Sources: Still Stranger Than That
Still Stranger Than That: 500 True Stories to Finish the Argument, by J. R. Veley.
Every fact in the book was checked against at least one source. They are listed here by fact number. Web pages move and vanish; where a link has died, the title of the fact is usually enough to find the source again.
1. Still Wrong Facts 1–50
No. 001 Kennedy was not a jelly doughnut
No. 002 Your blood is never blue
No. 003 Sparta’s pit held no babies
No. 004 Mice would rather have cereal
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/5319210.stm
- https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/09/mice-dont-like-cheese/
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_48
- https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep5.shtml
- https://www.livescience.com/do-mice-really-like-cheese
No. 005 There was no cherry tree
No. 006 Quicksand cannot swallow you
No. 007 Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was innocent
No. 008 Swallowed gum leaves in days
No. 009 No crane lifted the knight
- https://books.openedition.org/efr/28460?dir=next
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110719194352.htm
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3248716/
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/10-workout-tips-14th-century-knight
- https://www.history.co.uk/shows/knight-fight/articles/debunking-the-biggest-myths-about-knights-armour
- https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Livre_des_faits_du_bon_messire_Jean_le_Maingre,_dit_Bouciquaut/Partie_I/Chapitre_VI
No. 010 A dog year is not seven
- https://europepmc.org/search?query=TITLE%3A%22Quantitative%20Translation%20of%20Dog-to-Human%20Aging%22
- https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/new-trick-to-calculate-your-old-dogs-age
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-human-year-does-not-equal-seven-dog-years-180952929/
- https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/cosmati-pavement
No. 011 Crisis is not danger plus opportunity
No. 012 Galileo’s tower drop was Stevin’s
- https://theconversation.com/galileos-most-famous-experiment-probably-never-took-place-111650
- https://physicsworld.com/a/the-legend-of-the-leaning-tower/
- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Stevin.html
- https://galileo-unbound.blog/tag/delft/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delft_tower_experiment
- https://www.lowensteyn.com/grotius/
No. 013 Hyenas hunt; lions steal
No. 014 Not nine million witches
No. 015 Swim straight after lunch
No. 016 Godiva kept her clothes on
No. 017 Eggs stand up every day
No. 018 Rasputin was simply shot
No. 019 Thou was the familiar word
No. 020 The stooping Neanderthal was a scientist’s error
- https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/old-man-of-la-chapelle-aux-saints/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6421410/
- https://api.openalex.org/works/doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330670105
- https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/endnote/endnote-3-when-we-arrived/
- https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/10/20/so-near-and-yet-so-far/
No. 021 Hippos do not sweat blood
No. 022 No Polish lances against German tanks
No. 023 Normal body temperature is not 98.6
- https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html
- https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/09/body-temperature.html
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-986-degrees-is-not-the-average-human-body-temperature-180983071/
- https://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-1-the-story-of-98-6/
No. 024 Voltaire never said “defend to the death”
No. 025 Most boomerangs were never meant to return
- https://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/defining-symbols-australia/boomerang
- https://www.nature.com/articles/253039a0
- https://www.usba.org/history/
- https://archaeology.org/news/2025/06/30/new-dating-suggests-worlds-oldest-boomerang-was-made-40000-years-ago/
- https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/images/map-australia-showing-distribution-boomerangs
No. 026 Most gladiators walked out of the arena alive
No. 027 NASA did not spend millions on a space pen
No. 028 Hair does not simply turn white overnight
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3891/pg3891.txt
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1935-3
- https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/08/Kelly-Emily-_Canities-Subita-A-Reappraisal-of-Evidence-Based-on-196-Case-Reports-Published-in-the-Medical-Literature.pdf
- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-stress-turns-hair-gray-triggers-body-fight-flight-response
No. 029 How many Inuit words for snow
No. 030 The dodo was not fat
No. 031 Vikings drank from horns, not skulls
No. 032 The five-second rule fails in under one
No. 033 Babylon knew Pythagoras’s theorem first
- https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/jewels/themes/science/158
- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pythagoras/
- https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/propI47.html
- https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m446-03/pl322/pl322.HTML
- https://www.worldhistory.org/Pythagoras/
No. 034 You are not always six feet from a rat
No. 035 Tongue rolling is not a one-gene trait
No. 036 William Tell’s apple shot was told of a Dane
No. 037 A drink does not kill brain cells
No. 038 You may end a sentence with a preposition
- https://hcmc.uvic.ca/eol/cambridge/benjonson/litrecord/litrecord_dry_010/
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-cant-you-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition
- https://www.michiganpublic.org/podcast/thats-what-they-say/2024-01-07/twts-a-rule-about-which-we-should-be-asking-questions
- https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/
No. 039 An owl turns its head 270 degrees, not 360
No. 040 Medieval people did wash
- https://archive.org/download/parissousphilipp00grau/parissousphilipp00grau_djvu.txt
- https://bencrowder.net/blog/2015/occupations-in-1292-paris/
- https://www.medievalists.net/2023/11/people-middle-ages-baths/
- https://www.the-scientist.com/bathing-through-the-ages-1300-1848-70963
- https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/faculty_schol/4767
- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14031
No. 041 Diamonds are not squeezed coal
No. 042 Darwin borrowed “survival of the fittest”
No. 043 The alcohol does not cook off
No. 044 Nobody explodes in a vacuum
No. 045 German lost no vote
No. 046 Men have all their ribs
- https://hyperallergic.com/500-years-of-drawing-the-human-body
- https://realshakespeare.omeka.net/items/show/61
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Humani_Corporis_Fabrica_Libri_Septem
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7965591/
- https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/jewels/themes/health_sciences/144
No. 047 Rome did not salt Carthage
No. 048 The apple missed Newton’s head
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/whats-the-real-story-with-newton-and-the-apple-see-for-yourself
- https://physicsworld.com/a/newtons-apple-the-birth-of-a/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34944738
- https://www.york.ac.uk/physics/about/newtonsappletree/
- https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00167
- https://wellcomecollection.org/works/aydz9jns
No. 049 The frog jumps out
- https://archive.org/download/studiesfrombiol00martgoog/studiesfrombiol00martgoog_djvu.txt
- https://archive.org/download/bub_gb_Hr0aAAAAMAAJ/bub_gb_Hr0aAAAAMAAJ_djvu.txt
- https://archive-srel.uga.edu/outreach/ecoviews/ecoview071223.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
- https://www.recordcourier.com/news/2006/feb/01/frogs-dont-like-heat-no-matter-how-its-applied
No. 050 The bumblebee was never grounded
2. Spies, Codes and Secrets Facts 51–100
No. 051 The Soviet spy caught by a hollow nickel
No. 052 The oldest secret was a glaze recipe
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/middlebabylonian-chemical-text/F4B01DC7752095019833F30BE77CD2BD
- https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/01/hidden-history-encryption/125104/
- https://distantreader.org/stacks/journals/cubo/cubo-1645.pdf
- https://www2.rivier.edu/faculty/vriabov/cs572aweb/Slides/4-up/History.pdf
- https://meshandcloth.substack.com/p/passing-down-the-craft-the-oldest
No. 053 The Enigma message with no letter L
No. 054 The terrorist on the police payroll
No. 055 The Kama Sutra’s secret writing
No. 056 The Pueblo crew’s Hawaiian good-luck sign
No. 057 Vigenère did not invent his cipher
- https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovan-battista-bellaso_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
- https://crypto.interactive-maths.com/vigenegravere-cipher.html
- https://bnaskrecki.faculty.wmi.amu.edu.pl/crypto/book/part2_classical_polyalphabetic/ch05_vigenere_kasiski.html
- https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/other/the-biggest-secret/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigen%C3%A8re_cipher
No. 058 The saboteurs who closed Liberty’s torch
No. 059 Queen Gorgo read the blank tablet
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D239
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D5%3Achapter%3D51
- https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D66
No. 060 The Stasi kept smells in jars
No. 061 Mata Hari was a poor spy, not a master one
No. 062 Philip II blamed his broken cipher on sorcery
No. 063 Julia Child’s first recipe was shark repellent
No. 064 A computer cracked a secret society’s cipher
- https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1026/Copiale-Cipher-How-a-secret-society-s-code-was-finally-cracked
- https://www.wamc.org/2011-11-13/copiale-cipher-mysterious-code-broken-at-last
- https://www.su.se/english/research/research-catalogue/research-projects/d/decipherment-of-historical-manuscripts/the-copiale-cipher
