Category: T

A legendary animal reported to exist in the Swiss, Bavarian, and Austrian Alps that is the subject of cryptozoologic research. The modern record of sightings of the Tatzelwurm (literally “worm with claws”) began in 1779. A man named Hans Fuchs encountered two tatzelwurms and was so scared that he suffered a heart attack. He only…

Isolated Philippine natives discovered by Manuel Elizalde in 1971. The Tasaday were a small tribe of 24 people living on the Philippine island of Mindanao. They were so isolated from the 20th century that they believed that they were the only people living in the world. They practiced a Stone Age culture, knew nothing of…

Popular medical remedy of the 18th century recommended by philosopher, George Berkeley. Tar water was made by putting a quart of cold water and a quart of tar together, mixing them, and then allowing the tar to settle. A glass of the clear water that remained behind was then drawn off and mixed with an…

A pack of 78 cards, first used in Northern Italy in the early 14th century, originally as a tricktaking game, but now used by fortune-tellers for divination. The deck of 78 cards comprises four suits of 14 cards in each, making 56; the other 22 cards are unsuited trumps, decorated with symbolic designs like The…

A book by Fritjof Capra, a physicist of some standing and a professor at the University of California, first published in 1975, revised in 1983, and subtitled “An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism.” The book has three parts: The Way of Physics; The Way of Eastern Mysticism; and The Parallels.…

Communication between apes and humans. During the last hundred years, there have been several attempts to engage in some form of intelligible speech with apes. Richard L. Garner spent many years analyzing the sounds made by apes and eventually claimed to be able to talk to monkeys in their language. He published several books, The…

A phenomenon of spiritualism in which poltergeists or noisy spirits are heard to rap on tables to attract attention, or more frequently a method by which spirits of the dead answer questions posed to them. Table rapping or table tilting is a very laborious way of consulting the spirit world and works rather like the…

Refers to an event recounted in the Old Testament when Joshua commanded the sun to delay going down for a full day and the moon to halt in its movements. During the 1970s, a story began to circulate in conservative Evangelical Christian circles that some scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had…

Scientist who posited that information is a fundamental component of the universe. A university professor, biologist, researcher, teacher, and from 1975 until his retirement in 1990, the first head of the Science and Society Department in the University of Bradford, United Kingdom. His family having emigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1930s,…

An organization of scholars, scientists, historians, magicians, and the intellectually curious that sponsors a lecture series at California Institute of Technology and publishes the quarterly magazine The Skeptic. Its purpose is to promote science and critical thinking and to disseminate information on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, the paranormal, magic, superstition, fringe claims and groups, revolutionary science protoscience,…