27 Unbelievable Local Traditions - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.214)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that every year in Gloucestershire, England, thousands of people gather to chase a 7-pound wheel of cheese down Cooper's Hill

Whoever catches it wins the cheese itself, but it's harder than it appears. The moving cheese can reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour, enough to seriously injure people

Anyway, that's the first of many unbelievable local traditions I'm going to share with you today

Every year in Lopburi, Thailand, a monkey buffet festival is held where an elaborate buffet is made

And I know what you're thinking, but no, the food is not made of monkeys. It's made for monkeys

In fact, up to 2,000 of them show up to eat delicious food, and they even manage to drink out of soda cans

Apparently, in 2011, buying and preparing all of the stuff cost $16,000

Now, I'm sure you've heard of the running of the bulls, which began in the 13th century. Now it takes place all over the world, but the most popular one is in Pamplona, where thousands of people participate

Like, people run through the streets alongside actual bulls, which originally was just a way of getting them from, like, the corral to the bullfighting ring

Now it's like sort of a way of having a party except kind of a deadly party

Another unsafe local Spanish tradition is baby jumping in the village of Castillo de Murcia

For the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi, which is not just a town in Texas, it's also a holiday celebrating the Eucharist

The kolacho, a man who represents the devil, jumps over babies who are less than a year old

No one quite knows why this baby jumping started, but it's been going on since 1620

Anyway, speaking of terrifying children, there's Japan's Namahage Festival. Men dress in scary masks to look like Namahage, a sort of demon who knocks on doors and yells things like

Any crying kids out there? This is supposed to keep kids from being disobedient. You know, it's all in good fun

Okay, Mac to Spain, La Tomatina, or the tomato throwing festival, takes place every August in Buñol

The day begins with people trying to get a ham off the top of a pole that's covered in soap

I imagine it like that scene in Mulan where she's trying to climb to the top of the pole

except I'll make a man out of you isn't playing in the background, and, you know, ham

Ham? Better put a quarter in that staff pork chop party fund. Anyway, eventually trucks arrive with thousands of tomatoes and people throw them at each other

If mass tomato throwing sounds dangerous to you, you should probably avoid Ivrea, Italy

because that's where the battle of the oranges takes place. The exact origins of this orange throwing war are unclear but citizens are fairly certain that it symbolizes some kind of rebelling against noblemen Anyway unlike Lotamatina orange throwers are divided into teams Also apparently there are ways to watch the spectacle without actually getting like pelted by one of the million oranges that the town stocks for the event

A million oranges! You think they're like, huh, we have a million oranges, what should we do

I guess we could feed hundreds of thousands of people, or we could throw them at each other

Moving on to something a little less dangerous. In Austin, Texas, there's an annual festival for Eeyore's birthday party

It started in the English department at the University of Texas in honor of a story in which Eeyore thinks that Winnie the Pooh and company have forgotten his birthday, but actually they throw him an awesome surprise party

The idea has spread and it's become like a city-wide party for charity. And Eeyore

In 1945, Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, beheaded a rooster named Mike because it was dinner time

However, despite having been decapitated, Mike the rooster went on to live for 18 more months

It turned out that Olsen's axe missed Mike's jugular vein. A blood clot kept him alive, Olsen fed him with a medicine dropper

Anyway, the town of Fruta now has an annual Mike the Headless Chicken Festival, including a 5k run and a peep-eating contest

Peep-eating contest. That's a contest I could win. Every October, to celebrate the anniversary of the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia, thousands of people gather there for a Bridge Day

It's actually the only day of the year that people are allowed to walk on the bridge, and many base jumpers take this opportunity to jump 876 feet into the New River Gorge

Base, of course, stands for Bravery, Anyone Shouldn't E-Tempt. If you'd rather stay on the ground, you might consider attending the World Toe Wrestling Championships, which have been going on in Ashbourne, Derbyshire since the 1970s

It's a lot like arm wrestling, except the competitors interlock their big toes

Don't worry though, there is a hygiene check beforehand. That actually does very little to appease my worry

You might have found the one thing I want to do less than base jump. Oaxaca, Mexico holds a sculpture competition known as the Night of the Radishes

Artists carve radishes into figures, usually people, and the vegetables are sometimes like

six pounds and twenty inches tall. What started as an attempt to show citizens that the mineral-rich mud in South Korea was

a good ingredient for cosmetic products, resulted in the Boerjung Mud Festival. It started in

1998 and now over a million people attend the annual festival, which unsurprisingly

revolves around things like mudslides and body painting. You know, it's like Woodstock