No. 065 Sorge told Moscow that Japan would not attack
No. 066 Nathan Hale’s famous last words are secondhand
No. 067 The CIA secretly owned the cipher company
- https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/02/11/intelligence-coup-of-the-century-how-the-cia-was-able-to-read-encrypted-messages-of-allies-and-adversaries-for-decades/
- https://cryptomuseum.com/intel/cia/rubicon.htm
- https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2020/02/13/intelligence-coup-of-the-century-swiss-crypto-company-was-owned-by-cia-and-bnd/
No. 068 The book of angel magic was really ciphers
No. 069 The first code talkers spoke Choctaw
No. 070 Rose Greenhow drowned weighed down by gold
No. 071 The Great Seal that listened for seven years
- https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/thing/index.htm
- https://www.nsa.gov/History/National-Cryptologic-Museum/Exhibits-Artifacts/Exhibit-View/Article/2718563/cold-war-great-seal/
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/584493/soviet-spies-bugged-united-states-seven-years
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Theremin
No. 072 Al-Kindi broke ciphers by counting letters
No. 073 Mansfield Cumming did not cut off his own leg
No. 074 Escape kits hidden in Monopoly sets
No. 075 Mary, Queen of Scots’ lost letters decoded
No. 076 Evdokia Petrova chose Australia at Darwin
- https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/petrova-evdokia-alekseevna-18741
- https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/petrov-vladimir-mikhailovich-18740
- https://petrov.moadoph.gov.au/the-affair.html
- https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/history-culture/2025/04/the-petrov-affair/
- https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/history-of-parliament/history-milestones/australian-parliament-history-timeline/events/the-petrov-affair
No. 077 The scytale may never have been a cipher
No. 078 Cicero the spy was paid in forged pounds
No. 079 Two scientists read a lovers’ newspaper cipher
No. 080 The CIA wired a cat to eavesdrop
No. 081 Austria’s spy-catcher was spying for Russia
No. 082 Real ninja did not wear black
No. 083 British spies invented public-key encryption first
No. 084 Vienna read embassy mail before breakfast
No. 085 Josephine Baker’s secrets in invisible ink
- https://www.defense.gouv.fr/chemins-memoire/histoire-memoires/personnalites/personnalites-lettre-lettre/josephine-baker
- https://www.history.com/articles/josephine-baker-world-war-ii-spy
- https://abcnews4.com/news/entertainment/gallery/josephine-baker-inducted-into-pantheon-first-black-woman-to-receive-frances-top-honor?photo=3
No. 086 The Beale treasure is almost certainly a hoax
- https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/03/20/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-40-the-beale-cryptograms/?all=1
- https://ciphermysteries.com/other-ciphers/beale-papers
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161-118091854979
- https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/nsa/bealepapers/doc2453995.pdf
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Beale_Papers
No. 087 The Berlin spy tunnel the Soviets knew about
- https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/berlin-tunnel-americas-ear-behind-the-iron-curtain
- https://www.dvidshub.net/news/printable/442731
- https://germanhistorydocs.org/de/die-besatzungszeit-und-die-entstehung-zweier-staaten-1945-1961/oeffentliche-besichtigung-eines-amerikanischen-spionagetunnels-in-ost-berlin-3-mai-1956
- https://www.wtap.com/2020/12/26/british-double-agent-george-blake-dies-in-russia-at-98
No. 088 Zimmermann confirmed his own telegram
No. 089 The Voynich manuscript, still unread
No. 090 Churchill did not sacrifice Coventry
No. 091 Baden-Powell hid forts in butterfly wings
No. 092 The Siberian pipeline blast that may never have happened
- https://themoscowtimes.com/archive/kgb-veteran-denies-cia-caused-82-blast
- https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/The-Farewell-Dossier.pdf
- https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/farewell-dossier-wrong-in-a-big-way
- https://www.welivesecurity.com/2010/09/30/from-sci-fi-to-stuxnet-exploding-gas-pipelines-and-the-farewell-dossier/
No. 093 London bet on the Chevalier d’Éon’s sex
- https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_Y-4-568
- https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/the-libellous-letters-of-the-chevalier-deon/
- https://words.fromoldbooks.org/Chalmers-Biography/d/denton-william.html
- https://www.thehistoryblog.com/?p=16210
- https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw217942
No. 094 “AF is short of water”
No. 095 Hunting Bacon in Shakespeare made two codebreakers
- https://www.historynet.com/two-of-world-war-iis-greatest-codebreaking-achievements-shared-a-remarkable-common-element.htm
- https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/decoding-renaissance-500-years-codes-and-ciphers-folger
- https://hyperallergic.com/how-looking-for-ciphers-in-shakespeare-shaped-modern-codebreaking
- https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Decoding_the_Renaissance_exhibition_material
No. 096 Franklin’s secretary was a British spy
- https://newrepublic.com/article/90870/edward-bancroft-thomas-schaeper
- https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/06/23/american-who-spied-british/
- https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2012113_2012104,00.html
- https://historynet.com/patriot-spy-ben-franklin/
- https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/10/majestys-secret-service/
No. 097 Poles broke Enigma first
No. 098 A Safeway bag signaled a spy’s escape
No. 099 The Kryptos answer was found in an archive
- https://www.paradigm.xyz/writing/kryptos
- https://puzzculture.com/tag/kryptos/
- https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/11/24/kryptos-sculpture-cia-headquarters-decipher-boston-auction
- https://citizen.digital/article/auction-of-famed-cia-cipher-shaken-after-archive-reveals-code-n373254
- https://content.rrauction.com/jim-sanborns-complete-kryptos-archive-sells-for-962500-at-auction/
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cia-code-went-unsolved-35-215443791.html
3. Art for Art’s Sake Facts 101–150
No. 101 The Matisse that hung upside down
No. 102 The oldest song held up flowerpots
No. 103 Hokusai’s thirty names and ninety-three homes
- https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/21-facts-about-katsushika-hokusai
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/at-home-in-hokusais-floating-world-180941026/
- https://intojapanwaraku.com/culture/158816/
- https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-old-man-mount-fuji-and-the-sea/
- https://www.theccma.org/about-hokusai
- https://serai.jp/?p=36212
No. 104 The suffragette and the meat cleaver
- https://www.artinsociety.com/from-the-rokeby-venus-to-fascism-pt-1-why-did-suffragettes-attack-artworks.html
- https://about.jstor.org/blog/on-this-day-velazquezs-venus-vandalized-2/
- https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/database/2373/miss-mary-raleigh-richardson
- https://www.artfund.org/our-purpose/art-funded-by-you/the-toilet-of-venus-the-rokeby-venus
No. 105 Bells that ring two notes
No. 106 The king who never stood up
No. 107 Frida Kahlo came in her bed
No. 108 Pythagoras and the blacksmith’s hammers
No. 109 Gold for nothing, into the Seine
- http://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/22/sothebys-selling-receipt-invisible-yves-klein-work-paris
- https://www.art-critique.com/en/2022/04/zone-of-immaterial-pictorial-sensibility-sells-for-1-2-million/
- https://collections.lacma.org/object/183719
- https://brooklynrail.org/2010/09/artseen/yves-klein-with-the-void-full-powers/
- https://themorgan.org/node/92306
- https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/yves-klein-played-gold/
No. 110 Found by a tiger hunter
No. 111 The Benin Bronzes are mostly German brass
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10075414/
- https://archaeology.org/news/2023/04/10/230411-benin-bronzes-ore
- https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n16/adewale-maja-pearce/strewn-with-loot
- https://museumanthropology.org/cambridge-university-to-return-100-benin-bronzes-to-nigeria/
- https://edu.rsc.org/science-research/surprise-origin-for-benin-bronzes/4017488.article
- https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2026/02/cambridge-university-transfers-ownership-of-116-benin-bronzes-to-nigeria/
- https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/mixed-progress-for-looted-treasure-blfptvt7
No. 112 The chimpanzee the critics praised
No. 113 A symphony played to the besiegers
- https://www.michiganpublic.org/2014-11-02/amid-hunger-and-cold-an-unforgettable-symphony-premiere
- https://thewire.in/history/leningrad-symphony-siege-world-war-two-russia
- https://lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/january/fireman-shostakovich
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_premi%C3%A8re_of_Shostakovich%27s_Symphony_No._7
No. 114 Michelangelo’s fake antique
No. 115 The scroll burned on a deathbed
No. 116 No mouse ate the organ
No. 117 Customs called the Bird a kitchen utensil
- https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_333013.pdf
- https://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0314/031497.feat.arts.2.html
- https://blog.granneman.com/?p=454
- https://collections.lacma.org/node/2109716
- https://chronicle.lu/category/art-art-galleries/27707-art-exhibition-marks-centenary-of-birth-of-modern-romania
No. 118 Napoleon’s soldiers spared the Sphinx
No. 119 Thirteen years, never met
No. 120 The oldest painting is Indonesian
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/467702-oldest-painting-figurative-art
- https://www.scu.edu.au/news/2024/tc-oldest-cave-art/
- https://archaeology.org/?p=55827
- https://discover.unhas.ac.id/publications/rock-art-from-at-least-67800-years-ago-in-sulawesi
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/14/worlds-oldest-known-cave-painting-found-in-indonesias-sulawesi
