WEIRD FACTS ABOUT
WAX
On 1 December 1761, Marie Tussaud, founder of Madame Tussauds Waxworks, was born in Strasbourg, France. She learnt wax modelling from her mother's employer, Swiss physician Dr Philippe Curtius, who made wax models for his anatomy classes.
During the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud worked making death masks of guillotine victims.
Wax figures at Tussauds are made two per cent larger than their subjects because wax shrinks.
The 1953 horror film House Of Wax was made in 3D, though its director Andre de Toth was blind in one eye and could not appreciate the effects.
In medieval times pigment from human earwax was used to illustrate illuminated manuscripts.
Human earwax comes in two types.
Ninety-seven per cent of Europeans and Africans have 'wet' earwax but East Asians have 'dry' earwax.
The gene controlling earwax type was found in 2006 by Japanese researchers, who discovered that earwax type also correlates with armpit odour.
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