Pheasant Island: Half Spanish, Half French All Year
Pheasant Island switches flags every six months: discover the curious 360-year-old shared-sovereignty deal behind it all.
Curiosities
Principality of Sealand: The Tower That Survived a Coup
The Principality of Sealand rose from an abandoned WWII gun tower and survived an armed coup staged by foreign mercenaries.
The Molasses Tsunami That Swept Through Boston at 35 MPH
In 1919, a molasses tsunami over 13 feet tall swept through Boston at 35 mph and killed 21 people. Discover the strange physics behind it.
The 38-Minute War Between Britain and Zanzibar
In 1896, the 38-minute war between Britain and Zanzibar ended with a shelled palace and a sultan fleeing out the back door.
The Emu War: When Australia Lost a Real War in 1932
In 1932, Australia fought the Emu War, sending soldiers and machine guns against 20,000 birds… and still lost. Here’s what went wrong.
The Wind Phone: The Booth Where People Call Their Dead
In Japan, thousands line up at a disconnected wind phone, picking up the receiver to talk to the loved ones they’ve lost.
The Weirdest Olympic Sport in History: Winning Gold With a Paintbrush
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
The 52-Hertz Whale: the Ocean’s Loneliest Voice Has Gone Unanswered for 35 Years
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
The Island That Switches Owners Twice a Year (For Over 350 Years)
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
The Loneliest Tree in the World Took Thousands of Years to Grow and One Drunk Truck Driver to Knock Down
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