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/782566-oldest-painting-non-figurative-art
No. 121 The painting that shredded itself at Sotheby’s
- https://artandobject.com/news/banksy-reveals-shredder-malfunction-new-video
- https://artsandcollections.com/banksys-love-is-in-the-bin-sells-for-a-record-186m-at-sothebys
- https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/banksy-love-is-in-the-bin-half-shredded-5-million-auction
- https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/partially-shredded-banksy-painting-sells-for-18-582-000/
- https://iol.co.za/news/eish/2018-10-08-watch-art-prankster-banksy-reveals-how-he-shredded-r19m-painting/
- https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/bansky-video-shows-he-planned-to-shred-entire-painting-558195
- https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/banksy-artwork-shreds-itself-during-auction-after-aps104-million-sale-245894
No. 122 The musician who became Córdoba’s legend of good taste
No. 123 The takeaway Rembrandt
- https://www.courthousenews.com/rembrandts-targeted-again-at-theft-prone-london-gallery/
- https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/08/14/A-thief-walked-into-the-Dulwich-Picture-Gallery-in/5891366609600/
- https://dulwich-picture-gallery-ii.rkdstudies.nl/pronk-rembrandt/rembrandt-dpg99/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Jacob_de_Gheyn_III
No. 124 Salieri wrote a song with Mozart
No. 125 The school mural that began a movement
- https://papunyatula.kluge-ruhe.org/?p=221
- https://archive.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/archives_2000/papunya_tula
- https://www.diggins.com.au/?p=6032
- https://newsteadart.com.au/artists/kaapa-mbitjana-tjampitjinpa
- https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/education/resources-educators/resources-educators-ATSIart/resources-educators-complimentary-resourcesatsi/papunya/
- https://australian.museum/learn/news/blog/papunya-a-precious-collection/
No. 126 Dürer never saw his rhinoceros
- https://daily.jstor.org/durers-rhinoceros-and-the-birth-of-print-media
- https://www.rct.uk/collection/800198/a-rhinoceros
- https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1895-0122-714
- https://crouchrarebooks.com/browse/probably-no-animal-picture-has-exerted-such-a-profound-influence-on-the-arts-clarke/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCrer%27s_Rhinoceros
- https://pachydermjournal.org/index.php/pachyderm/article/download/1312/1308/2672
No. 127 A de Kooning swapped for the Book of Kings
No. 128 Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling standing
No. 129 The lion song sold for ten shillings
No. 130 Laocoön’s arm in a stonecutter’s shop
No. 131 Rauschenberg erased a de Kooning drawing on purpose
No. 132 Caravaggio painted his last works as a fugitive killer
- https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/art-design/2024/03/the-last-crimes-of-caravaggio
- https://charlessaumarezsmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/caravaggio.pdf
- https://www.italianartsociety.org/?p=18964
- https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/21-facts-about-caravaggio
- https://www.collezionegalleriaborghese.it/en/opere/david-with-the-head-of-goliath
No. 133 The statues of Easter Island walked
- https://anthropology.arizona.edu/news/dr-terry-hunt-publishes-walking-statues-oral-history-meets-archaeology
- https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/5830/easter-islands-statues-actually-walked-and-physics-backs-it-up
- https://www.heritagedaily.com/2012/10/easter-island-statues-walked-into-position-say-experts/61152
- https://www.discovermagazine.com/wooden-slats-or-rollers-didn-t-transport-easter-island-s-moai-the-statues-walked-48130
- https://lbpost.com/news/csulb-archaeologist-s-work-featured-in-national-geographic
No. 134 Whistler won one farthing from Ruskin
No. 135 Grotesque began in Nero’s buried palace
No. 136 A quartet first played in a prison camp
- https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780801441363
- https://www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/Prisoner%20of%20War/PW%20Camps/Stalag%20VIII-A%20Gorlitz/MessiaenQuartet/MessiaenQuartet.htm
- https://yourclassical.org/episode/2019/01/15/a-messiaen-premiere-in-a-german-prisoner-of-war-camp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatuor_pour_la_fin_du_temps
No. 137 Van Gogh sold more than one painting
No. 138 The metronome Maelzel borrowed from Winkel
- https://community.ams.org/notices/201309/rnoti-p1146.pdf
- https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz55540.html
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/measure/maelzels-metronome/720B9ED61CD844C8619AD0C8EEC2AB72
- https://momh.org.uk/exhibitions/johann-nepomuk-maelzel-1772-1838
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Nikolaus_Winkel
No. 139 A lost Cimabue hung above a hot plate
- https://www.thelocal.fr/20191028/rare-italian-masterpiece-found-in-french-kitchen-sold-for-24-million
- https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/12/24/french-government-has-30-months-to-find-funding-for-cimabue-kitchen-painting
- https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/date/2023/11/27
- https://www.medievalists.net/2023/11/newly-discovered-medieval-painting-goes-to-the-louvre/
- https://hyperallergic.com/cimabue-painting.md
- https://www.louvre.fr/en/exhibitions-and-events/exhibitions/a-new-look-at-cimabue
No. 140 The Bayeux Tapestry is an English embroidery
- https://www.history.co.uk/articles/bayeux-tapestry-little-known-facts
- https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/node/14341
- https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2026/05/first-look-at-the-british-museums-bayeux-tapestry-exhibition/
- https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/
- https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/07/10/bayeux-tapestry-arrives-at-british-museum-after-historic-transfer
- https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/09/04/ten-surprising-facts-about-the-bayeux-tapestry
No. 141 Soloists playing blind could not pick the Stradivari
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/violinists-cant-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones
- https://www.thestrad.com/stradivari-loses-out-in-blind-testing-study-of-player-preferences-for-old-and-new-violins/5124.article
- https://josephcurtinstudios.com/?p=7184
- https://www.dalembert.upmc.fr/lelam/Membres/Fritz/HomePage/index.html
No. 142 The Lenin mural Rockefeller Center destroyed
No. 143 Turner was never lashed to the mast
- https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-17-autumn-2009/sublime-roller-coaster-ride-through-art-history
- https://victorianweb.org/painting/turner/heffernan/milton.html
- https://www.pbo.co.uk/news/painting-the-perfect-storm-11299
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-snow-storm-steam-boat-off-a-harbours-mouth-n00530
No. 144 The Just Judges are still missing
- https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2024/04/10/the-mystery-of-the-disappearance-of-the-just-judges-90-years-on/
- https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive/seeking-out-the-just-judges
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Just_Judges
- https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2026/04/01/st-bavo_s-cathedrals-centuries-old-doors-leading-to-the-van-eyck.consumer/
No. 145 Bach took four weeks’ leave and stayed four months
No. 146 A master forger caught by the wrong white
- https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151015-the-surprising-secrets-of-busting-art-forgeries
- https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive/how-the-detection-of-titanium-white-gave-away-beltracchi
- https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-cheerful-prisoner-art-forger-all-smiles-after-guilty-plea-seals-deal-a-794454.html
- https://abc17news.com/entertainment/cnn-style/2023/02/07/the-husband-and-wife-forgers-who-fooled-the-art-market-and-made-millions/
- https://web.de/magazine/unterhaltung/kultur/wolfgang-beltracchi-portraet-genialen-kunstfaelschers-30625452
- https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-17283458
- https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/wolfgang-beltracchi-helene-art-scam
No. 147 Greek statues were brightly painted
No. 148 Napoleon nude in Wellington’s stairwell
- https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/apsley-house/history/collection/
- https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/apsley-house/history/description/
- https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/national/napoleon-statue-in-london-conserved-ahead-of-200th-anniversary-of-his-death-19771
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_as_Mars_the_Peacemaker
- https://ageofrevolution.org/?p=4230
- https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/apsley-house/history/
No. 149 The famous urinal is a replica
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573
- https://salon.com/2004/12/02/top_10_artworks
- https://www.artsjournal.org/?p=25063
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3671180/Duchamps-Fountain-The-practical-joke-that-launched-an-artistic-revolution.html
No. 150 A piece of music that ends in 2999
4. Countries That Never Were Facts 151–200
No. 151 The sea fort that declared independence
- https://bendbulletin.com/?p=43790
- https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/sealand-the-micronation-carving-its-own-path-60-minutes/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sealand-royal-family-history-60-minutes
- https://sealandgov.org/products/become-a-sir-or-dame-knighthood-ecitizens
No. 152 Japan’s first election was held by rebels
- https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%AE%B1%E9%A4%A8%E6%88%A6%E4%BA%89
- https://www.archives.go.jp/exhibition/digital/hatamotogokenin/contents/56.html
- https://pages.uoregon.edu/jsmacollections/home/artists/hayakawa-shozan-1850-1892/the-surrender-of-the-ezo-rebels.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ezo
