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Professor N. M. Chuckerbutty aka Chakrabarty, recorded the Bahar Kawali - or Qawali - for the Gramophone Company (HMV) in Calcutta in December, 1912, according to the listing in Michael S. Kinnear's study. I wondered if the soloist was a relative of the English cinema organist Oliphant...

I thought that we had a thread already on the way Fortean topics come into vogue for a while and then sink. I can't find one. It is not always easy to identify a lack of something. Google does not help - its new format seems to avoid any statistics on the results page. The topic I had in mind...

“Residents of this area always use wild mushrooms but have never had any issues and it’s surprising for us to see this happening this year in Kermanshah and its vicinity.” Suddenly 800 people have been affected and 11 are dead! :dunno:

How he was lured by a maiden as bait! . . . and deposited in Llyn Ffynnon Las, beneath Mount Snowdon! Oh where is Anfanc now? All together, "In the attic!" :evil:

No thread on him, so far as I can see. If he has been mentioned at all, it is not by his full name. His twenty-year hiatus, between Days of Heaven, released 1978 and The Thin Red Line, 1998, gave the impression of a very thoughtful, puzzled or very constipated creator. Since then, the films...

I read somewhere that the random button on Wikipedia is no such thing but pulls up a page that has been recently cached for one reason or another. I tend to get sports-related stuff, obscure places and the occasional exotic disease; only very occasionally does it hit on anything that interests...

The History of Derbyshire by John Pendleton, published in 1886, contains the following extraordinary paragraph (here divided for easier reading): "Dr James Clegg, a Presbyterian, who resided at Chapel-en-le-Frith in the middle of the eighteenth century, gives an account of this extraordinary...

Albert Camus: The Plague, La Peste, 1st English Edition, 1st state, very striking Michael Ayrton dust-jacket, 1948 Extremely rare in this condition. Among the best copies to be seen online with the least fading to the spine. No markings, inscriptions or spotting within. Minor indentations on...

Mrs Diggle's Diary, 1939 - 41. Manuscript of War Diary, starting price on Ebay will be £350, enquiries invited This is a research project which was begun but which I do not have time to persevere with. It seems likely that the family has died out, hence the orphaned diary. We never learn the...

Books by Jack-the-Ripper (not guaranteed to be by him) . . . 13: Palestine by Claude Regnier Conder, 1st Edition, 1889, illustrated with engravings and coloured maps at the back. Damp marks on the front and rear cloth but paper is good, corners only slightly soft. Spine in smart condition. A...

I am thinning down my collections and will be putting loads of stuff onto Ebay in the coming weeks. As some of the titles have Fortean interest, it may be worth posting them on here. I am busy scanning images but if any of the following takes your fancy, I will push it to the front of the...

I was a bit surprised to discover that we don't have any existing thread with the word Surrealism in the title! Alchemist Adam McLean has posted his 20-video exploration of the subject on Youtube. He concentrates on paintings. It is timely, perhaps, in view of all those molten watches and the...

It sounds like hell to me! Speed-viewing, basically. The author argues that this caffeinated approach to viewing enhances his pleasure. His pleasure, however, does seem to be mainly box-set binges of television series in order to keep abreast of things which might be discussed on social media...

The term seems to have been coined in 1978 by Peter Valenti in this article. It was retrospectively applied, just as film noir had been in the 1950s. Valenti grounded his genre in films of the 1940s, such as Here Comes Mr Jordan, The Horn Blows at Midnight and A Matter of Life & Death, though...

Here's a curiosity I had not heard of: The Thomas Francis Puzzle Stones of Bebington. :) The rest of that site has some fascinating stuff on it.

More or less what it says - unlike the rice! :eek:

Are they just to disguise a rough old drink? When we get the chance to drink a good tequila . . . :blissed:

Rare glimpses of a Portsmouth-made creature feature from the late silent period. A group of boys tunnel from Scotland and emerge in an Australia populated by monstrous reptiles. The Youtube fragments are horrible and further degraded by a watermark - just in case anyone would nick them! But...

What are all those competitions whose medals adorn the labels of the wines, pickles, vinegars, mustards etc etc that we buy? All a conspiracy? Do you follow any of them? A wine story here. "You collect 5,500 wines at $75 and pay the judges nothing. I think somebody should follow the...

Just one letter goes bad and we are in a different world . . . a bad world . . . Public Enema . . . closely followed by A Shit in the Dark Red Bust Picnic at Hanging Sock Nunny Face The Thong from Another World Madonna of the Seven Moans Cow to Marry a Millionaire - well...

A necessary step in Selling Wars to the Public A leaked document which deserves to be read in full. I doubt if much will surprise anyone here, though it is always salutary to see this kind of material in its frank, confidential form.

I'm sure we have a thread for this kind of thing but I can't locate one. We know that screen-writers enjoyed sneaking in lines that were so wicked no one wanted to admit understanding them. From that wholesome musical version of The Shop Around the Corner renamed In The Good Old Summer...

Years ago, I recall seeing an engraving of a device to communicate with angels or spirits. Memory suggests it was not unlike a dressing-table but in place of the mirror there was a triangular or pyramidal superstructure on a column. This had an oval aperture through which, presumably, the...

This horse-meat business seems be a shocking one - belonging here: Conspiracy alleged :?

One of the joys of having great big files online has been the opportunity to scan images from old prints, plates and negatives in high res. The detail on some of those old photos has to be seen to be believed. I was going to put this on an existing thread such as Good Things Online, but if...

