The Fablieaux

If you’ve ever doubted that mental illness can be passed from parent to child, a woman in China’s Sichuan province just proved you wrong.

Who knows where Lin Zongxiu’s information came from, but someone, somewhere had informed her that soup made from a man’s head was a remedy for psychiatric problems.

Not only did Ms. Lin believe this nugget of folk wisdom, but she decided to put it to the test.

On the one hand, you can’t blame her: She was presumably desperate to help her 25-year-old daughter, who had suffered from mental illness for years. On the other hand, well, let’s just say you don’t pop into your corner grocery and buy a man-head. The implications are obvious.

More »

A German court fined an unemployed man 900 euros ($1,227) Tuesday for knocking the head off a waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin museum.

Minutes after the Madame Tussauds museum opened in the German capital in July, the 42-year-old pushed past security staff and ripped off its head. The man, an ex-policeman, said he found it inexplicable that the Nazi leader would be found only some 500 meters from Berlin’s Holocaust memorial. The man appeared perplexed when he discovered the wax likeness was not Hitler himself.

The waxwork of a glum-looking Hitler in a mock bunker stirred debate in Germany even before it went on display. Critics argued it was tasteless to display a replica of the man who unleashed World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe’s Jews.

Madame Tussauds said the museum avoided politics, arguing Hitler stood for a significant part of German history and his waxwork therefore had a legitimate part in the exhibition.

The restored figure was returned to the museum in September and is now displayed behind a glass wall.

About 25 workers spent about four months on the original waxwork, using more than 2,000 pictures and pieces of archive material (like that shown here) and also guided by a model of the “Fuehrer” in the London branch of Madame Tussauds.