- https://www.nippon.com/ja/guide-to-japan/gu014059/
No. 153 The Formosan who had never seen Formosa
- https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/made-in-taiwan-how-a-frenchman-fooled-18th-century-london
- https://www.mhra.org.uk/publications/ct-79
- https://libraries.wm.edu/blog/special-collections/believable-lies
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Psalmanazar,_George
No. 154 The country that lasted five days
- https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v14/d62
- https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/somalias-independence-day-celebrates-a-union-that-was-always-a-mirage
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-becomes-first-country-to-recognize-breakaway-somaliland-as-independent-state/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Somaliland
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/26/israel-appoints-first-ambassador-to-somaliland
- https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2592354/push-for-recognition-somaliland-president-heading-to-washington-for-first-u-s-visit.html
No. 155 The bookseller who crowned himself King of Hay
No. 156 The heir who sold his empire twice
No. 157 The republic made by a vague treaty
No. 158 The man from Taured never vanished
No. 159 Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/ancient-egypt-nubian-kingdom-pyramids-sudan
- https://www.history.co.uk/articles/sudan-so-many-pyramids
- https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/4340/new-pyramid-unearthed-in-egypt
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanishakheto
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_pyramids
No. 160 The principality of tuna fishermen
No. 161 The republic that lasted a day
No. 162 The villages that owed nobody
No. 163 The republic that elected a goat
No. 164 The king Europe went looking for
No. 165 Africa leased for one lifetime
No. 166 The island that minted puffins
No. 167 The tiger-flag republic
No. 168 The town that never seceded
No. 169 Europe’s zinc-mine country
No. 170 The king who shopped his kingdom
No. 171 Key West seceded for a minute
No. 172 The kingdom nobody can find
- https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2020/12/mummified-baboons-shine-new-light-lost-land-punt
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60860
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87513
- https://www.worldhistory.org/punt/
- https://encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/punt-expeditions
- https://www.britannica.com/print/article/483652
No. 173 Andorra’s twelve-day king
No. 174 The pirate republic that lived in a book
No. 175 Squatters who seceded from Britain
No. 176 The stamp country Feynman never reached
- https://castle.eiu.edu/scienced/what/what_8.html
- https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/physics/news/celebrating-100-years-from-the-birth-of-richard-feynman-in-tuva/
- https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/03/28/the-last-journey-of-a-genius/
- https://feynman.com/fun/tuva/feynman-visits-tuva/
- https://www.firstissues.org/countries/tannu_tuva.html
- https://fotuva.org/newsletters/lally_2.html
No. 177 The Baltic duchy with colonies
- https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rbalxx/v44y2013i4p503-526.html
- https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/james-island-and-kunta-kinteh-island-fort-gambia.html
- https://3seaseurope.com/polish-colonies-poland-colonial-power-latvia-gambia-tobago/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curonian_colonisation
- https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/118775812.html
- https://whc.unesco.org/archive/advisory_body_evaluation/761rev.pdf
- https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/761/
No. 178 Victoria never erased Bolivia
No. 179 The right to be idle
- https://archive.libertarianism.org/building-tomorrow/republic-one-square-kilometer
- https://govilnius.lt/the-constitution-of-uzupis
- https://www.wandertooth.com/republic-and-constitution-of-uzupis/
- https://www.perceptivetravel.com/issues/0816/uzupis2.html
- https://goodfaithmedia.org/in-uzupis-everyone-has-the-right-to-idle-and-to-be-misunderstood/
No. 180 The colony sold from Paris
No. 181 Cospaia, the republic a treaty forgot
- https://www.finestresullarte.info/en/travel/the-republic-of-cospaia-history-of-a-state-born-by-mistake-in-valtiberina
- https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/08/republic-of-cospaia-italian-hamlet-that.html
- https://www.umbriatourism.it/en/-/republic-of-cospaia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Cospaia
- https://teverepost.it/perpetua-et-firma-libertas-la-storia-di-una-repubblica-nata-per-sbaglio
No. 182 The kingdom of Lo kept its king until 2008
No. 183 Texas paid its London rent 141 years late
- https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Raise-a-toast-to-Texas-history-on-the-streets-of-13145665.php
- https://texashistoricalfoundation.org/blog-archive.html/article/2023/10/25/the-surprising-story-of-the-republic-of-texas-legation-in-london
- https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-are-there-texas-embassies-in-london-and-paris
- https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/637
No. 184 Seborga was never a principality
No. 185 Stellaland, the republic named for a comet
No. 186 D’Annunzio’s Fiume made music a state institution
- https://aksioma.org/reakt/fiume/charter_of_carnaro.html
- https://www.gp.ppmhp.hr/en/dannunzijeva-rijecka-avantura
- https://brewminate.com/impresa-di-fiume-a-fascist-dystopia-with-style-on-the-adriatic-in-the-early-20th-century/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Regency_of_Carnaro
- https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/03/06/dannunzio-he-dared-undarable/
- https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gabriele-d-annunzio_(Dizionario-di-Storia)/
No. 187 The wheat farmer who seceded from Australia
No. 188 George III was also King of Corsica
- https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/biographies/paoli-pascal-philippe-antoine-also-known-as-pasquale-paoli/
- https://www.grandtour.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/elliot-sir-gilbert-4th-bt/22279752
- https://www.napoleon.org/en/reading_room/biographies/files/nelson.asp
- https://www.pbs.org/empires/napoleon/flash/n_myth/youth/page_1.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Corsican_Kingdom
- https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-new-annual-register-_1795
No. 189 Akhzivland, a country on an Israeli beach
No. 190 The State of Franklin took its taxes in skins
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/_Topics/history/_Texts/WILLSF/9*.html
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/_Topics/history/_Texts/WILLSF/28*.html
- https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/?p=1637
- https://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/?p=1063
No. 191 The island republic made of typefaces
No. 192 Borneo’s republic of gold miners
- https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/11/29/a-nation039s-history-discrimination
- https://www.budaya-tionghoa.net/2012/06/review-buku-chinese-democracies-a-study-of-the-kongsis-of-west-borneo-1776-1884-dr-yuan-bing-ling/
- https://borneohistory.net/kongsi-and-the-hakka/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanfang_Republic
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongsi_republics
No. 193 The prince of an empty Atlantic island
No. 194 The smallest kingdom in the world
No. 195 The free state left between two circles
No. 196 The French lawyer who was king of Patagonia
- https://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-96468.html
- https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/sociedad/curiosidades/2016/08/21/orelie-antoine-de-tounens-el-aventurero-frances-que-se-convirtio-en-rey-de-la-araucania.shtml
- https://www.prensalibre.com/?p=5878514
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Or%C3%A9lie-Antoine_de_Tounens
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tombeau_d_Antoine_de_Tounens.JPG
No. 197 Three thousand applied to live in an artwork
- https://gulfnews.com/uae/thousands-seek-citizenship-in-internet-country-1.380749
- https://www.thelocal.se/20191202/adventcalendar-the-micronation-in-a-southern-swedish-natio
- https://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/02/18/ladonia_in_sweden_is_a_micronation_built_around_nimis_a_driftwood_sculpture.html
No. 198 The literary kingdom of a Caribbean rock
- http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/scua/msc/tomsc550/msc536_gawsworth/gawsworthfa.html
- https://thebcreview.ca/2022/12/20/1674-hayward-hingston/
- https://obits.gazette.com/news/javier-marias-1951-2022-award-winning-spanish-novelist
- https://ideasimagination.columbia.edu/news/redonda-s-rulers/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Redonda
- http://www.javiermarias.es/REDONDIANA/redondaarticles.html
No. 199 Tonga’s king and the brass band
No. 200 The Esperanto island Italy blew up
- https://www.ilpost.it/2012/08/29/la-storia-dellisola-delle-rose/
- https://www.focus.it/cultura/storia/vera-storia-isola-delle-rose-micronazione-rimini-1968
- https://www.engineering.com/rose-island-the-building-of-a-utopia/
- https://weirditaly.com/2021/08/06/the-curious-history-of-the-republic-of-rose-island-a-micronation-on-a-man-made-platform-off-the-coast-of-italy/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Rose_Island
5. Do Not Try This at Home Facts 201–250
No. 201 Justin Schmidt rated the pain of insect stings
No. 202 Santorio spent thirty years on a weighing chair
- https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2020/11/05/revealing-data-ars-de-statica-medicina-1614/amp/
- https://encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/medicine-biographies/sanctorius
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.05211
- https://www.amusingplanet.com/2024/10/santorio-santori-and-insensible.html