What connects chemical crystals, polarized light, Technicolor cinematography, mental illness and Bing Crosby? Well the answer is the thread title and the incredibly strange little film can be seen on YouTube, together with an explanation: Here What it did for the patients I don't know...

Any ideas? :?:

Anyone, living within easy reach of Penrith, planning an unusual day out over the Easter holiday, could explore the mystery of what became of Isis Parlis. [edit Aug. 2012: But finish reading this first!] At your own risk be it, though! Probably the site has been rendered unsafe by landslide or...

A curious tale well told The link to this was found on Nitrateville I suppose I could fit this into an existing thread but it's worth a brief spin as an individual headline, I think. :)

I was in Southport at the weekend and found a large insect flying around my bedroom as I prepared for bed. It stunned itself against the door and I was able to step on it. It was like nothing I had seen before. Though the body was crunchy and hard, when stepped on, the wings did not appear to...

Annoying pop-ups Warning should you dare to click this link Spring-cleaning my bookmarks and purging dead links, I came across the curious case of a claimant to the throne from North Manchester. That page is pasted for convenience in The Royal Pretenders Thread There is no full index of...

The University of California at Santa Barbara has placed online their enormous collections of old cylinder records. As their Overview page puts it, "Many cylinders sound wonderful, while others are almost unlistenable . . . " For those who love old records, this is an amazing resource...

Nothing to do with Edgar Allan but one Nathan Poe, who formulated it in August 2005. Here it is: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." from...

Much more fun than the dispiriting incest-fest The Cement Garden is this short film which came as a bonus on the rare w/s director-approved edition VHS tape. It had been sitting unviewed on my shelves for a couple of years and got a showing tonight. As a fan of the wicked world of Saki, I think...

One of those things which is supposed not to exist, unless we count the mad upsurge in Paris at the end of the century which so dismayed Blavatsky and captivated Strindberg, who became a practicing alchemist. Let's leave Paris on one side for now . . . Episode One: Postbellum Remarks of a...

Presumably the Babinet meant is This Lovely Looking Fellow But I can find no reference to his electric pussy anywhere except here: QUOTE BEGINS: It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty. "The...

Lost, Found & Lost Again A Cautionary Tale I suggest that those with fast Internet connections go through this experience in the same order I did. My journey was slower but more exciting . . . The recent restoration of the Keystone films has received a lot of attention in classic film...

This slice of rediscovered history is a diary I found in a North Manchester flea-market in August this year. It is the personal diary of an officer's wife. Her own forename is not recorded in the document, though I think she can be identified as a Mrs James Diggle, whose own roots (and those of...

I know that at times certain political threads on this Board have consisted entirely of sponsored posters. All I'd like to know is can someone please pay me to spend all day twiddling on the Internet? I'm really very good at it. I'll spout as much cack as they do, better spelled and punctuated...

Since beauty is only skin deep, the Sister Italy nuns will need to give a summary of their Lives & Miracles. I am not making this up! Silly Season Story Priest lines up nuns for online beauty pageant John Hooper in Rome The Guardian, Monday August 25 2008 Father Antonio...

I saw it only the once in a Channel 4 broadcast of the eighties. Lucky were those who taped that, since the versions available since on VHS and DVD have been rubbish. Now Criterion in the States and Eureka here are issuing a restored version: Reviewed here A unique film. Can it live up to...

Not quite so momentous as the rediscovery of Metropolis - see Lost & Found thread in Fortean News for that - but I see the bbfc has just passed Caligula uncut at 18. http://sbbfc.co.uk/Caligula_Case_Study.asp I plan to watch it with my favourite horse. 8)

The Roundhay Garden Scene is a precious fragment of moving picture history. If you don't know it already, you should see the original 1888 version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1i40rnpOsA Now, let's see what some slackers did with that for their homework: (NB: Some of the intertitles...

Rather a pleasing yarn from that rich source of UFO tales, the 19th Century American press. No matter how many I read, I am always taken aback by how early many of the key features of UFO narratives are established. The mention of claims being staked can be read several ways, I suppose: either...

We do not appear to have mentioned this curious case anywhere on the Board before. Here is a site devoted to it: http://www.campdenwonder.plus.com/ "This website is dedicated to the study of an intriguing incident in English history, an enigma which has remained unsolved for nearly 350...

No kidding! The story of the Salford Sioux Strange though it may seem today, hundreds of Oglala Sioux Indians - depicted in the 1990 film 'Dances with Wolves' – once settled, for six months, in their teepees on the cold and damp banks of the Irwell during the winter of 1887-88! The...

" . . . you pick up a pointy finger and proceed to shove it with as much force as you can muster into the arse of your chosen victim. According to the brochure, the funny face expressions will make people laugh and relieve stress! You can choose from six different characters to spank...

or the strange tale of the rise and fall of Canada's home-grown pulp fiction industry. A scholarly but delightful site which explores how a war-time economic act banning imported US pulps gave rise to some home brewed horrors. Here :)

Yes, tv cooks have always been rude. Fanny Craddock at least made me smile, however. Even her name sounded like a drag-queen. I remember reading that her own home was far from spotless and always had a full sink of dirty pots. Now telly is exposing her druggy habits and her son thinks she was...

I caught part of a Radio 4 documentary on this guy recently. Seems well worth a mention on here. Here's a good page: http://www.ominous-valve.com/xerf.html Enjoy. :)