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Thursday, January 05, 2006

Catch Up Day

Catch up days aren't particularly fun, but I had email (and a phone call) to take care of and email I wanted to send, so I figured yesterday was as good a day as any to try to get caught up. I still didn't send everything I wanted to, but I made a good sized dent in the pile. This made for a very unexciting evening, but then so many of them are. :-)

I saw this really interesting show on PBS the other night. It was about an Egyptian Mummy that ended up in a "museum" near Niagara Falls in Canada. I think they said this museum purchased the mummy in the 1860s, but I don't remember for sure. This place also boasted two-headed sheep and other things like this. In the 1980s, a German tourist wondered if it wasn't an Egyptian queen, and even had German TV involved, but when some expert who X-rayed the mummy said it wasn't royalty, the plug was pulled.

Years go by, the museum is bought by someone who puts the Egypt collection up for sale, including the mummies they have, and it's bought by a university (I think) in Atlanta. They run more tests and call in experts to examine the mummy. Turns out they're fairly sure that the mummy is that of Ramses I. Very interesting.

But during the show they also talked about the historical uses the Western world has used mummies for, including grinding them up and using the powder as an elixir. Gag! This is a dead body they're consuming. How gross is that?

I love finding these little documentary shows. I enjoy them much more than regular TV which I have almost no patience for. There was also a show on some station earlier this week about an A330 that had both engines go down over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilot thought he was going to have to ditch at sea, but there was a small island in the Azores that had an airfield, and although the plane didn't look pretty when it was done, he brought it down safely and the only injuries were 9 people hurt during the evacuation of the aircraft. Now that was interesting. :-)