The Hidden Secrets of the Moai: The Famous Easter Island Heads Also Have Bodies Too!

Practically everyone has seen the iconic images of the Easter Island heads. What you may not have known is that those Easter Island heads actually have hidden buried bodies. Archaeologists have uncovered the bodies associated with the heads and found interesting discoveries that further our knowledge of the Easter Island civilization and how they created the monoliths.

The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile. The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE. A bit of an aside, but CE refers to the "Common Era" and sometimes replaces the use of AD in historical and archaeological communities.

The reason the bodies have been hidden underground for so long is that the statues were build on the side of a volcano, which helpfully erupted all over the statues and buried them up to their necks.

Archaeologists have studied the statues on the island for about a century, and have actually known about the hidden bodies since the earliest excavations in 1914. The first photographs of the hidden torsos emerged in 2012, two years after Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, began excavating the monoliths with the help of local Rapa Nui people. These amazing pictures below show moment archaeologists discovered Easter Island statues were covered in tattoos:

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Reading in the Cabin, 1955

Two women read while laying on bunk beds. They are identified as players with the Shepherd of the Hills Theater. Many dress costumes hang on the closet door and are draped across the top of the bunk.

(Photo: Missouri State Archives)

26 Wonderful Color Photographs Captured Everyday Life in Belfast in 1955

To the casual onlooker, Belfast in 1955 is a tranquil, peaceful city where trolleybuses run in a leisurely way through sparse traffic and lamplighters go about at night. Picture Post photographer Bert Hardy visited the city, wandering the bustling shipyards and lively streets.

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27 Beautiful Photos That Show What Women Wore during the 1940s

Here is a beautiful color photo collection that shows what women wore in the 1940s.

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The Fry Street Fair: A Look Back On The Annual Event of Denton, Texas in the Early 1980s

Discontinued in 2007, the Fry Street Fair was an annual event held near the University of North Texas campus and featured live music performances. It was first held in 1979, but was shut down due to costs and security concerns. Attendance reached 20,000 in its peak year.

These fascinating photos were taken by American photographer Alec Williams that documented the Fry Street Fair festivals from 1981 to 1985.

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14 Distorted Portraits of Celebrities As You've Never Seen Them

Photographs for “Distortions” series, a project that resulted in experimental portraits of celebrities and political figures.

As legend tells it, Arthur Fellig earned the nickname “Weegee” during his early career as a freelance press photographer in New York City. His apparent sixth sense for crime often led him to a scene well ahead of the police. Observers likened this sense, actually derived from tuning his radio to the police frequency, to the Ouija board, the popular fortune-telling game. Spelling it phonetically, Fellig took Weegee as his professional name.

In the late 1940s, Weegee began experimenting with photographic manipulation. His subjects were often film stars, world leaders both past and present, and figures of the art world. He even turned the camera upon himself.

He used several methods to create these “distortions.” The results are jarring caricatures of well-known faces that make us examine the notion of celebrity in a whole new way.

Although street photography remains his legacy, Weegee considered these experimental photographs his true art.

Marilyn Monroe, ca. 1960

J. Edgar Hoover, 1960s

Brigitte Bardot, 1958

Andy Warhol, 1960s

Queen Elizabeth II, 1950s

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Old Hollywood Plastic Surgery Secrets: Here Are 4 Weird Ways Classic Starlets Changed Their Faces

In Hollywood, plastic surgery is as commonplace as The Paleo Diet. There are a million different ways to tweak, chisel, or reconfigure one's visage as desired thanks to a laundry list of procedures.

The possibilities are so limitless these days, it's got us reminiscing about the golden age of celebrity. Even though they didn't live under the high-definition magnifying glass of today, Old Hollywood starlets were no less vain and thus had to get way more creative in the nip-and-tuck department.

From the up-and-coming ingénue looking to kick-start her career to the lauded actress hoping to freeze her face in time, here are a couple of ways classic Hollywood glamazons altered their famous faces.

1. The Hairline Electrolysis

Back in the heyday of Old Hollywood, hairlines had a lot of sway. In fact, Rita Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, was of Spanish descent and decided to dye her hair red and get rid of her characteristically-Latina lower hairline.

To reshape it, Hayworth underwent a year's worth of electrolysis, which consisted of using a thin metal probe to "shock" the follicle and permanently remove the hair. In the end, her hairline was an inch higher and her new look, for better or for worse, helped launch her career.

Marilyn Monroe was also notorious for undergoing electrolysis, removing her widow's peak to change her face shape.

2. The Sans-Molars Cheekbone Trick

Marlene Dietrich was famous for her cheekbones that could cut glass, but rumor has it they weren't part of her born-with-it bone structure. According to folklore, the German-American beauty had her molars removed to emphasize the hollows of her cheeks. And you thought fillers sounded unpleasant...


3. The Croydon Facelift

In case you had your doubts, Dietrich had a very high threshold pain. In addition to her dentistry tactics, she was also a fan of the Croydon Facelift method, using both surgical tape and strategically-twisted piece of hair to pull the skin up around her face.


4. The Did-She-or-Didn't-She Nose Job

Unlike today, where every star and their mother has had a nose job (we're partially kidding), it was a less popular, and more risky procedure amongst the Old Hollywood crowd. This said, rhinoplasty did happen. And it's hard to say who definitely had work done, but X-rays of Monroe's skull (weird, we know) indicated she had some type of procedure to alter the cartilage around the tip of her nose.

(This original article was published on Marie Claire)