- https://www.lequotidiendumedecin.fr/actu-medicale/la-balance-de-santorio
- https://hekint.org/2017/01/22/santorio-santorio-physician-physiologist-and-weight-watcher/
No. 203 Lavoisier did not blink after the guillotine
No. 204 Daniel Carrión’s experiment on himself
No. 205 Ebbinghaus memorized nonsense to measure forgetting
No. 206 Priestley breathed his new air after two mice
No. 207 Jack Barnes and the jellyfish nobody could see
- https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barnes-john-handyside-jack-12177
- https://www.mja.com.au/journal/1998/169/11/years-experience-irukandji-envenomation-far-north-queensland
- https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2002/177/7/fatal-envenomation-jellyfish-causing-irukandji-syndrome
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barnes_(toxinologist)
No. 208 Brown-Séquard’s rejuvenation elixir
- https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2002/177/11/brown-sequard-revisited-lesson-history-placebo-effect-androgen-treatment
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12463999/
- https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/news/print/endocrine-today/%7B0b1791e0-0e1c-42ac-bec3-d5b67bb054f6%7D/controversial-father-of-endocrinology-brown-squard
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Edouard-Brown-Sequard
No. 209 Shennong and the glass stomach
No. 210 J. B. S. Haldane and the smoke-blowing ear
No. 211 Cocaine in his own eye
- https://anaesthetists.org/Home/Heritage-centre/Learning/Heritage-Centre-blog-celebrating-75-years-of-Anaesthesia/Cocaine-and-Self-experimentation-a-blog-post-from-the-Heritage-Centre
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/your-trip-to-the-dentist-wouldnt-include-anesthesia-without-this-doctor
- https://priory.com/anaesthesia/Freud.htm
- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.236095
No. 212 Bread, cabbage and a mountain
No. 213 Hunter’s famous inoculation
No. 214 Volta heard his battery boil
No. 215 Two thousand worm eggs
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC126866/
- http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2010/02/february-10-ascaris-lumbricoides.html
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-helminthology/article/abs/an-observation-on-human-resistance-to-infection-with-ascaris-from-the-pig/EE28B09747E242DBA2E3C94D7237AD92
- https://web.stanford.edu/group/parasites/ParaSites2002/ascariasis/index.html
- https://archive.org/details/humanhelmintholo00faus
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides
No. 216 Staring at the sun for psychology
No. 217 The student who drank black vomit
No. 218 The lecture in Las Vegas
No. 219 The king who ate poison daily
No. 220 Feeding lice to save Lwów
No. 221 Newton pushed a needle behind his own eye
No. 222 Two explorers ate only meat for a year
No. 223 Pettenkofer drank a glass of cholera
- https://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/33/burnett.php
- https://www.srf.ch/wissen/forschung-nobelpreise/beruehmter-selbstversuch-es-waere-kein-selbstmord-ich-stuerbe-im-dienste-der-wissenschaft
- https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz19767.html
- https://historyofmedicine.com/author?id=3026
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/8F7A43262602236762FA3FB3E58E3928/S0022172400000280a.pdf/the-work-of-max-von-pettenkofer.pdf
No. 224 Higher than anyone, though nobody knows how high
No. 225 Rosenhan’s pretend patients were partly pretend
No. 226 Spinal anesthesia was proved with a hammer
- https://anaesthetists.org/Home/Heritage-centre/Learning/Heritage-Centre-blog-celebrating-75-years-of-Anaesthesia/Cocaine-and-Self-experimentation-a-blog-post-from-the-Heritage-Centre
- https://www.nysora.com/techniques/neuraxial-and-perineuraxial-techniques/spinal-anesthesia-2/
- https://storage.imrpress.com/IMR/hmed/application/10.12968/hmed.2011.72.5.287.pdf
- https://www.mcgill.ca/science/files/science/schwarcz-joe-those-were-the-days.pdf
No. 227 Purkyně tried nutmeg on himself
- https://psmag.com/social-justice/newtons-needle-scientific-self-experimentation-86583/
- https://theconversation.com/out-of-your-noggin-festive-spices-and-their-intoxicating-history-35425
- https://storage.imrpress.com/IMR/hmed/application/10.12968/hmed.2019.80.7.415.pdf
- https://ziva.avcr.cz/files/ziva/pdf/purkynovy-farmakologicke-pokusy.pdf
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4192555
- https://unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1966-01-01_4_page003.html
No. 228 Stung on the nose on purpose
No. 229 Galileo did not blind himself on the sun
No. 230 Madame Penicillin drank cholera first
- https://microbiol.crie.ru/jour/article/download/369/165
- https://www.vokrugsveta.ru/articles/boec-medicinskogo-fronta-kak-zinaida-ermoleva-pobedila-kholeru-v-stalingrade-i-sozdala-pervyi-otechestvennyi-antibiotik-id6203186
- https://www.fontanka.ru/2025/04/19/75361637/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Yermolyeva
No. 231 Spallanzani swallowed bags of bread
No. 232 John Lilly and the first isolation tank
No. 233 Haffkine’s first injection
No. 234 Franklin’s Christmas turkey
No. 235 Bacon’s snow-stuffed chicken
- https://archive.org/details/lettersandlifef00bacogoog
- https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/francis-bacon
- https://www.the-microbiologist.com/features/ice-ice-maybe-francis-bacon-and-frozen-meat/104.article
- https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2007/05/31/francis-bacon-the-frozen-chicken/
- https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/aubrey_biog.htm
No. 236 Harrington proved the body can attack itself
No. 237 Henry Head had his own nerve cut
No. 238 Conan Doyle’s poison diary
No. 239 Paralyzed but wide awake
- https://curiousclinicians.com/2022/03/30/episode-46-the-man-who-purposefully-paralyzed-himself/
- https://broughttolight.ucsf.edu/2016/10/31/the-flying-death-and-other-adventures-in-anesthesia
- https://doi.org/10.1097/00000542-194701000-00001
- https://esaic.org/?p=5088
- http://triggered.edina.clockss.org/ServeContent?rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1124%2Fmi.10.5.1
No. 240 A summer in the malaria marsh
No. 241 Pierre Curie strapped radium to his arm
No. 242 Joseph Goldberger’s filth parties
No. 243 Six days in a glass box
No. 244 Jesse Lazear’s bite was probably no accident
No. 245 Six months without vitamin C
No. 246 The Bolshevik who swapped blood to stay young
- https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/new-life-in-the-veins/
- https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/a-martian-stranded-on-earth-alexander-bogdanov-blood-transfusions-and-proletarian-science/417564.article
- https://blood.ru/en/about/history/our-history/
- https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/aleksandr-aleksandrovich-bogdanov
- https://blood.ru/en/about/history/all-directors-national-medical-research-center-hematology/aleksandr-aleksandrovich-bogdanov/
- https://journals.rcsi.science/2309-4370/article/view/34555
No. 247 Koprowski drank his own polio vaccine
No. 248 Eight days in an upside-down world
- https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/stratton-george.pdf
- https://www.uibk.ac.at/media/filer_public/7a/1c/7a1ca04d-72fc-468f-b87e-ec7ae3d9571a/cortex-the-world-is-upside-down.pdf
- https://heikohoffmann.de/htmlthesis/node9.html
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91177/how-our-eyes-see-everything-upside-down
No. 249 Cooking a steak in a hot room
6. Plants Behaving Badly Facts 251–300
No. 251 The tree that owns itself
No. 252 Coconuts from under the sea
- https://daily.jstor.org/coco-de-mer-the-magical-derriere-of-the-sea
- https://sif.sc/sites/default/files/downloads/2016 09_Passage magazine_Legends of the coco de mer.pdf
- https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/kingscollections/page/24/
- https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/ewer-formed-seychelles-nut-prague-1602
- https://khm.at/en/artworks/decorative-ewer-with-seychelles-nut-92885
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_of_the_coco_de_mer
No. 253 Aunt Etty’s war on stinkhorns
No. 254 The tree that stings for months
- https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2009/06/gympie-gympie-once-stung-never-forgotten/
- https://theconversation.com/the-worst-kind-of-pain-you-canimagine-what-its-like-to-be-stung-by-a-stinging-tree-103220
- https://phys.org/news/2020-09-native-tree-toxins-pain-spiders.html
- https://www.truthorfiction.com/does-the-australian-gympie-gympie-drive-people-to-suicide/
No. 255 The vegetable lamb of Tartary
No. 256 A palm from Masada’s seeds
- https://arava.org/harvesting-ancient-dates/
- https://arava.org/arava-research-centers/arava-center-for-sustainable-agriculture/methuselah/6-new-ancient-date-trees/
- https://jewishindependent.ca/a-methuselah-update
- https://archive.israel21c.org/?p=108237
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7002127
No. 257 Linnaeus names a weed after a critic
No. 258 The blob of Garland, Texas
- https://fwbg.org/research-programs/myxomycete-research-program/
- https://fwbg.org/2024/10/31/the-mysteries-of-myxomycetes-six-scintillating-facts-about-slime-molds/
- http://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article/plasmodial-slime-molds-are-not-molds/
- https://islandnature.ca/2010/03/weird-and-wonderful-slime-mold/
- https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/briar-patch/
No. 259 The oldest tree with a birthday
No. 260 Madagascar’s man-eating tree
No. 261 Britain’s knotweed is all one plant
No. 262 The honey that felled an army
No. 263 The trees that went around the Moon
No. 264 The vicar who felled Shakespeare’s mulberry
- https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol3/pp244-247
- https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/gastrell-trial-victim-or-villain/
- https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/here-we-go-round-mulberry-tree/
- https://www.moruslondinium.org/research/shakespeare-mulberry-objects
