Quirky

The ones you will tell someone about before the day is out. 38 stories, a few minutes each.

The Great Molasses FloodOn January 15, 1919, a storage tank in Boston's North End collapsed and released 2.3 million gallons of molasses in a wave that reached speeds of…
The Woman Who Sold the Eiffel TowerContrary to popular legend, Victor Lustig did not actually sell the Eiffel Tower. He sold the rights to scrap it, which in 1925 seemed like a…
The Dancing Plague of 1518In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg and began to dance. She did not stop.
Bubble Wrap Was Invented as WallpaperIn 1957, two engineers in New Jersey sealed two shower curtains together and created a sheet of plastic filled with air pockets. Alfred Fielding…
TarrareIn the late 18th century, a French man with an insatiable appetite became one of history's strangest documented medical cases. Known only as…
Australia's Great Emu WarIn 1932, the Australian government deployed soldiers with machine guns against a population of emus. The emus won.
Why Shopping Carts Needed Paid ActorsWhen Sylvan Goldman introduced the first shopping cart at his Humpty Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937, customers refused to use it.
The Inventor of Pringles Is Buried in a Pringles CanFredric Baur spent most of his career at Procter & Gamble developing food storage technologies. He created frying oils, engineered freeze-dried ice…
The Exploding Whale of Florence, OregonOn November 9, 1970, a 45-foot sperm whale washed ashore near Florence, Oregon. The carcass weighed eight tons and was already decomposing. The…
The Great Stink of LondonIn the summer of 1858, the River Thames smelled so bad that Parliament considered relocating.
How Post-it Notes Were Accidentally InventedIn 1968, Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M, was trying to develop a super-strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. He failed.
The London Beer Flood of 1814At around 5:30 in the afternoon on October 17, 1814, a wooden vat at Meux and Company's Horse Shoe Brewery ruptured and released a wave of porter…
Why Manhole Covers Are RoundFor decades, one question haunted job interviews at Microsoft, Google, and countless other tech companies: why are manhole covers round?
How the Caesar Salad Was Invented in TijuanaThe Caesar salad is not named after the Roman emperor. It's named after Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who ran a restaurant in Tijuana, and…
GiethoornIn the Dutch province of Overijssel, about ninety minutes from Amsterdam, there's a village where you can't drive a car. Not because it's…
How the Slinky Was Accidentally InventedIn 1943, Richard James was a naval engineer at the William Cramp & Sons shipyards in Philadelphia, working on a problem that had nothing to do with…
The Library of Unwritten BooksIn Richard Brautigan's 1971 novel *The Abortion*, there's a library in San Francisco that accepts any book anyone wants to deposit. Not published…
The Great Maple Syrup HeistQuebec produces about 77 percent of the world's maple syrup, and the industry is tightly controlled by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.
Why Wombat Poop Is Cube-ShapedOf all the animals on Earth, only the wombat produces cube-shaped feces. Each day, a bare-nosed wombat deposits roughly a hundred six-sided…
How Champagne Was Invented by AccidentThe legend goes like this: Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine monk working in the cellars of the Abbey of Hautvillers in the late 1600s, accidentally…
The Collyer BrothersIn March 1947, the New York City Police Department received an anonymous tip that someone had died inside a decaying brownstone at 2078 Fifth…
Ketchup Was Once Sold as MedicineBefore ketchup became a condiment, it was a patent medicine.
The Man Who Ate an Entire AirplaneMichel Lotito was a French entertainer who spent his career eating things that were not food.
How Traffic Lights Were Invented Before CarsThe first traffic light was installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London on December 10, 1868—more than a decade before Karl Benz patented…
The Corpse FlowerThe titan arum blooms so rarely and smells so terrible that botanic gardens issue public alerts when one is about to open. Visitors line up,…
How the Guillotine Was Designed to Be HumaneBefore the French Revolution, the method of execution in France depended on social class. Nobles were beheaded by sword, a relatively quick death…
The Great Stork DerbyWhen Charles Vance Millar died in Toronto on October 31, 1929, his will contained a clause that would consume the city's attention for a decade.…
The Tanganyika Laughter EpidemicOn January 30, 1962, three girls at a boarding school in Kashasha, a village near the western shore of Lake Victoria in what was then Tanganyika,…
The Kentucky Meat ShowerOn March 9, 1876, chunks of meat fell from a clear sky onto a strip of land near Rankin in Bath County, Kentucky. The area affected was roughly 100…
The Paris CatacombsBeneath the streets of Paris lies a network of tunnels containing the remains of roughly six million people.
The Bridge That Soldiers Must Break Step OnOn April 12, 1831, a column of the 60th Rifle Corps marched across Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England.
The Day Sweden Switched Sides of the RoadOn September 3, 1967, at precisely 4:50 in the morning, every vehicle in Sweden stopped.
The Shortest War in HistoryOn August 27, 1896, the British Empire went to war with the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The conflict lasted between 38 and 45 minutes, depending on the…
The Tree That Owns ItselfOn a quiet residential corner in Athens, Georgia, there stands a white oak tree that legally owns itself—and the eight feet of land surrounding its…
The Whistling Language of La GomeraOn the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands, people communicate across deep ravines by whistling. The language is called Silbo Gomero, and it…
The Inventor Killed by His Own InventionOn February 4, 1912, Franz Reichelt climbed to the first platform of the Eiffel Tower and jumped. He was wearing a combination overcoat-parachute…
The 1904 Olympic MarathonThe marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis is widely considered the most absurd sporting event in modern history. Of the 32 runners who…
The Invention of the ForkThe fork is one of the most common objects in the Western world, yet it took roughly a thousand years to catch on. For most of European history,…