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There are many strange customs practiced by people around the world.
Some might jump from a 100 foot stand or get stung by ants to prove they are growing up.
Others get covered in cinnamon or pepper as adults unlucky in love.
Men jump over babies and women throw them off buildings to protect their souls from
harm.
Others fling tomatoes or oranges in the streets to honor the gods or reenact a myth.
Some even create feasts for monkeys or bury a fake sardine to symbolize death.
Let’s discuss some of the weirdest things people do in this episode of The Infographics
Show, Strange Customs Around the World.
In the transition between child and adult most experience a few growing pains along
the way.
But these are nothing compared to what is customary for some young boys in the Amazon
to go through.
First, they must get bullet ants and place them in a pair of gloves.
Then they put these on 20 different times, dancing as they are stung by the ants over
and over again.
The pain from the ants is described as 30 times worse than the sting of a bee and each
glove is swarming with them.
Once they have done this successfully, they can consider themselves a man.
Another extreme type of test is expected of boys on a Vanuatuan island.
They must prove their ability to conquer fear by a practice called land diving.
This requires climbing a 100-foot tower of wood and jumping head-first down to the ground,
escaping certain death only because of vines tied around their ankles.
In Indonesia, young people of both genders participate in a unique custom of their own
to transition from wild children to being considered fully human.
It requires that their canine teeth are ground down.
This is done without any form of pain relief and they are expected to sit quietly without
a sound.
It is believed that pointy teeth will prevent them from reaching heaven as they will be
mistaken for wild animals.
Of course, with time children become adults and most adults will at some point search
for love.
Beware if you are unlucky in this area and remain single in Denmark.
In some areas the custom is to go up to anyone unmarried on their 25th birthday and fling
handfuls of cinnamon on them.
If you think that’s bad, just wait until you’re still single at the age of 30.
This is when you will get covered in spicy bursts of pepper.
Germany has its own strange customs in this area, too.
When single German men turn 30 in Bremen, they must sweep cathedral steps to organ music
until a girl takes pity on them and gives them a kiss.
But don’t think those that find love are in the clear.
Once a more widespread custom but still practiced by the Tujia people of China, a woman must
cry for a whole month before her wedding day.
Once it is dark, she will walk around and sob for an hour each night.
After ten days her mother will join in and cry along.
Yet ten days after this her grandmother will start crying, too.
If the bride has any sisters or aunts, you guessed it, they must also follow along.
This is meant to make the wedding day seem just that much happier by comparison.
In Germany, it is customary to throw a Polterabend party a few weeks before a wedding.
During this guests show up and break a bunch of porcelain and other pottery.
It is then up to the future husband and wife to clean up the mess.
This can last all night, with guests continuing to smash cups, plates, and bowls after the
couple has just cleaned everything up.
It is believed this will prepare the two for the messes that life will eventually throw
at them.
In Scotland there’s a similarly messy custom known as the Blackening.
This is when the future bride and groom are surprised, tied up, and blackened.
In other words, they are covered in flour, custards, dirt, or soot to become as dirty
as possible.
After they take a shower or two, it is believed they will have more luck.
In Greece when a couple actually gets married those attending will spit.
They won’t actually hit the bride and groom, because though it looks like they’re really
doing it, it’s really just symbolic.
Making a spitting motion and sound three times is thought to protect against evil spirits.
Though rather strange, Indonesia practices an even crazier, and rather uncomfortable,
custom once a couple’s married.
The newlyweds are kept in a room for three days and three nights and not allowed to use
the bathroom and guarded to ensure they don’t cheat.
Once this time is up, they take a bath, and begin a normal married life.
Strange customs continue around the world in regard to pregnancy and family.
In China, for example, the partner of a pregnant woman is expected to carry her over burning
coals.
Though painful for the one doing the carrying, it will ensure the future mother has a more
pleasant and swift labor.
Then, once born, cultures have a different approach to celebrating birth and providing
a newborn protection.
In Spain during the festival of El Colacho, babies are placed on blankets in the street.
Men dressed as red and yellow devils run around and fight pious men dressed in black.
The men then jump over the babies, which is meant to keep them safe from sin and disease.
Though not exactly safe, in India they take it to a whole different level of extreme.
A few Hindu and Muslim parents wanting the same spiritual protection for their children
will throw their babies off the top of 50 foot buildings.
When all goes according to plan, the babies are caught in a sheet below.
While some customs can be unpleasant or scary, others can be more fun, though they also can
get a bit messy.
An example of this is La Tomatina, also known as the World’s Biggest Food Fight.
This takes place on the last Wednesday of August in the Spanish town of Bunol.
