Gueules cassées (broken faces) is a French expression for facially disfigured servicemen that originated in World War I. Colonel Yves Picot is said to have coined the term when he was refused entry to a gathering for the war-disabled. == Background == Trench warfare protected the bodies but left the heads exposed. The introduction of the steel helmet in 1915 made head injuries more 'survivable', but this reduction of mortality meant a mutilated life for thousands.At the start of the war those wounded to the head were generally not considered able to survive and they would not usually be 'helped...

Amanda Claire Marian Charteris, Countess of Wemyss and March (née Feilding; born 30 January 1943), also known as Amanda Feilding, is an English drug policy reformer, lobbyist, and research coordinator. In 1998, she founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness, later renamed to the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which initiates, directs, and supports neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition. She has also co-authored over 50 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Foundation. The central aim of her...

Heartbeat in the Brain is a 1970 documentary film produced and directed by Amanda Feilding, an advocate of trepanation. It was filmed by Joseph Mellen. == Summary == In the film, Feilding, a 27-year-old student at the time, drills a hole in her forehead with a dentist's drill. In the documentary, surgical scenes alternate with motion studies of Feilding's pet pigeon Birdie. == Release and rediscovery == In 1978, Feilding screened the movie at the Suydam Gallery in New York. More than one audience member fainted during the climax.The 1998 documentary A Hole in the Head contains footage f...

Glass delusion is an external manifestation of a psychiatric disorder recorded in Europe mainly in the late Middle Ages and early modern period (15th to 17th centuries). People feared that they were made of glass "and therefore likely to shatter into pieces". == Delusion == In the 16th and 17th centuries of Europe, glass became a valuable commodity. It was regarded as a magical, alchemical object. Associated with fragility and luxury, glass influenced the way noblemen of early Europe perceived their esteemed positions in society. This fixation on a novel material contributed to the manifestation...

A gopnik (Russian: гопник, romanized: gopnik, pronounced [ˈɡopnʲɪk]; Ukrainian: гопник, romanized: hopnyk; Belarusian: гопнік, romanized: hopnik) is a member of a delinquent subculture in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and in other former Soviet republics — a young man (or a woman, a gopnitsa) of working-class background who usually lives in Russian suburban areas and comes from a family of poor education and income.The collective noun is gopota (Russian: гопота). The subculture of gopota has its roots in working-class communities in the late Russian Empire and gradually emerged underground during the...

Tomás de Torquemada (14 October 1420 – 16 September 1498), also anglicized as Thomas of Torquemada, was a Castilian Dominican friar and first Grand Inquisitor of the Tribunal of the Holy Office (otherwise known as the Spanish Inquisition). The Spanish Inquisition was a group of ecclesiastical prelates that was created in 1478, and which was charged with the somewhat ill-defined task of "upholding Catholic religious orthodoxy" within the lands of the newly formed union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon. The lands of this newly formed royal union are now known as the Kingdom of Spain. Mainly...

In mathematical logic, Russell's paradox (also known as Russell's antinomy) is a set-theoretic paradox discovered by the British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell in 1901. Russell's paradox shows that every set theory that contains an unrestricted comprehension principle leads to contradictions. The paradox had already been discovered independently in 1899 by the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo. However, Zermelo did not publish the idea, which remained known only to David Hilbert, Edmund Husserl, and other academics at the University of Göttingen. At the end of the 1890s, Georg...