- https://apollo-magazine.com/?p=955899
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21587468
No. 265 Sunflowers stop following the sun
No. 266 The loneliest plant in the world
- https://conifers.org/za/Encephalartos_woodii.php
- https://theconversation.com/searching-for-a-female-partner-for-the-worlds-loneliest-plant-232088
- https://www.c-lab.co.uk/projects/BecomingFemale
- https://www.irishnews.com/news/uk/ai-enlisted-in-the-hunt-for-female-partner-for-lonely-ancient-plant-ENUWMHAX5RNKRDRNFHCUNWKHPU/
No. 267 The donkey kept breathing by bellows
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8159/pg8159.txt
- https://archive.org/details/wanderingsinsout00wateuoft
- https://archive.org/details/essaysonnaturalh00wate_4
- https://museumsandcastles.wakefield.gov.uk/discover/collections/people/charles-waterton/wourali
- https://historyofmedicine.com/id/2541
- https://anaesthetists.org/Home/Heritage-centre/Learning/Previous-Exhibitions/Doctor-says-relax
No. 268 Kudzu never ate the South
No. 269 Two chapels inside an oak
No. 270 The botanists who starved among the seeds
No. 271 The poinsettia is not poisonous
No. 272 Annie Paxton stood on a water lily leaf
No. 273 Dutch elm disease and the Dutch women who solved it
No. 274 The mandrake does not scream
- https://www.exclassics.com/herbal/herbalv20066.htm
- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm
- https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/mandrake-medicine-and-myths
- https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mandrakes
- https://www.medievalists.net/2025/05/how-to-harvest-a-mandrake-medieval-medicine-and-magic-in-the-old-english-herbarium/
No. 275 Thirsty plants click
No. 276 Dancing on a giant sequoia’s stump
No. 277 Ötzi’s fungus kit
No. 278 The dodo tree that never needed dodos
No. 279 Who poisoned the Tree of Knowledge
- https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/tree-knowledge-barcaldine
- https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/speeches/spk2006/Peter%20Beattie%20spk%20Brisbane%20Central%202006_05_26_26.pdf
- https://documents.parliament.qld.gov.au/speeches/spk2006/Peter%20Beattie%20spk%20Brisbane%20Central%202006_06_08_31.pdf
- https://woodcentral.com.au/how-wood-scientists-brought-the-tree-of-knowledge-back-from-the-dead/
- https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/51558
No. 280 Darwin predicted a moth nobody had seen
- https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/september/moth-predicted-to-exist-by-darwin-and-wallace-becomes-a-new-species.html
- https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-3421.xml
- https://arboretum.harvard.edu/arnoldia-stories/the-intertwined-attractions-of-plants-moths-and-people/
- https://www.biodiversitycollaborative.org/index.php/node/257
- https://livescience.com/animals/wallaces-sphinx-moth-the-long-tongued-insect-predicted-by-darwin-a-century-before-it-was-discovered
No. 281 Lincoln’s mother and the poisonous snakeroot
No. 282 The walking palm stays where it sprouted
No. 283 The flower too rude to name on television
No. 284 The ancient yew that started growing berries
No. 285 The tumbleweed is an immigrant from Russia
- https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/tumbleweeds-fastest-plant-invasion-in-usa-history.html
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/the-weed-that-won-the-west
- https://www.sdnewswatch.org/fact-brief-tumbleweeds-first-appear-united-states-sd/
- https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/tumbling-tumbleweeds-emc
No. 286 The pub inside a baobab tree
- https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/64800
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/oldest-tress-africa-baobabs-dead-climate-science
- https://vinepair.com/articles/step-inside-the-south-african-bar-in-a-tree
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sunland-baobab
- https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/huge-hollow-baobab-trees-are-actually-multiple-fused-stems
No. 287 The Glastonbury Thorn and Joseph’s staff
- https://ourresearch.reading.ac.uk/glastonburyabbeyarchaeology//digital/the-lady-chapel-c-1185-1539/joseph-of-arimathea/
- https://thegardenhistory.blog/2018/12/22/the-glastonbury-thorn/
- https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/134449
- https://ourresearch.reading.ac.uk/glastonburyabbeyarchaeology//myths/the-holy-thorn/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Thorn
No. 288 The pitcher plant that is a tree shrew’s toilet
- https://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/6982/
- https://europepmc.org/search?query=Chin%20Moran%20Clarke%20Nepenthes%20tree%20shrew%20New%20Phytologist
- https://europepmc.org/search?query=Grafe%20bat%20Nepenthes%20rafflesiana%20elongata%20mutualism%202011
- https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2010/03/12/good-to-the-last-dropping-pitcher-plant-evolves-to-be-shrew-loo
- https://www.botany.one/success-tastes-like-something-else-for-a-high-altitude-pitcher-plant/
No. 289 Seeds buried in 1879 to be dug up until 2100
No. 290 The manchineel, the little apple of death
- https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FR370/pdf
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1127797
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-dangerous-tree
- https://www.sciencealert.com/this-tree-of-death-is-so-toxic-you-can-t-even-stand-under-it-when-it-rains
- https://imagineourflorida.org/manchineel/
No. 291 Mother trees feeding their young are unproven
- https://olemiss.edu/hoeksemalab/docs/Karst et al. 2023. Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests-1.pdf
- https://frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2024.1512518/full
- https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/05/18/Detangling-Debate-Wood-Wide-Web/
No. 292 The oldest pot plant in the world
No. 293 The desert plant with only two leaves
No. 294 The bicycle the tree ate
No. 295 A hall named in honor of a moth
No. 296 Anne Frank’s chestnut tree
- https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/front-section/chestnut-tree/
- https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2010/8/23/tree-has-fallen/
- https://www.dutchnews.nl/2007/11/anne_frank_horse_chestnut_tree/
- https://csmonitor.com/From-the-news-wires/2010/0823/Anne-Frank-tree-knocked-down-by-storm
No. 297 Derby’s prison tree that never was
No. 298 The night Sycamore Gap fell
- https://euronews.com/green/2025/07/15/two-men-who-felled-iconic-sycamore-gap-tree-on-hadrians-wall-jailed-for-four-years
- https://cfjctoday.com/2025/07/15/vandals-who-cut-down-sycamore-gap-tree-sentenced-in-england-to-more-than-4-years-in-prison/
- https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/services/media/first-sycamore-gap-saplings-to-be-planted-this-national-tree-week
No. 299 The pine found in a hidden gorge
- https://www.botanicgardens.org.au/discover-and-learn/watch-listen-read/30-years-historic-discovery-ancient-dinosaur-trees
- https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2020/01/secrets-and-fires-dinosaur-trees-saved/
- https://www.treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/wollemia/wollemia-nobilis/
- https://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/conservation-programs/wollemi-pine-conservation-project
- https://Www.Britannica.Com/plant/Wollemi-pine
No. 300 The bonsai that survived Hiroshima
7. Business as Unusual Facts 301–350
No. 301 Fourteen centuries of temple builders
- https://www.kongogumi.co.jp/about_history.html
- https://www.kongogumi.co.jp/profile.html
- https://www.openculture.com/2024/08/how-the-oldest-company-in-the-world-has-survived-nearly-1500-years.html
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2003/5/25/japan-firm-is-worlds-oldest
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi
No. 302 Hoover’s free flights fiasco
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3704669.stm
- https://www.marketingweek.com/hoover-fails-to-shake-off-free-flights-horror/
- https://www.marketingweek.com/candy-poised-to-buy-ailing-hoover-europe/
- https://thehustle.co/the-worst-sales-promotion-in-history/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion
No. 303 The philosopher who cornered the olive presses
No. 304 Rudolph was a store giveaway
- https://wusf.org/2013-12-25/writing-rudolph-the-original-red-nosed-manuscript
- https://www.infodocket.com/2017/12/19/david-m-rubenstein-library-duke-university-acquires-copy-of-1939-booklet-that-introduced-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer/
- https://www.todayifoundout.com/?p=3630
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rudolph-red-nosed-reindeer
- https://www.bangordailynews.com/2011/12/24/news/scrapbook-tells-how-rudolph-went-down-in-history/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._May
No. 305 The king’s lavatory attendant
- https://www.history.org.uk/files/download/19906/1526047886/Tracy_Borman__Private_Lives_of_the_Tudors.pdf
- https://tudorsociety.com/groom-stool-sarah-bryson/
- https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/sir-henry-norris/
- https://historyrevealed.com/period/tudor/the-men-who-changed-henry-viiis-underpants
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool
No. 306 Kenya’s money in a text
- https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/hilty/t/Literature_by_RQs/RQ%20304/2007_Hughes_Lonie_M-PESA-%20Mobile%20Money%20for%20the%20Unbanked%20Turning%20Cellphones%20into%2024-Hour%20Tellers%20in%20Kenya.pdf
- https://www.chyp.com/book-corner-money-real-quick-the-story-of-m-pesa
- https://tech-ish.com/2026/05/07/safaricom-fy26-mpesa-results-explained/
- https://econ.georgetown.edu/?p=39
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
No. 307 Counterfeit Viking swords
- https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_b/backbone/rb_4_3.html
- https://www.kpbs.org/news/arts-culture/2012/10/09/nova-secrets-viking-sword
- https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2009/02/cutting-edge-in-middle-ages.html
