Curiosities

In 1896, the 38-minute war between Britain and Zanzibar ended with a shelled palace and a sultan fleeing out the back door.

In 1932, Australia fought the Emu War, sending soldiers and machine guns against 20,000 birds… and still lost. Here’s what went wrong.

In Japan, thousands line up at a disconnected wind phone, picking up the receiver to talk to the loved ones they’ve lost.

In 1912, a sharpshooter named Walter Winans stepped onto the Olympic podium in Stockholm… for a sculpture. Winans already had a gold medal from the London Games of 1908, earned fair and square in the “running deer” shooting event (a deer-shaped target that slid along rails). But in 1912 he didn’t show up with a … Read more

Since 1989, military hydrophones scattered across the North Pacific have been picking up the voice of a whale that sings at a frequency no other whale uses. It isn’t a glitch in the equipment: it’s real, it repeats season after season, and in more than three decades nobody has ever laid eyes on the animal … Read more

There’s a patch of land in Europe that switches countries twice a year, with no war, no referendum, and barely anyone noticing. It’s called Pheasant Island (or Île des Faisans, depending on whose turn it is), it’s barely bigger than a football pitch, and it has belonged to both Spain and France at once since … Read more

Picture a tree so alone it was, quite literally, the only one of its kind for 400 kilometers in every direction. Not just the nearest big shrub or a distant cousin — nothing. Just sand, rock, and horizon as far as the eye could see. That tree really existed, deep in the Sahara Desert, and … Read more

Some people have bad luck, and then there’s Roy Sullivan. This park ranger from Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, was struck by lightning seven separate times between 1942 and 1977 — and survived every single one to tell the tale. The park’s own superintendent documented each incident, and today Sullivan holds the Guinness World Record for … Read more

Some radio songs run longer than this flight. In Scotland’s Orkney Islands, there’s a scheduled commercial air route that lasts, on average, 90 seconds from gate to gate: the hop between the islands of Westray and Papa Westray, separated by just 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) of sea. It’s officially the world’s shortest scheduled flight, and … Read more

On Thursday, December 29, 2011, the people of Samoa went to bed like any other night. When they woke up, it was Saturday, December 31. Friday the 30th simply never happened: no birthdays fell on it, no invoices were dated that day, nothing. An entire country wiped 24 hours off its calendar, and it did … Read more