Medical and Scientific Oddities -

[Rumpled Foreskin]

Mine would be Phineas Gage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
He had an iron, literally explode, through his skull. He somehow survived. The damage to his physical body was quite extensive, but apparently his mind was somewhat "normal". He then kept this iron, which was like a javelin, by his side at all times. He is considered one of the medical "Rorchach Test" individuals, if not the first. His wounds are highly debated, and his symptoms even more so.

If you care to, share the stories that most interest you.

 

[ConcernedAnon]

A similar case is that of Anatoli Bugorski who was caught in the path of a particle beam in the 70s. The remarkable thing is that he is still alive today, despite a high energy beam going through his brain, and in fact continued to work as a physicist!

The path of the beam, and an image showing the partial paralysis of his face.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Saturn has some really strange moons.

Enceladus has a subsurface ocean. The ice crust is thinnest in the south pole, where some of the water escapes in geysers, feeding the "E ring" of Saturn. It is believed the interior is warm due to gravity induced tidal forces.

Titan has ice as "rock" and hydrocarbons (mostly methane) as "water." The poles have lakes, while the equator has a vast dune field, with grains of ice as the "sand." In other star systems, there could be frigid worlds like Titan but with exotic life that metabolizes hydrocarbons. It's unlikely any intelligent life on a Titan-like world could progress beyond "Stone Ice Age" technology because of a lack of metals on the surface.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

Science and medicine are probably my main interests, so I have a peculiar (and possibly :autism fascination with this sort of stuff.

In terms of medical oddities, the first case that springs to my mind would probably be that of Robert Wadlow, an American man who, standing at 8 feet and 11 inches tall, was the tallest person ever known to have existed.

His tall stature was the byproduct of a malfunctioning pituitary gland, which caused him to grow not only a lot faster than his peers, but it also meant that he never stopped growing at all. Unfortunately, back in the 1930's when he lived, there were no forms of medical intervention which could have helped him, and so he died of complications associated with his condition at the age of just 22.

By all accounts he was a kind-hearted man, and apparently very strong up until the last few months of his life. He was already 7 feet tall by the age of 12, and by the time of his death he was wearing custom-made size 37 shoes.

I don't know if extreme longevity would be considered a medical oddity, but if it is, then there is no way I couldn't mention Jeanne Calment.

A French woman aged 122 years and 164 days old upon her death, she is officially confirmed as the oldest person ever to have lived, and the only person to have officially lived beyond the age of 120 (something which had previously been considered biologically impossible by some). Perhaps her greatest claim to fame outside of her longevity was the fact that she was the last living person to have met Vincent Van Gogh in person, whom she described as "very ugly", "ungracious", and "impolite" in an interview she gave about him 98 years after his death.

She was apparently fond of cigars, and smoked them every day throughout most of her life.

As for scientific oddities, I think the most breathtaking example I could cite would be UY Scuti, the largest star thus far discovered.

This red supergiant has a volume that is roughly 5 billion times greater than the volume of our Sun, and if it were at the center of our own solar system, it would stretch out as far as Jupiter. If you keep in mind that the Sun is roughly one million times the size of the Earth, you might gain some perspective as to how large this thing really is.

 

[___-]

Once I took a shit about the size of my forearm.

 

[ForgedBlades]

I'll just link some nifty videos.

 

[Sperglord Dante]

There's a small population in the Dominican Republic who have a baffling medical condition: some of the "girls" born there grow peni and testicles during puberty.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people, writes Michael Mosley.

Johnny lives in a small town in the Dominican Republic where he, and others like him, are known as "Guevedoces", which effectively translates as "penis at twelve".

We came across Johnny when we were filming for a new BBC Two series Countdown to Life, which looks at how we develop in the womb and how those changes, normal and abnormal, impact us later in life.

Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended.

Johnny, once known as Felicita, remembers going to school in a little red dress, though he says he was never happy doing girl things.
[...]
When Imperato-McGinley investigated the Guevedoces she discovered the reason they don't have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.

This deficiency seems to be a genetic condition, quite common in this part of the Dominican Republic, but vanishingly rare elsewhere. So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.

Imperato-McGinley's thorough medical investigations showed that in most cases their new, male equipment seems to work fine and that most Guevedoces live out their lives as men, though some go through an operation and remain female.

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

George Washington was never in good health. He suffered from malaria and dengue fever when he was serving in the Virginia Colonial Militia in the 1750s, he was stricken with mumps in the 1760s that probably left him impotent, and by the time he became president he only had one tooth left.

 

[OhGoy]

Humanity knows more about outer space than we know about the ocean. As someone with thalassophobia, the very thought terrifies me. It's only a matter of time until we discover Cthulhu (or something even more terrifying)...

 

[Y2K Baby]

Water has a bunch of weird, amalgamous qualities and is fucking gay.

 

[PsychoNerd054]

There was once a man named Harry Eastlack. He suffered from a fate worse than death, Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), a super rare condition where the immune system goes into overdrive and causes tendons and muscles to ossify into bone. At age 5, he fractured his leg. Afterwards, the hip and knee had stiffened and the surrounding muscles and tendons turned into bone. By his mid-20's, his entire vertebrae had stiffened. By his late 30s, he has been left completely immobile due to a majority of his muscles and tendons being turned into bone, at which point he could only move his lips. He later died of pneumonia at age 40.

His skeleton is now on full display at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.

 

[Cactus Wings]

Humanity knows more about outer space than we know about the ocean. As someone with thalassophobia, the very thought terrifies me. It's only a matter of time until we discover Cthulhu (or something even more terrifying)...

I take peace in the fact the pressure is immense. How would such a large creature exist? They're gonna be weak, thin, and frail. Even if some giant Cthun-esque monster lived, it'd be like a balloon near surface.

How far down did megalodon live? Can't be very considering the size.

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

William Shy was a Confederate Army colonel who died in 1864 at the Battle of Nashville. His body was buried in a special sealed metal coffin called a Fisk Mummy. In 1977 his grave was robbed and his body was so well preserved that he was mistaken for a modern day murder victim. This led to the creation of the first forensic body farm at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.