99. Meredith didn't get that joke, neither did the rest of our audience, but I enjoyed it Speaking of mud you can find the World Bog Snorkeling Championships in Wales in the town of Mark I not going to try to say anything in Welsh just put the town name right there That town So therein the person who crosses a 60 long bog first wins

But you can't actually swim or use traditional swimming moves, so you've just kind of got to wade slash doggy paddle. Why would anyone do this

Now, the straw bear has roots all over Europe, but I'm just going to talk about the Straw Bear Festival in Whittlesea, England. I apologize to all of our German viewers

So in the 1800s, a man dressed in straw would go around town and dance for money or food

which was outlawed in 1909, but then the tradition was brought back in 1980, and now he has his

own festival. Alright, let's talk about wife carrying for a minute. Wife carrying is a sport all over the world, but you can actually find the world championships

of it every year in Finland. Men carry a woman, she doesn't actually have to be anyone's wife, through an obstacle course

slash race. And the rumors are true, the winner's prize includes the wife's weight in beer

Paul Bunyan Days in Fort Bragg, California celebrates the legendary lumberjack character

with a huge celebration, although if I were you, I might steer clear of things like the

20-foot axe throw and chainsaw bucking. In Jaipur, India, there's an elephant festival with activities like elephant polo and an

elephant beauty contest. This is an homage to the ancient Indian royalty, who used to ride on elephants painted gold

or silver, but the festival has been cancelled for the past two years because of animal rights

concerns and it may not continue. Which might be okay. Admittedly, I'm not an elephant, but when I paint my naked body entirely in gold, it's

just not fun for anyone. A kinetic sculpture is a sculpture that can move on surfaces like mud or pavement, even

water, so it only makes sense that Humboldt County, California holds a kinetic sculpture

race that's considered the triathlon of the art world. It also makes sense, of course, because Humboldt County, California is the capital of marijuana

production in the United States. Anyway, participants and their beautiful bikes cover 42 miles over

the course of three days. Another race is the Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race in Brawby, North Yorkshire, England. This

was invented by a guy named Sam Thackeray in the 90s. He was at a pub, saw a waitress

carrying Yorkshire pudding, and thought it'd be awesome to float down a river in a Yorkshire

pudding boat. The boats are made of flour, water, eggs, and then some varnish for waterproofing

and then children add oars to race them down a river. That sounds safe

A fiesta has been going on in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1712, but its best-known tradition

burning a zazobra, only started in 1924. Zazobra which means anxiety in Spanish is a 50 marionette that weighs 2 pounds It represents all of last year problems so it burned every year in front of approximately 32 people Portschalk Austria is home to the World Body Painting Festival which has occurred in Austria

since 1998. It's just what it sounds like. Artists compete in different categories of body painting, including ones for face painting

and UV effects. I'm sorry, do they actually paint themselves with ultraviolet radiation

That seems like a terrible idea. The Yooka-Laylee Festival started in Oahu, Hawaii in 1971, and now 20,000 people gather

every year for the five-hour long festival. According to its website, performers include

ukulele artists and celebrities, which is to say YouTubers. And yes, we do have a ukulele

playing hula girl on the wall of magic. It has everything! In 1950, Sapporo Japan saw its first snow festival, which consisted of six high school

students making snow sculptures. But nowadays, around 200 snow statues are made every year

and two million people show up to admire them. Some of the statues reach up to 50 feet high

I'm going to finish by talking about some parades, like the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island, where over a thousand people dressed as mermaids participate

After Hurricane Sandy, the Mermaid Parade almost had to be canceled, but a Kickstarter raised $100,000 so it could go on

But if you're not interested in seeing a thousand mermaids, maybe you'd enjoy the Parade of a Thousand Clowns in Vincennes, Indiana

This is in honor of Red Skelton, who was born in Vincennes and was a clown before becoming a famous comedian

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that in Riga, Latvia, there is a Go Blonde parade

Why? Well, according to Marika Guderta, the president of the Latvian Association of Blondes

quote, We have to cheer people up. We know there is an economic crisis

but small things like a playground or a blonde parade can cheer up the residents of Riga

Why not? It's true, friends. It really is the small things. You know, playgrounds, blonde parades, etc

Anyway, thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people

Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week's question comes from BFYOBRYAN12 who asks

What language do a deaf person's thoughts speak in if they were born deaf and have never heard anyone speak

Well, the short answer is it depends. I mean, on the most basic level, instead of an inner voice that is heard, it's a visual or felt voice

Some people who are born deaf think in sign language, visualizing themselves signing and or fingerspelling

And others think in written English, like seeing typed or handwritten letters. Still others think in muscle memory. So essentially it varies from person to person

If you have a mind-blowing question you'd like us to answer, please leave it below in comments. Thank you for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome