Rescued Victorian rainfall data smashes former records

From phys.org: Rescued Victorian rainfall data smashes former records.

Record-breaking Victorian weather has been revealed after millions of archived rainfall records dating back nearly 200 years were rescued by thousands of volunteers during the first COVID-19 lockdown.

The Rainfall Rescue project was launched by the University of Reading in March 2020 and offered members of the public a way of distracting themselves from the pandemic by digitally transcribing 130 years’ worth of handwritten rainfall observations from across the UK and Ireland.

Some 16,000 volunteers responded to the challenge, digitising 5.2 million observations in just 16 days. Ahead of the two-year anniversary of the project launch, on Saturday 26 March, these records have now been made publicly available in the official Met Office national record, extending it back 26 years to 1836. [continue]

Victorians’ Christmas parlor games will leave you burned, bruised, and puking

An Atlas Obscura article makes it clear that the Victorians were insane.

Indeed, in the early years of Queen Victoria’s rule, Christmas rivaled Spring Break for sheer bawdiness and self-destruction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the bonkers Victorian parlor game of Snapdragon.

Traditionally played on Christmas Eve, players of Snapdragon must find themselves a broad, shallow bowl, and then prepare to risk their health. Into this bowl should be poured two dozen raisins. If raisins are hard to come by, almonds, grapes or plums will suffice. You should then pour a bottle of brandy into the bowl so that the raisins bob up and down like drowning flies. Place the bowl on a sturdy table, turn the lights down low, and then, with appropriate panache, ignite the brandy.

To play Snapdragon, arrange your family and friends around the blazing bowl so that their faces are lit in a demonic fashion and then, one by one, take turns plunging your hands into the flames in order to try and grab a raisin. If you can accomplish this, promptly extinguish the flaming raisin by popping it into your mouth and eating it. [continue]

Oh my. That rather out-does beer pong.

The Independent’s Christmas fun: Victorian parlour games page explains snapdragon, and goes on to tell us about other games, like this one:

If family relations have become slightly fraught over Christmas, you may be looking for a game involving rather more explicit violence, in which case you’ve come to the right paragraph: Moriarty is the game you’re after. [continue]

That article has lots more you’ll want to read.

Christmas parties these days are pretty tame events, all in all.