Strange Customs of the World

'The Coopers Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake' is an annual event held on the Spring Bank Holiday at Coopers Hill,, near Gloucester in the Cotswolds region of England. BBC Gloucester Cheese Rolling It is traditionally by and for the people of Brockworth - the local village, but now people from all over the world take part. The event takes its name from the hill on which it occurs.

The Royal Shrovetide Football Match occurs annually on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England. It has been played since at least the 12th century, though sadly the exact origins of the game are unknown due to a fire at the Royal Shrovetide Committee office in the 1890s which destroyed the earliest records. However, one of the most popular origin theories suggests the macabre notion that the 'ball' was originally a severed head tossed into the waiting crowd following an execution.

Category: Image - :RoyalShrovetideFootballMob.jpg|thumb|right|A view from inside the hug taken at the 2006 Royal Shrovetide Football Match by Gary Austin

(More photos available via External Links below)

Category: File - :Wonderferret gurns.jpg|thumb|A male gurning.

A gurn or chuck is a distorted facial expression, and a verb to describe the action. A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip.

The English Dialect Dictionary, compiled by Joseph Wright, defines the word gurn as "to snarl as a dog; to look savage; to distort the countenance," while the Oxford English Dictionary suggests the derivation may originally be Scottish, related to "grin." In Northern Ireland, the verb "to gurn" means "to cry," and crying is often referred to as "gurnin'."

The term is also used to describe the jaw-jutting facial expression of people under the influence of the drug ecstasy.

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:''?Olympicks? redirects here. For the 1894 revival, see Olympic Games.

Category: Image - :CotswoldGames01.jpg|thumb|250px|A woodcut from 1636 depicting the Cotswold Games

The Cotswold Olimpick Games are an annual public celebration of games and sports held in the Cotswolds in the West Country of England. The games began sometime between 1604 and 1612 and have continued on and off to the present day. Different sources provide different starting dates for the games, but most sources refer to 1612.

Conkers or conker is a game traditionally played mostly by children in Britain, Ireland and some former British colonies using the seeds of horse-chestnut trees - the name conker is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns to strike each other's conker until one breaks.

Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals ? especially to birds of prey. The location of the sky burial preparation and place of execution are understood in the Vajrayana traditions as charnel grounds. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator (), which literally means, "giving alms to the birds."

The majority of Tibetans adhere to Buddhism, which teaches rebirth. There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel. Birds may eat it, or nature may let it decompose. So the function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. In much of Tibet the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and with fuel and timber scarce, a sky burial is often more practical than cremation.