Catching Bullets is a Bad Idea

Two rifles were loaded with bullets marked by members of the audience. Two beautiful female assistants pulled their triggers. Black smoke burst into the air. "My God, you've shot me!" gasped the exotic wizard Chung Ling Soo, blood spurting from his torso. The 'flash and bang' of the final act had gone terribly wrong.

The early 1900s were the golden era of the British music halls. Performing on stage at the Wood Green Empire in London, March 23, 1918, was a mysterious magician in oriental robes. For the climax of his show, the Mandarin of Magic would use a china plate to catch two bullets fired at him, point blank. It was his last performance.

Chung Ling Soo was an American named William Ellsworth Robinson who gave his show an oriental theme to increase its popularity in Europe.

After forty years of investigating spurned lovers and secret societies, the truth about his death was finally exposed.

Soo jealously guarded the secrets behind his illusions and loaded the rifles himself. Not being a gunsmith, he failed to recognized that a worn breechblock was allowing gunpowder to build up between the blank charge and the live charge. Soo effectively killed himself with his lack of knowledge.

Mysterious Mayan Manuscript

In 1869 Charles de Bourbourg, a French ethnographer who became known for his recovery of historical documents, claimed to have deciphered the above obscure Mayan picture writing. His translation tells of two countries that existed many millenniums ago. Earth tremours rocked them to their very foundations. Their entire land mass along with 64 million citizens 'disappeared in the night.'

Bourbourg claims this refers to the continents of Atlantis and Mu. Others claim Bourbourg is speculating on the entire interpretation.

Hey, if you click on the picture you can see it up close - very cool.

Voynich Manuscript

The 'Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World' has now been radio carbon dated back to between 1404 - 1438; making it 100 years older than previously thought and 250 years older than the Gutenberg bible. Experts, however, are no closer to decoding the cryptic script which has recently been described as making "the "DaVinci Code" look downright lackluster."

It has been suggested that the tome, written on animal skin, is the work of alchemist/scientist Roger Bacon. It is richly illustrated with tiny naked women, 113 unidentified plant species, zodiac signs, courtly figures and other baffling pictures. The Voynich Manuscript is on page 178 in Almanac of the Infamous. I love it when new information on old mysteries is revealed.

"Yes," admitted the prisoner, "I am a werewolf."

Dark times lived in Gascony, France in 1603. Innocent children were plucked from their beds to suffer a hideous fate. Mass hysteria descended on the village when 13-year-old Marguerite Poirer swore before the magistrate that on the night of the full moon she was savagely attacked by a wolf-like beast while tending her cattle. Luckily she was able to drive the creature off with her sturdy, iron pointed staff.

Jeanne Gaboriaut, 18-years-old, told the judge that 14-year-old Jean Grenier had made advances on her and when she denied him because of his yellow complexion and dirty appearance he told her "That is because of the wolf's skin I wear." The creepy jerk told shepherdess that his wealthy employer gave him a pelt to put on that he might go "haunting" the woods and fields. There where nine other like himself, who roamed the forest between dusk and dawn. Grenier immediately was arrested.