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sword/material-and-properties-of-vlfberht-swords/5151484BCC44E9436B588408AAF32A21
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords
No. 308 Gillette did not give razors away
No. 309 Cash only, no haggling
- https://www.mitsui-museum.jp/exhibition/images/230628/Details_230628en.pdf
- https://cp.mistore.jp/global/history-group.html
- https://www.mitsui.com/jp/en/roots/1209869_7253.html
- https://encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/mitsukoshi-ltd
- https://hosei.ecats-library.jp/da/repository/00014710/keiei_51_3_yahagi.pdf
- https://the-shashi.com/en/tse/8231/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsui_Takatoshi
No. 310 Pepsi’s winning number 349
- https://chanrobles.com/cralaw/2006junedecisions.php?id=664
- https://www.csmonitor.com/1993/0818/18023.html
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558202/pepsi-number-fever-promotion-failure-philippines
- https://philstar.com/cebu-news/344000/sc-decides-finality-pepsi-349-case
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Number_Fever
No. 311 In the name of God and of profit
- https://www.museocasadatini.it/en/mercante-francesco-datini-prato-tuscany.php?id=31&sc=3
- https://www.strategy-business.com/article/21219
- https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-merchant-of-prato
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/money-matters-in-european-artworks-and-literature-c-14001750/accounting-faith-and-seeing-ghost-money-in-masaccios-tribute-money/80FC52183C57DDD043E53C466D9077F5
No. 312 The tractor maker who took on Ferrari
- https://www.motorvalley.it/en/stories/ferruccio-lamborghini-a-dream-challenge/
- https://www.carscoops.com/2012/04/lamborghinis-humble-beginnings/
- https://www.jalopnik.com/ferruccio-lamborghini-fixed-his-hated-ferrari-with-a-cl-1759677501/
- https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/ferruccio-lamborghini-great-european-lives/
- https://lambocars.com/motortrend-investigates-on-mythical-ferrari-insult-toward-feruccio-lamborghini/
No. 313 Rent paid in elk and beavers
No. 314 The Hawthorne effect was not at Hawthorne
No. 315 Marmite but Parwill
No. 316 Crassus bought Rome while it burned
No. 317 Dalí drew the lollipop logo
No. 318 Stakhanov’s record had helpers
- https://tribun.com.ua/en/110554-stakhanov-movement-myth-or-reality-exploring-the-history
- https://russianlife.com/stories/online/did-stakhanov-act-alone
- https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1936/year-of-the-stakhanovite/
- https://www.rferl.org/a/Ukraine_City_Marks_Soviet_Era_Stakhanov_Movement/2074704.html
- https://www.themoscowtimes.com/all/67092?amp=1
No. 319 The widow who cleared champagne
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-widow-who-created-the-champagne-industry-180947570/
- https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2800/veuve-clicquot/
- https://www.mhdkk.com/en/brands/veuve_clicquot/history
- https://mwi.westpoint.edu/2015125war-and-booze-the-story-of-veuve-clicquot-napoleon-and-the-first-modern-champagne/
No. 320 The needle shop’s white rabbit
No. 321 When leaving a tip was against the law
No. 322 Sailing for China, England found Moscow
No. 323 Nintendo began with playing cards
No. 324 Sixes and sevens did not come from the guilds
No. 325 New England ice for Calcutta
No. 326 Mercedes was a girl who never owned a car
No. 327 The Taj Hotel snub is a legend
No. 328 Muzak timed its music to speed up workers
No. 329 A share in a copper mountain from 1288
No. 330 Pears soap stamped on French coins
- https://www.agsa.sa.gov.au/collection-publications/collection/works/1874-french-10-centime-with-a-pears-soap-counterstamp/74182/
- https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O75697/
- https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/signal/coins/sg072206-coins.htm
- https://mediacat.uk/why-we-should-seek-inspiration-from-marketing-rogues/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_Offences_Act_1861
No. 331 Japan’s Christmas dinner comes from KFC
- https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/things-to-do/whats-the-deal-with-kfc-and-christmas-in-japan
- https://www.arabnews.com/node/2624851/offbeat
- https://www.businessinsider.jp/article/142/
- https://www.businessinsider.jp/article/181888/
- https://biz-journal.jp/2023/12/post_367283.html
- https://www.ksl.com/article/news/world/how-kfc-became-a-big-christmas-tradition-in-japan/50544767
No. 332 A galley built while the king dined
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/genius-of-venice-180956858/
- https://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/content/shipbuilding/venice_arsenal/lettura_gal
- https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2776/arsenale/
- https://warhistory.org/article/venice-a-call-to-arms
- https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=wiel&book=venice&story=cambray
- https://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/cedes/arsenale
No. 333 Henry Ford never said “faster horses”
No. 334 The pH scale came from a brewery lab
No. 335 Workers kept Saint Monday
- https://libcom.org/article/time-work-discipline-and-industrial-capitalism-e-p-thompson
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20203/pg20203.txt
- https://theconversation.com/history-of-the-two-day-weekend-offers-lessons-for-todays-calls-for-a-four-day-week-127382
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday
No. 336 The Tupperware lady, erased
- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tupperware-wise
- https://www.womenshistory.org/node/1638
- https://americacomesalive.com/first-woman-on-cover-of-business-week/
- https://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2007-06-08/selling-the-bowl-that-burps
- https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/252290/life-of-the-party-by-bob-kealing/
No. 337 One cymbal recipe, four centuries secret
- https://zildjian.com/pages/about-us
- https://www.ctpublic.org/2024-12-14/zildjian-brand-cymbals-are-everywhere-but-how-theyre-made-is-a-400-year-secret
- https://simanaitissays.com/2018/08/09/celebrating-the-zildjian-family-all-400-years-of-it/
- https://blogs.unb.ca/alumni/2024/01/growing-the-global-sabian-brand-in-rural-new-brunswick.php
- https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/avedis-zildjian-co-history/
No. 338 Black Friday was about traffic
No. 339 The Match King lent nations millions
No. 340 Utopian Turtletop
- https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/spring/feature/moore-or-less
- https://futilitycloset.com/2011/01/17/poetry-in-motion-2
- https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/edsel-car/
- https://www.motorcities.org/ykw
- https://blogs.loc.gov/catbird/2013/12/hello-poetry-lovers/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wallace_(executive)
No. 341 The Savoy sacked Ritz and Escoffier
- https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/07/19/ritzy-business/
- https://famoushotels.org/news/kitchen-revolt-at-the-savoy-16-fiery-cooks-took-their-long-knives
- https://www.hotel-online.com/news/archive-18745
- https://tastecooking.com/blue-collar-heroes-white-collar-crooks/
- https://www.herodote.net/1er_juin_1898-evenement-18980601.php
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Ritz
No. 342 Forbes never rated the dabbawalas Six Sigma
No. 343 Piggly Wiggly’s founder cornered his own stock
- https://digi.econbiz.de/viewer/fulltext/1831284952/640
- https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/clarence-saunders/
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bizarre-story-piggly-wiggly-first-self-service-grocery-store-180964708/
- https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/b1dc17ec-41f7-4207-a299-4266877111f5
- https://thefinanser.com/2024/11/the-forgotten-story-of-clarence-saunders-vs-wall-street
- https://time.com/archive/6649727/business-new-piggly-head/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Saunders
No. 344 A brewery’s book of records
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-history
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2022/9/why-was-the-guinness-world-records-book-first-published-714607
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/hall-of-fame/first-sub-four-minute-mile.html
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/about-us/our-story/timeline
No. 345 The cartel that shortened light bulbs
No. 346 The town split by sneakers
- https://www.thelocal.de/20160606/adidas-and-puma-herzogenaurach-a-football-strip-feud-that-divides-a-town
- https://vice.com/en/article/the-nazi-sibling-rivalry-that-divided-a-town-and-created-modern-sportswear-id
- https://www.tbsnews.net/features/adidas-and-puma-how-sibling-rivalry-gave-rise-two-giants-sports-world-710938
- https://www.adidas-group.com/en/about/history
No. 347 Apple’s bitten logo was not for Turing
No. 348 Tire makers rate restaurants
No. 349 The cubicle’s inventor called it insanity
No. 350 The rent unchanged since 1521
- https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei
- https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei/life-in-a-500-year-old-tradition
- https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei/unparalleled-worldwide-for-500-years
- https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei/reconstruction-after-the-bombing-raid
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/after-almost-500-years-german-utopia-is-still-going-strong-180973787/
- https://www.creators.com/read/travel-and-adventure/08/14/touring-augsburgs-fuggerei-worlds-oldest-housing-settlement
8. Luck, Rituals and Superstitions Facts 351–400
No. 351 The year Japan’s births fell by a quarter
No. 352 Curses for the Roman bath-house thieves
No. 353 The German Christmas pickle Germany never heard of
No. 354 Burma’s banknotes divisible by nine
- https://globalvoices.org/2009/03/07/myanmar-withdrawal-of-currency-notes-in-1987/
- https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/index.php/content/burmese-citizens-campaign-democracy-1988
