Thursday, February 16, 2012

Blue people?

You have heard of blue moon of Kentucky? well there are apparently blue people of Kentucky.
Being part Appalachian, Kentuckians are used to inbreeding jokes. However, there
is one joke about Kentucky and inbreeding that's funny because it's true: The
story of the Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek. The Fugates were an extended
family living in an isolated hollow in Eastern Kentucky ominously named
Troublesome Creek. Most members of the family had "hereditary
methemoglobinemia." This is an enzyme deficiency that causes a person's blood to
run vein blue as opposed to arterial red. Instead of being pink, these people
are tinted blue or purple. The condition is based on a recessive gene; the only
way to acquire it is if both your parents pass down the love. So what were the
odds of clan founder Martin Fugate taking another methemoglobinemia carrier as
his wife? He did, and they settled in Troublesome Creek sometime in the mid 19th
Century. Cousins marrying cousins was commonplace among isolated Appalachians,
so by the time a doctor discovered the Fugates in the 1960s, there were several
blue people living in the hills around Hazard.

5 comments:

  1. This man is not a Blue Fugate. He dyes his skin for attention. The Blue Fugate's are descendants of Zachariah Fugate and his wife a Smith of the Rev. Smith lineage. It is well documented by the University of Virginia. This was one couple and all are the Blue Fugate's are his descendants. There was no more cousin marriages in this family, than in most ancestral charts across the early USA.

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    1. I have read in several places the original Fugate, was Martin, who was an orphan from France.

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  2. This is Paul Karason from Washington who died in 2013. His permanent blue skin condition was caused after he took too much silver compound in a bid to relieve dermatitis symptoms. The condition is called argyria. So, this story of Blue Kentuckian is complete bunkum. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2431165/Paul-Karason-Papa-Smurf-dies-Blue-man-suffers-heart-attack.html

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  3. Hi guys, just here to say- real or not, this man do be blue as fuck tho. You can't deny it- he blue!

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