The Magdeburg Unicorn

[Ian Thomas]

So ... waddaya think?


The Magdeburg Unicorn, on display at the Natural History Museum Madgeburg (image courtesy Sven Sachs via Twitter)


The Odd History of Germany’s “Unicorn” Fossil
aworkstation.com/the-odd-history-of-germanys-unicorn-fossil/

[dennisw]

The only unicorn I really know about is rhinoceros unicornis the one horned species of rhino. I did get into trouble for explaining to a granddaughter that the Chinese dish "Rainbow Steak" gets its name because it is made from unicorns. She was upset (too much Harry Potter).

[johannes]

Prussian naturalist Otto von Guericke (1602–1686)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg

Von Guericke was a Magdeburg patrician, he only became a subject of the elector of Brandenburg (in the holy Roman empire) - who was also duke of Prussia (in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth) in a personal union - in the very last year of his life, and when the new Brandenburger administration declared his life-long tax exemption null and void, he got the hell out of Dodge and moved to Hamburg...

[johannes]

animated films of the 1980s that were definitely too traumatizing to show to children

Mommy Fortuna got what she deserved, and what she had always wanted in the first place:

(From thw TV Tropes discussion of the Last Unicorn)
Mommy Fortuna is frequently warned that the harpy Celeaneo will kill her, or as the Unicorn puts it, "Your death sits in that cage, old woman, and she hears you." Mommy Fortuna, however, is already well aware. "Oh, she'll kill me one day or another. But she will remember forever that I held her. So there's my immortality, eh?" Later, when Mommy Fortuna is killed, Schmendrick regrets how it happened, but the Unicorn points out that it was the death that Mommy Fortuna wanted. "She chose her death long ago. It was the fate she wanted."

[Ian Thomas]

No idea wtf you just said, learned J, but it's deep. Very deep.