even met!?”

We decided that he would finally come up here for a weekend. God I was so nervous. I KNEW he wouldn’t like me or something and wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

Everyone and their brother knew he was coming up that weekend. Hell, for all I knew he totally lied about everything and was a psycho. Around 2am that Friday night he knocked on my door, I went to the peep hole & looked through. I was shaking like a leaf, but I opened the door anyways. We just sort of stood there looking at each other, not sure what to do. He pulled a beanie baby anteater out of his pocket for me (I collect beanies). Then he grabbed my hand, pulled me towards him, and we hugged for what seemed like forever. God, he smelled good.

That weekend went so well that he ended up staying until Tuesday (he was supposed to leave on Sunday) due to car trouble (except the car was fixed on Monday).

Despite the distance, (it takes him 10 hours to get here) he calls me every day and comes up here every other weekend. And I go down there as often as I can. We’ve been together for about a year and a half and I love him with every fibre of my being. He loves me and loves my kid. His family are the most amazing, happy, normal people I have ever met. (God I love them.) And I can’t wait until I’m done school and will be able to move down there.

Chris is definitely the person I want to be with for the rest of my life. Just the thought of waking up beside him every morning is enough to keep me going through the day. His scent on my pillow that lingers for a few days after he’s been there makes me happy. The emptiness I feel on Sundays after he goes home makes me insane. But at the same time knowing that on his way home he’s probably thinking about all the things we did that weekend and all the things Madison did to make us laugh, makes me happy.

Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice in which the guilt/innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. Classically, the test was one of life or death and the proof of innocence was survival.

In medieval Europe, a trial by ordeal was considered a judicium Dei: a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf. In pre-modern society, the ordeal typically ranked along with the oath and witness accounts as the central means by which to reach a judicial verdict. Indeed, the term ordeal, Old English ordǣl, has the meaning of ‘judgment, verdict’; from the German Urteil and Dutch oordeel, from Proto-Germanic uzdailjam (that which is dealt out).

Trials by ordeal became rarer over the Late Middle Ages, but the practice was discontinued only in the 16th century.

Pictured above is an ordeal of cold water. The ordeal of cold water has a precedent in the Code of Ur-Nammu and the Code of Hammurabi; a man accused of sorcery was to be submerged in a stream and acquitted if he survived. The practice was also set out in Frankish law but was abolished by Louis the Pious in 829. The practice reappeared in the Late Middle Ages: in the Dreieicher Wildbann of 1338, a man accused of poaching was to be submerged in a barrel three times and to be considered innocent if he sank, and guilty if he floated.

Gregory of Tours recorded in the 6th century that it was thought that with a millstone round the neck, the guilty would sink: “The cruel pagans cast him [Quirinus, bishop of the church of Sissek] into a river with a millstone tied to his neck, and when he had fallen into the waters he was long supported on the surface by a divine miracle, and the waters did not suck him down since the weight of crime did not press upon him.”