Thousands flock to this event from all around the world.
However, due to limited space, only 20,000 get inside.
These lucky few are given over one hundred tons of over-ripe tomatoes to fling in the
streets.
Believe it or not, though just an hour, La Tomatina makes quite a mess and it takes fire
trucks to clean it up afterwards.
While some believe La Tomatina first began as the escalation of a small food fight, a
tomato toss during a parade, or the response to a performance by an ungifted musician,
its origins are not exactly known.
Its purpose, on the other hand, is.
The event is meant to honor Luis Bertran and the Virgin Mary, Bunol’s patron saints.
The Battle of Oranges in Italy is a custom based on a much less light-hearted event.
It is meant to symbolize a myth about a horrible marquis who tried to rape a woman who instead
cut off his head.
After he died, the people of the town staged an uprising and stormed his castle.
This revolt is what is symbolized through three days of citrus-based fights.
It begins when one woman is picked who pretends to the be the one who killed the marquis.
Then nine teams are created to represent both commoners and royalty.
Dressed in their battle best, they fight in the streets of Ivrea that have been set aside
as a makeshift battleground.
For three whole days before Fat Tuesday begins, every person, man, woman, or child throws
oranges at the opposing teams and symbolically kills them on contact.
While an airborne orange doesn’t sound like such a threat, it is not uncommon for many
to develop bruises, cuts, and other wounds.
Not as big as La Tomatina, the Battle of the Oranges is Italy’s largest food fight.
More than 500,000 pounds of fruit are used and pulp covers the people and the streets.
While many in La Tomatina and The Battle of Oranges find themselves running from flying
food, the English go a different direction in a custom practiced at Cooper’s Hill.
The Cooper Hill Cheese Roll competition is an annual event of a quite unusual type.
It requires participants to hurtle down a steep hill to catch a wheel of cheese.
However, like battles with an orange, this event has its own types of hazards.
Chris Anderson, the man who set a new record by scoring 22 cheeses in 14 years, recently
tore his left calf during the last 2018 competition.
It’s no wonder people get hurt when the speed of the cheese has clocked in at 70 miles
per hour.
And, on top of this, the competition itself is quite intense.
Anderson had to race against another participant who wore something similar to a Speedo with
boots to give himself the benefit of near-nude aerodynamics.
But why should it be people who have all of the food-filled fun?
An interesting custom in Lopburi, Thailand includes some monkeys in the mayhem.
In this part of the world the monkey is revered as a descendant of a brave Hindu deity that
rescued a woman from a demon.
As their reward they receive a feast on November 25th of each year.
This includes over 4,000 pounds of food, and such things as watermelons, pineapples, and
bananas.
Monkeys are free to nibble on these treats while grabbing a soda to drink.
While some cultures enjoy sweet and succulent foods, in some places they serve something
a bit different.
An example of this is Hakal, a specially prepared dish served in Iceland.
It is made of pieces of Greenland shark that have been left out for at least six months.
The reason this is necessary is because the shark has no urinary tract so its’ wastes
build up to toxic levels in its meat.
Another potentially dangerous treat is consumed in the regions of southeast Asia.
It is made from the pangium edule fruit with lethal amounts of hydrogen cyanide.
After its shell is removed it must be boiled and then fermented in leaves for a month.
If this procedure is not properly followed, a little taste of the fruit will be your last.
When someone does die, death and burial customs can be pretty strange as well.
The Yanomami have a tradition where they take the body of the deceased and burn it.
While there’s nothing so unusual about this first step, it gets much weirder very quickly.
After the body has burned, they then blacken their faces with its ash.
Following this, they collect any remaining bones and turn them into a powder that they
mix with bananas.
This makes a kind of banana soup and everyone eats it together.
To the Yanomami people this is the only known way someone who dies can reach eternal peace.
In Madagascar, they have a strange after-death custom of their own.
They exhume their ancestors’ remains every five to seven years and replace their old
clothes with new ones.
Then, stranger still, those in the Merina tribe dance with the clothed corpses.
By the time the day ends they are returned back to the tomb upside down until the procedure
repeats again five to seven years later.
Though no one has died, at the end of carnival season, Spaniards engage in symbolic mourning.
This is supposed to signal the end of festivities and the beginning of Lent.
On Ash Wednesday a procession known as the Burial of the Sardine walks through the streets
carrying a large fake fish.
They walk through Madrid until they get to the burial grounds and at this point they
bury the sardine.
The world is full of many strange and wonderful different ways of doing things, but we think
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Which of these customs is the strangest?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called What A Dollar Gets You Around The World!
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