Top 5 Horrifically Dangerous Spanish Festivals

Posted By Mark on Jul 5, 2016

Spain: famous for its sun, sea, soaring temperatures, siestas, and Salvador Dali. But it’s not just things that begin with the letter ‘S’ that Spain embraces so let’s take a quick look at five horrifically dangerous events that help to mould the characters of Spanish people. Running Of The Bulls Not exclusive to Spain and not limited to just one place there is, however, one very famous “Running of the Bulls” event and that’s the one that takes place in the 8-day festival in Saint Fermin, Pamplona. With a few rules – competitors must be 18, sober, must run in the same direction as the bulls, and cannot let the bulls know that their deaths are imminent through interpretive dance – the running takes place through the town and injuries are pretty commonplace. Less common, but certainly not unexpectedly, deaths – typically by goring or a fatal realisation that your life has culminated in you jogging along with cows – do occur too. At the end of the run the bulls are celebrated by the crowd and are released to live their lives out in peace. No, of course not! The bulls and runners are led into an arena and are fought and killed. The Castells of Tarragona Castells are human towers formed by teams who build solid bases then add layers of people in order to place someone as high as possible, remove supporting people to leave a single human chain, then dismantle safely in order to… nobody knows. The important thing, though, is that a lot of weight ends up being supported by people and a lot of people are sufficiently high in the air that if the tower collapses – and they do – then there’s quite a distance to fall. Deaths have occurred. At festivals different teams of tower-builders often compete in brightly-coloured displays of daring and there are different tower designs depending on the number of levels a team wants to build as well as the number of people per level that is supported. A tower is considered complete when the uppermost person – the enxaneta (usually a child because it takes them longer to fall) – raises four fingers in the air to give praise to the Sky God Ugalugha, climbs down, then all the levels descend in order from the top down. At the end of the festival the losing teams of tower-builders are fought and killed. The Arizkun Festival If you were wondering if the Spanish had a festival that combined running through the streets leaping over bonfires trying not to incinerate your pubic regions as well as Wicker Man-style pagan...

Fresh Complexion

Posted By Mark on Jul 3, 2016

Portsmouth, Alien Invasion – Children’s Gas Masks

Posted By Mark on Jul 3, 2016

Gas attacks were a constant threat from the Squirmy Munge although it was the inconvenience rather than the actual effectiveness of it as a weapon that most affected Portsmouth’s citizens as the general wind conditions coming off the Solent to the south and from Portsdown Hill to the north generally helped to dilute the harm down to a breathing irritant. Whilst records of the time cannot be confirmed it is widely believed that deaths directly attributable to gas attacks during the alien invasion are probably only four or five. Nevertheless, it was important for the island’s people to be prepared for all eventualies and that included children, of course. The image above is from the quarterly catalogue sent out by G.H. Kay’s department store in Southsea advertising a range of gas masks designed for...

Hans Poelzig Architecture

Posted By Mark on Jul 2, 2016

Via Graphicene: Hans Poelzig (30 April 1869 – 14 June 1936) was a German architect, painter and set designer. One of the finest examples of German Architectural Expressionism. As an architect and theoretician, Poelzig was particularly interested in developing a language specific for factory buildings : “the true monumental task of contemporary architecture”, in a period when Germany was developing as a major industrialised...

Space Captain Tim

Posted By Mark on Jul 2, 2016

Space Captain Tim Adventures In The Distant Fear Zone was the first of three published science fiction novels featuring the ruggedly handsome and devoted father and space captain by Ryan Hedley, Sr during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The books were written for Hedley’s infant-then-teen son although they were marketed for an adult audience. Generally, the stories followed the heroic captain of the Space Voyager Cosmic 10 as he steered his vessel and crew through perilous space adventures all with the aim of saving his son from the clutches of Alien Witchqueen Audrey who steals the child in the opening chapter of this book. Hedley’s devotion to his own son accounts for the artwork present on each book’s cover, allowing Ryan Junior to design Space Voyager Cosmic 10 for the first in the series as well as the wrestling aliens that adorned the outside of Space Captain Tim Conquers The World Of The Warriors and the huge weapon that graced Space Captain Tim Unleashes The Ultimate Power. The latter two books were eventually withdrawn from sale and pulped as their covers were deemed to violate anti-homosexuality and obscenity laws...