jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Kendall) (09/21/87)
The following article appeared in the sunday Sept. 20 paper: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DRIED BLOOD OF PATRON SAINT LIQUIFIES AS SIGN OF LOVE NAPLES, ITALY - The dried blood of St. Januarius reportedly turned to liquid Saturday after Archbishop Michele Giordano implored the city's patron saint to "give us a sign of your suffering and love". About 5,000 Neapolitans packing the cities cathedral prayed and pleaded to the saint, while Giordano told them that "to re-establish the dominion of good over bad, we must suffer". After about 30 minutes,the dried blood contained in two glass ampules was reported to have liquifed, promting the congregation to erupt into cheers, applause and predictions of good luck for the city. According to tradition, the blood of the martyred saint almost always turns to liquid twice a year: on Sept. 19, the date marking his decapitation in 305 A.D. under the persecution of Emperor Diocletian; and on the first Saturday of May, commemorating the transfer of St. Januarius' body to Naples. The dried blood also reportedly turned to liquid on June 27, the day Giordano officially took over the archdiocese from retired Cardinal Corrado Ursi. Failure of the dry blood to liquify is seen by Neapoitans as a sign of bad luck and disaster to come. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I cross posted this to sci.misc because maybe they have a response. My questions: 1. Is this for real? 2. Where is James Randi going to be the first of next May? -- Jim Kendall jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM ISC Systems Corp. E. 22425 Appleway Liberty Lake, WA 99019
lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) (09/23/87)
> My questions: > > 1. Is this for real? I've seen a film of it on a TV special once and It was definite liquid. My wife (a non practicing Catholic) and myself ( a non practicing Lutheran) were wondering how they managed to pull it off. Considering the history of the Catholic Church and its penchant for fooling the masses (I DON"T WANT TO START A DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC!) there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas? -- j UUCP: ...ihnp4!msudoc!eecae!lawitzke ARPA: lawitzke@eecae.ee.msu.edu (35.8.8.151)
jeffl@sequent.UUCP (09/24/87)
In article <745@iscuva.ISCS.COM>, jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Kendall) writes: > The following article appeared in the sunday Sept. 20 paper: > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > DRIED BLOOD OF PATRON SAINT LIQUIFIES AS SIGN OF LOVE > > NAPLES, ITALY - The dried blood of St. Januarius reportedly turned > to liquid Saturday after Archbishop Michele Giordano implored the > city's patron saint to "give us a sign of your suffering and love". > > About 5,000 Neapolitans packing the cities cathedral prayed and > pleaded to the saint, while Giordano told them that "to re-establish > the dominion of good over bad, we must suffer". > (Remainder of article deleted) > My questions: > > 1. Is this for real? > > 2. Where is James Randi going to be the first of next May? And one more ... 3. How long before Michael Jackson tries to buy it for his home freak show? Jeff (Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.) "I know it's true. I saw it on T.V." -- John Fogerty
mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) (09/26/87)
My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these. The issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one. It is a religious one. This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup. It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church. There is nothing useful whatsoever that can be said on this topic in "sci.misc". You can only offend people. So drop it immediately, or move to "soc.religion". Mark Stevans cci632!mark
daver@felix.UUCP (Dave Richards) (09/26/87)
In article <2901@eecae.UUCP> lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) writes: >there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas? Ever heard of ice melting after being out of the freezer for awhile? (now I suppose you couldn't figure out how to get red ice.) But seriously folks: What I'm curious about is what it looks like before liquifying. Is it a pile of powder or what? Considering that blood is something like 95% water, a goblet of blood would dry to a very small amount of residue on the bottom. And conversely, a goblet full of dried blood would probably expand to more than a gallon if reconstituted. You can imagine the mess! Dave
robert@uop.UUCP (09/27/87)
In article <2901@eecae.UUCP>, lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) writes: > there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas? ok latin folks, don't kill me for misspelllllinnnggggsssss but hokus pokus comes from the catholic mass... it is hockus corpus mae-us (roughly translates this is my body) in fact it is all wrapped up in the ideas of transsubstantiation.. but this is sci.misc.... the "hokus pokus" is the little "magic" said to change the bread into the body of Christ in the Catholic mass.
edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu (Eddie Wyatt) (09/27/87)
In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes: > My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these. The > issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one. It is a religious > one. This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup. > > It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff > Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit > unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church. > > There is nothing useful whatsoever that can be said on this topic in > "sci.misc". You can only offend people. So drop it immediately, or move > to "soc.religion". > > Mark Stevans > cci632!mark The matter is not totally religous!! If the phenomenon can be explained totally by the physical properties of the enviroment, then the topic of the descussion is science. What I've seen are a few people offering political and pyschological explanations for the event which are not totally orthogonal to science. Scientists have been fooled before, so checking out the posiblity that the event is a hoax is a reasonable search path to take in investigating the event. Besides, if you don't like it, you know where the 'n' key is!! -- Eddie Wyatt e-mail: edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu
lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) (09/28/87)
> > issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one. It is a religious > one. This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup. I think the point of the posting was asking the people who read sci.misc (assuming they are scientifically informed) If they could explain the "solid to liquid" question with an explanation using some sort of other compound, mixture, etc other than blood which could be used to pull this off. -- j UUCP: ...ihnp4!msudoc!eecae!lawitzke ARPA: lawitzke@eecae.ee.msu.edu (35.8.8.151)
lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) (09/28/87)
> What I'm curious about is what it looks like before liquifying. Is it a
From the film I saw it is kept in a box with doors similar to what is
used in a Catholic Church to hold the communion ware. The dried blood
is actually in a tube about 6" long and about 2" in diameter. The liquid
blood uses about the same volume as the solid blood. I don't think it
was supposed to be "dried blood" as in dehydrated but solidfied as in
clotted.
--
j UUCP: ...ihnp4!msudoc!eecae!lawitzke
ARPA: lawitzke@eecae.ee.msu.edu (35.8.8.151)jj@alice.UUCP (09/28/87)
OK. I don't know what sort of material would work, but let's hypothesize a wax, colored red, that is a plastic solid at 95 degrees F, and a liquid at 100 degrees F. It's hardly impossible to make such a substance. One might also use a solvent-solid pair that passes a phase boundary due to temperature, or , or ... Probably any stage magician would know. I'm not one, but I do know enough chemestry to guess what sorts of things would work. -- TEDDY BEARS HAVE *GREEN* EYES! "...Farewell even to our Scottish name, so ..." (ihnp4;allegra;research)!alice!jj Copyright JJ 1987. All rights to mail reserved, USENET redistribution otherwise granted to those who allow free redistritution.
jeffl@sequent.UUCP (Jeff Lindorff ) (09/28/87)
In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes: > It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff > Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit > unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church. > I don't know what it was that lit your blowtorch Mr. Stevans, but I, for one am not going to be accused of anything I didn't do. If you had read my contribution (talk.rumors #1216) to the original posting, you would have found NOTHING in it that would constitute 'ridicule' of the Catholic Church. The ONLY thing ridiculed in my posting was Mr. Michael Jackson's penchant for collecting unusual stuff at any price. You remember Mr. Jackson, don't you? He's the same guy that tried to buy the Elephant Man's skeleton, and (supposedly) the remains of the space shuttle astronauts. Mr. Kendall (talk.rumors #1214) will have to defend himself, but I see no ridicule of ANYTHING in his posting. All he did was to post a copy of a newspaper article and pose a couple of questions, neither of which seemed to ridicule anyone or anything. Let's be a little bit more careful with the flames, Mr. Stevans. Ordinarily, I wouldn't post a response to something like this, I'd e-mail. But if you're going to accuse in public, I'm going to respond in public in all groups where the accusation appeared. Apologies to other groups for the cross-postings. End (hopefully) of discussion. Jeff (Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.) "I know it's true. I saw it on T.V." -- John Fogerty Jeff (Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.) "I know it's true. I saw it on T.V." -- John Fogerty
jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Kendall) (09/29/87)
In article <1045@ius1.cs.cmu.edu> edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu (Eddie Wyatt) writes: >In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes: >> My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these. > The matter is not totally religous!! If the phenomenon can be explained >totally by the physical properties of the enviroment, then the topic >of the descussion is science. What I've seen are a few people offering >political and pyschological explanations for the event which are >not totally orthogonal to science. Scientists have been fooled before, >so checking out the posiblity that the event is a hoax is a reasonable >search path to take in investigating the event. > > Besides, if you don't like it, you know where the 'n' key is!! > >-- > > Eddie Wyatt Thankyou Eddie!! I was going to send Mister Stevans a hot spout of flame for his retort, but then I figured the guy wasn't worth the effort if he can't take an objective view peoples curiosity. I wasn't trying to slam anybody....I was looking for a rational explaination of the posted article. Speaking of rational explanations - I've gotten several email replies on this subject that seem to be pretty plausible.. but none that can totally explain why people see the blood as a liquid. I'm sure that there were witnesses that were close enough to the event that they could differentiate between a mobile liquid and a mobile powder that APPEARS liquid. A liquid would coat the ampule whereas a powder would not (or would it?). -- Jim Kendall jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM ISC Systems Corp. E. 22425 Appleway Liberty Lake, WA 99019
dlp@ih1ap.UUCP (09/29/87)
The blood of this Saint was supposedly bottled in liquid form, which then hardened. On certain occaisions, the blood turns to 'liquid' as if a miracle had occured. No one opens the bottle to see if it really IS a liquid. On the comment of volume difference due to water loss, it has been my experience that soda bottles of blood clot very quickly, then dry out, leaving the same basic volume of material with lots of tiny air pockets. Don't ask unless you want to know. Random
tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (10/08/87)
In article <7324@alice.UUCP> jj@alice.UUCP writes: >Probably any stage magician would know. I'm not one, but >I do know enough chemestry to guess what sorts of things >would work. I'm not a stage magician either, but I do know enough about it to know that non-prestidigitators are usually too fast to pin magic tricks on exotic substances when the real magic is the time-tested switcheroo. Most weird substances are not all that useful for tricks, being unpredictable and toxic and requiring special education to go messing about with. Considered as a magic trick, the blood liquification is trivial, a simple switch. Two vials, one appearance. -- Tim Maroney, {ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg}!hoptoad!tim (uucp) hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)
taras@utgpu.UUCP (10/10/87)
Never mind the tenets of any religion. The blood should be tested to ascertain it's origin by scientific means. This mean of course typing and examination by a qualified hematologist. I would suggest conducting test for various viruses and antibodies, these same tests should be conducted of those who live in the immediate locale. I suggest that the results would be very interesting. My theory is that the substance that is claimed has a rather earthly origin. It would also be intesting to see if no antibodies existed or if antibodies existed of another era or if antibodies that match some of the locals existed. The policy of the Catholic Church is to ignore such phenomena, considering the amount of fraud associated with such claims in the past. This has however never prevented hoards of worshipers from heading towards theses self proclaimed shrines in effort to make closer contact with their God, regardless of whether the phenomena was legitimate or not. In other words, before anymore is said, lets test this thing make sure that it is for real. -- Taras Pryjma uucp: taras@gpu.utcs bitnet: tpryjma@utoronto Bell: +1 (416) 536-2821 Fear is never boring. hmmm. hmmmm. YEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Damn those trap doors! Yup. Fear is never boring.