Radium was quite the rage in early 20th-century products, resulting in it being an integral part of several products. Radium compounds were believed to possess qualities that promised better health and better looks, something that had customers flocking to buy anything that contained radium. There were several things you could buy that had radium in them, including radium shoe polish, radium hand creams (“Takes off everything but the skin!”), and radium pills. There was also naturally radioactive mineral water which sparkled and foamed “like champagne”, and was touted as being able to cure rheumatism, sciatica, paralysis, diabetes, and a long list of other ailments. Other radium-loaded products included radium pads, belts and, however strange it may seem, radium condoms.(source)
Experiments carried out on three skull-cups that were unearthed from a cave during an archaeological expedition revealed that the earliest use of human skull-cups in the U.K. began during the Ice Age when people desecrated dead bodies to make use of them as implements. They used skull-cups, the facial bones and the base of the skull was removed after soft tissue on the inside of the skull was cleared out.
The practice of making cups out of human skulls is not unheard of, with people such as the Vikings and the Scythians having done so quite extensively.(source)
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8 Adam Rainer was both a giant as well as a dwarf over the course of his lifetime, the only man in history to be so.
Born in Austria in 1899, Adam Rainer’s height was recorded at only four feet, eight inches at the age of 19. His “dwarfism” led him to be rejected by the army for being too short and too weak when he tried to enlist. At the age of twenty-one, Rainer suddenly began sprouting up at an alarming rate, growing to be seven feet, ten inches within a decade. Along with a growth in height, he also developed a severe spinal curvature. This sudden growth spurt was attributed to acromegaly which was in Rainer’s case, caused by a tumor on his pituitary gland. This induced an overproduction of growth hormone which resulted in his abnormally large hands and feet, as well as his protruding forehead and jaw, along with thick lips and wide-set teeth.
He was operated on with hopes of curing the condition, at least to some degree. The operations, however, did not seem to have any effect on his standing height which remained the same, and his spinal curvature which became more severe, indicating that he was still growing.(source)
This is incredible because now, not only do dead people give goosebumps, they can also get them!
In order to accommodate rigor mortis after a person’s death, their muscles undergo several changes of which contraction is a major part. Hair follicles, too, do pretty much the same thing; and when hair follicles contract, goosebumps appear.
There have also been instances of hair growth discovered when a body has been exhumed.(source)
10 It is possible for a woman to get pregnant while she is already pregnant.
Called “superfetation”, cases of double pregnancy, although rare, are possible, and occur when a woman continues ovulating even after becoming pregnant. In this condition, the second fertilized egg also gets implanted on the uterine wall. However, this is not very common, as hormonal changes normally prevent a pregnant woman from ovulating further and thicken the uterine lining preventing the second embryo from attaching itself to the uterine wall.
There have only been ten cases of this phenomenon ever recorded.(source)
