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Sunday 8 December 2013

Cannibal

A few centuries ago, cannibalism between warring tribes in Fiji was very much part of everyday life.  Eat me!' was a proper ritual greeting from a commoner to a chief. The ferocity of the cannibal lifestyle deterred European sailors from going near Fijian waters, giving the island the name Cannibal Isles; as a result, Fiji remained unknown to the rest of the world.

English colonists driven by hunger during the Starving Time of 1609-1610 at Jamestown, Virginia - the first permanent English settlement in the New World - resorted to cannibalism. The cannibalized remains of a 14-year-old girl were discovered in a 17th century trash deposit inside Fort James.

James 'Sligo' Jameson of the famous whiskey-distilling family was one of most famous naturalists of the late-nineteenth-century. He once bought a 10-year-old girl for six handkerchiefs during an African expedition and gave her to cannibals so he could witness and sketch her being eaten.

In English Criminal Law, you cannot kill a person for food, even out of necessity. In 1884, three sailors were stuck out at sea and killed the weakest one for food. After being rescued, they were found guilty of murder. This set a legal precedent which continues today.

2,500 people were arrested for cannibalism in the 1930's during the Holodomor Famine in Ukraine.

Cannibal Island is a small island in Siberia where the Soviet Union forcibly deported 6,000 citizens in May 1933. The deportees, mostly political prisoners and petty criminals, were abandoned with few supplies and only flour for food. Disease and cannibalism quickly ran rampant and after 13 weeks, two thirds of the original deportees were dead.

After the the 1941-42 Siege of Leningrad was broken, the Soviets wanted to prosecute those who had resorted to cannibalism. However, so many were accused (over two thousand) that the NKVD had to divide them into two groups; 'corpse-eating' and 'person-eating'. The former were jailed, and the latter (586 people) were shot.

 In 1967 students at the University of Colorado voted to name their new cafeteria after Colorado’s most well-known cannibal, Alfred Packer.

The cannibalism depicted in the 1980 horror movie Cannibal Holocaust was so realistic, the director Ruggero Deodato was brought to court and had to prove he didn't actually kill his actors.

Notorious 1990s Venezuelan cannibal Dorangel Vargas wouldn't eat people who were too fat as he was concerned about cholesterol.

In 2001 German computer repair technician Armin Meiwes placed an advert on "The Cannibal Cafe" (a defunct forum for people with a cannibalism fetish) for a “young, well-built man who wanted to be eaten.” A Berlin engineer, Bernd Brandes, answered the advertisement in March 2001. The two met on the evening of March 9, 2001 and Mewes stabbed Brandes in the neck with a large kitchen knife, The cannibal then chopped his victim into pieces and put several bits of him in his freezer, under pizza boxes. Over the next ten months he devoured the corpse.

Meiwes was arrested in December 2002 after investigators searched his home and found body parts. They also discovered a videotape of the killing during which Mewes made clear of his consent to being eaten.

Sewing machine inventor Elias Howe said he got the idea for the sewing machine needle from dreams of cannibals chasing him with spears.

Pixiebay

The University of Colorado named their cafeteria grill after an infamous confessed cannibal, Alferd G. Packer, with the slogan being "Have a friend for lunch!".

Cannibalism puts you at risk for prion disease (similar to mad cow), particularly if you eat human brains and bone marrow.

Eating one human body would provide about 81,500 calories. An arm would offer 1,800 calories and a leg 7,150.

So what does human flesh taste like? Apparently, you cannot distinguish it from veal.

Scientists discovered a cannibalistic ant colony composed entirely of worker ants in an abandoned Soviet Bunker in Poland. They had fallen down ventilation pipes leading into the bunker and reverted to cannibalism to survive. The scientists built a bridge that allowed most of them to escape.

Here is a list of songs about cannibals 

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