- Humpday
An Egyptian Mummy Is The Worst Gift to Unwrap
Happy HumpDay!
Happy HumpDay! Hope everyone is having a good start to their week! We are halfway through June and summer is almost in full swing. The weather is finally warming up and work is starting to slow down! Nothing better than sitting outside and reading three new interseting facts courtesy of HumpDay! If you have a beach trip planned and need some more reading material, check out the new website at HumpDayNewsletter.com and follow the official HumpDay Instagram!
Alcohol
We all know Bill W. He’s a great guy, he’s a friendly, handsome, all around cool dude. If you don’t know who Bill W. is, that’s alright, because Bill W. only help people who are in tough situations.
Bill W. isn’t a real person but rather he is a codename used my members of alcoholics anonymous to allow them to call for support when they are tempted to drink. Members of AA are told to ask for Bill W. whenever they have the urge to drink and don’t have access to their normal support system.
For example, an alcoholic stuck in an airport due to a flight delay may ask security to announce “Will Bill W. come to the airport bar to pick up your friend” over the loud speaker as a way of signaling to other AA members that he/she needs someone to help them not drink. This code allows AA members to call for support in a covert way that doesn’t publicly expose them for having an addiction.
Next time you find yourself at an airport or hotel bar, be on the lookout for someone calling for Bill W. You may be able to help someone who is struggling.
10 Little Known Things About AA
Sports
This Sunday was the conclusion of golf’s 119th US Open and if you tuned in for any of the four rounds you most likely heard a bunch of golf lingo, slice, duff, chuck, etc. Some of the most confusing terms in golf revolve around the scoring, Birdie, Eagle, Albatross. Why are golfers so interested in birds and why are some types of birds better than others?
Scoring one under par is known as a birdie. The origin of the word birdie comes from 19th century slang where the word “bird” was synonymous with “cool” or “excellent”. Starting in 1903, golfers started referring to scores one under par as “birdie” meaning that their score was pretty cool! After that, two under par started to be called an eagle because its like a birdie but even better, then an “albatross” (three under par) continued uping the ante with an even bigger bird.
On the other hand, the term “bogey”, meaning one over par, comes from the Scottish version of the word “boogey” as in the boogey man. The word’s literal definition is a devil or evil spirit. Kind of a harsh thing to say to someone who only missed par by one.
History
Parties are fun. Some parties have cake and others have karaoke, but Victorian era parties had even better entertainment...Dead bodies. More specifically, Victorian era parties used to have Egyptian mummies on display.
Throughout the 19th century, Mummy-mania swept across Europe as a renewed interest in ancient Egyptian culture emerged. Architecture from that time resembled that of ancient Egypt and Egyptian motifs were seen throughout pop culture. The Egyptian craze even led to an increase in tourism for Egypt and the emergence of a strange new industry…Mummy smuggling.
Rich European socialites would pay Egyptian mummy smugglers to dig up ancient graves and smuggle rotting corpses out of Egypt and ship them to Europe. Once the mummy arrived in Europe, the wealthy Europeans would host an “Unwrapping party” where the guests would dress in stereotypical Egyptian attire and slowly unwrap the dressings off the mummy to see what was inside. As a custom, the mummy was not unwrapped until after dinner had been served because the smell of a thousand-year-old corpse would often ruin party goer’s appetite.
Bizarrely, after a mummy was fully unwrapped and the bones of the deceased Egyptian had been displayed for all to see, the host would give the mummy to a pharmacist who would use parts of the body as medicine to help cure cuts, bruises and broken bones. Doctors used to perspribe people medicine made of rotten flesh to help cure any ailment they used to have. The 19th century was weird times for medicine.
The act of digging up then desecrating a body is disgusting and its insane to think people used to do it for entertainment. Too bad none of the mummies ever came to life to teach those snooty grave robbers a lesson.
This Week in History
On this week in 1972, five men from President Richard Nixon’s staff broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex to plant listening devices that would allow the white house to spy on their political opponents. The five men who staged the break in were arrested leading to a scandal at the white house and a subsequent cover up meant to clear President Nixon from any wrong doing. The investigation into the burglary and the subsequent obstruction of justice lead to impeachment proceedings that resulted in President Nixon’s resignation on August 9th, 1974.
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