Fatal television
An episode of the 1970s television series The Goodies killed a man. He died laughing.
Category: Arts
The Church of One Tree
The Church of One Tree in Santa Rosa, California, was built in 1873 out of a single giant redwood tree.
Invisible art
The French artist Yves Klein sold empty space – an invisible “zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility.” Buyers paid in gold, half of which Klein would throw into the Seine River.
The houses have eyes
The houses in the Transylvanian city Sibiu are watching you.
Rachmaninoff’s All by Myself
The Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff has a songwriter credit for the power ballad “All by Myself.”
Book of lonely vowels
Christian Bök’s 2001 anthology Eunoia contains five chapters that each use just one of the five vowels.
Mary and the lamb
Sarah Josepha Hale published “Mary had a Little Lamb” in 1830. Forty-six years later, Mary Tyler claimed to be the original Mary.
The doubters and the oracle bones
The Doubting Antiquity School were sceptics of ancient Chinese texts’ historical veracity… until the oracle bones were deciphered.
The lost bell of Shwedagon Pagoda
A Portuguese mercenary stole the largest working bell in history from Shwedagon Pagoda, and then lost it in the waters of the Yangon River.
Kiln cones
In a kiln, a set of three drooping cones can monitor the effects of temperature on the pottery items being fired.
Transylvanian school of witchcraft and wizardry
The 19th century Scottish author Emily Gerard collected local legends about a school of black magic high in the mountains of Transylvania.
Grace from slavery
John Newton was a press-ganged sailor, a slave, a slave-ship captain, an Anglican priest, an abolitionist, and the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Little Women and the mummy’s curse
At the same time she was writing the novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott also wrote one of the first stories to feature an Egyptian mummy’s curse.
Disney parodies
Disney animation has been parodied for more than half a century, including the classics Bambi Meets Godzilla, Mickey Mouse in Vietnam, and an Italian satire of Fantasia in which alien life evolves from a soda bottle.
Mozart’s missing movement
Mozart’s famous piece Ein kleine Nachtmusik has four movements – but in his personal catalogue, Mozart recorded five.
Uncombable hair
People suffering from Uncombable Hair Syndrome have silvery hair that resists all attempts to comb, brush, or otherwise groom it.