Blessing scam
You are being followed by a ghost. Put all your valuables in this bag. I’ll bless the bag to banish them. P.S. Don’t open the bag for a month afterwards.
Category: Society
Crossed letters
Lewis Carroll’s ninth rule of letter writing was to never cross your letters. But many people did it anyway.
Dreadnought vs. human torpedo
The Austrian dreadnought SMS Viribus Unitis was gifted to Yugoslavia in 1918, and then blown up by an Italian manned torpedo less than a day later.
The end of the tower
According to a popular myth, the solution of a 64-piece Tower of Hanoi puzzle will herald the end of the world.
Norse Adams and Eves
In Norse mythology, Ask and Embla were the first humans of this world. After Ragnarök, Líf and Lífþrasir will be the first humans of the next world.
Intentional crash
On the 14th lap of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, racer Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed into a wall. He did it on purpose.
Thwarting the biopirates
India prevented people patenting their foods, traditional medicines, and yoga poses by recording them all in an online database: 34 million pages’ worth.
Canal vaulting
The Dutch sport fierljeppen is just like pole vaulting. Except you don’t run with the pole, you’re allowed to climb while you’re in the air, and you’ve vaulting over a canal.
Click languages
Clicks are used in several languages of southern and eastern Africa, most famously in Xhosa. The sounds make Xhosa songs and tongue twisters sound amazing.
The biter bit
Sigurd the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, died in 892 CE when he was bitten by the severed head of his foe, Máelbrigte the Bucktoothed.
From the barricades
Twelve years before Orson Welles’ classic radio play The War of the Worlds, BBC Radio broadcast a hoax revolution in which government ministers were murdered and Big Ben demolished by trench mortars.
Out of many, pesto
The United States motto, e pluribus unum, appears in several classical sources. In one of them, it’s part of a recipe for pesto.
Telegraph code
T CODE CD CNDNS LG MSGS TO SV MON WN SDG TM BI CBL.
Dam the Mediterranean
In 1929 Bavarian architect Herman Sörgel proposed building a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar and shrinking the Mediterranean.
Exiled Americans
In a bid to free up jobs after the onset of the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of people were deported from the United States to Mexico. The majority were American citizens.
Emperor auction
Didius Julianus won the Roman Empire in an auction held by the Praetorian Guard in 193 CE.
The Generalist Academy 