- https://seasia.co/2026/07/03/when-myanmar-wiped-out-80-of-its-cash-overnight-because-of-numerology
- https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/06/guardianobituaries
No. 355 The astrologer questioned about the Great Fire
No. 356 The shrine that rescued a Bangkok hotel
No. 357 Friday the thirteenth is not an ancient fear
- https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2024/12/on-the-possible-origins-of-friday-the-thirteenth-metafolklore-fear-and-fun/
- https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/01/whos-afraid-of-friday-the-thirteenth/
- https://www.history.com/articles/friday-the-13th
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/160512-friday-13-knights-templar-superstition
No. 358 An Egyptian calendar and a winking star
- https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6206
- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-scribes-may-have-banked-blinking-binary
- https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/05/01/186271/ancient-egyptians-recorded-algols-variable-magnitude-3000-years-before-western/
- https://www.sci.news/astronomy/ancient-egyptian-scribes-algols-variability-06616.html
No. 359 The Colonel’s curse on the Hanshin Tigers
No. 360 The Christmas goat that Gävle keeps losing
- https://www.thelocal.se/20151126/five-weirdest-attacks-on-swedens-straw-yule-goat
- https://www.gavledraget.com/20000-kultur/varldens-storsta-halmbock-av-stig-gavlen/
- https://www.gavle.se/gavlebocken
- https://www.wfae.org/2023-12-22/this-40-foot-goat-has-been-burned-battered-and-bruised-will-it-survive-the-birds
- https://www.tv4.se/artikel/7tRQ4Pxcb7BzoYP5WN7Ov/gaevlebocken-har-vaelt-i-stormen
- https://www.tv4.se/artikel/5y9Nkiz9wGNdMNPTPd9mRB/efter-stormen-haer-aer-gaevlebockens-mest-maerkvaerdiga-oeden-genom-aren
- https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20251229-01/?p=111929
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat
No. 361 Reading the gods in a sheep’s liver
- https://www.worldhistory.org/image/18716/the-liver-tablet/
- https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org/department/what-is-it-70
- https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/aom/mom/46-en.html
- https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/mari/en/media/view/8488
- https://www.finestresullarte.info/en/archaeology/the-liver-of-piacenza-lives-again-in-3d-etruscan-divination-at-the-click-of-a-button
- https://prints.aap.com.au/heritage-images/clay-model-sheeps-liver-old-babylonian-14857089.html
No. 362 The President’s schedule by the stars
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/reagan-familys-trusted-astrologer-dies-87
- https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2014/10/24/reagan-astrologer-joan-quigley-dies/lFOup2K0VukxS2j77nNmoN/story.html
- https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/04/joan-quigley-ronald-reagans-guide-to-the-stars/
No. 363 Dancing with the ancestors in Madagascar
No. 364 The Angels of Mons began as fiction
No. 365 A chocolate bar that helps pass exams
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/features/how-the-kitkat-became-a-phenomenon-in-japan/
- https://thetakeout.com/how-kit-kats-became-a-japanese-phenomenon-1846514056
- https://www.lovethework.com/work-awards/entries/kit-kat-mail-2009-300557
- https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/kitkat-taxis-blessed-by-shinto-priest-offer-good-luck-to-test-taking-passengers
No. 366 Ringing the storm bells killed the ringers
No. 367 Gambling legal on Anzac Day
- https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/explainer-what-is-two-up/4egiqwgi1
- https://www.nowtolove.com.au/news/anzac-day-two-up-illegal-54960/
- https://rslqld.org/news/two-up-an-anzac-day-tradition
- https://www.northerndailyleader.com.au/story/8605528/why-two-up-is-legal-in-kalgoorlie-and-broken-hill-all-year/
- https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-1998-115
No. 368 The Dogon never knew Sirius B
- https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/cultures/fa16/documents/031
- https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/9039
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/4128518
- https://skepdic.com/dogon.html
- https://www.astronomy.com/today-in-the-history-of-astronomy/jan-31-1783-and-1862-pioneering-white-dwarf-discoveries/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nommo
No. 369 The President’s cake has no bean
- https://www.europe1.fr/societe/confectionner-la-galette-des-rois-de-lelysee-cest-un-honneur-a-100-un-stress-a-200-3941565
- https://www.futura-sciences.com/sciences/actualites/evenements-elysee-galette-cache-detail-na-rien-anodin-129868/
- https://www.brut.media/fr/news/ni-feve-ni-couronne-a-l-elysee-pour-la-galette-des-rois-b614baba-fa9f-4006-adca-074fd67d37cf
No. 370 Caesar’s stumble on the African shore
No. 371 110 Powerball winners from one fortune cookie
No. 372 The Tower ravens’ prophecy dates from the Blitz
No. 373 Iran’s thirteenth day out of doors
No. 374 The cosmonauts’ stop on the road to the pad
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-russian-astronauts-pee-on-a-bus-tire-before-launching-into-space-and-other-preflight-rituals
- https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/no-fly-boys-new-russian-space-suit-clashes-with-pee-ritual/
- https://www.livescience.com/62751-why-cosmonauts-pee-yuri-gagarin.html
- https://www.heraldnet.com/?p=209765
No. 375 No pope ordered the cats killed
No. 376 The Night of the Radishes
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-radish-carving-has-become-popular-holiday-event-oaxaca-180971096/
- https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/22/167709706/survived-the-mayan-apocalypse-here-come-the-radish-people
- https://davidpball.com/2011/12/24/noche-de-rabanos-digging-to-the-root-of-oaxacas-christmas-radish-festival/
No. 377 Fans do not kill sleepers
No. 378 Witch marks for a king who never came
No. 379 Oxen who forecast the harvest
No. 380 Stalin’s New Year tree
- https://tmora.org/2014/10/26/around-the-tree-holiday-traditions-in-the-soviet-era/
- https://euromaidanpress.com/2016/12/26/no-ukrainian-should-have-a-soviet-style-new-years-tree/
- https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CP%5CO%5CPostyshevPavel.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_tree
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Postyshev
No. 381 Where seventeen is the unlucky number
- https://theoriginals.renault.com/en/r17-tl
- https://www.thelocal.it/20220513/why-friday-13th-isnt-an-unlucky-date-in-italy
- https://www.thelocal.it/20240122/did-you-know-italians-fear-a-very-different-day-to-friday-13th
- https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/C.html
No. 382 The land divers of Pentecost Island
No. 383 The mummy that missed the Titanic
- https://nautil.us/the-curse-of-the-unlucky-mummy-234874/
- https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/a-mummy-a-myth-and-the-titanic/
- https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2012/05/29/the-mummys-curse-the-truth-behind-an-edwardian-rumour
- https://timmaltin.com/2019/02/22/titanic-mummys-curse/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlucky_Mummy
No. 384 The family demons keep away from
No. 385 Two goats for a Boeing 757
No. 386 China’s oldest writing and the malaria story
- https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_8297008
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/museum-offers-15000-letter-deciphering-oracle-bones-180964213/
- https://chinaheritage.net/journal/oracle-bones-that-dangerous-supplement/
- https://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/Articles/Details?Guid=228ded03-c40c-49c9-8cbb-3a4b63e01a90&CatId=7&postname=Reading+the+Bones
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone
No. 387 Skinner’s superstitious pigeons
No. 388 Buy it small and the god sends it big
- https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/ritual-journeys-in-la-paz-during-alasita-01182
- https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolivias-alasitas-fair-shines-with-unesco-list-recognition
- https://www.24horas.cl/noticiasbbc/ekeko-de-donde-viene-el-hombrecito-cargado-de-bienes-que-muchas-familias-peruanas-y-sudamericanas-tienen-en-casa-2854811
- https://eju.tv/?p=4874049
- https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/bern-returns-deity-statuette-to-bolivia/41124210
No. 389 The parade James Bond invented
- https://www.ibtimes.co.in/mexico-city-holds-its-first-ever-day-of-the-dead-parade-inspired-by-james-bond-movie-spectre-701927
- https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/spectre-scene-inspires-mexico-to-hold-day-of-dead-parade-1.1917065
- https://pvangels.com/news-mexico/180445/mexico-city-day-of-the-dead-parade-inspired-by-007
- https://morningsidepost.com/articles/2025/10/29/when-fiction-writes-on-tradition
- https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/day-of-the-dead-15-million-people-at-parade-in-mexico-li.2944122
- https://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bond-24-report-30032015-mexico-city-filming5
No. 390 The Easter hare was never Eostre’s
No. 391 NASA’s mission controllers eat peanuts for luck
No. 392 The goalkeeping coach suspected of planting a charm
No. 393 Most towers have no thirteenth floor, on paper
No. 394 Norway reads murder mysteries at Easter
No. 395 Pele’s curse on lava rocks is modern
- https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19910915/1305585/cursed-lava-flows-back-to-hawaii
- https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/20010521/pele21/to-pele-with-deep-apologies-rocks-sent-back-to-hawaii-to-placate-goddess
- https://psmag.com/?p=27885
- https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/37148351/national-park-service-to-visitors-please-please-leave-the-rocks/
- https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/17131
No. 396 The front row reserved for ghosts
- https://www.roots.gov.sg/muse/articles/from-good-brothers-to-getai-mandarin-terms-of-the-hungry-ghost-festival
- https://culturepaedia.singaporeccc.org.sg/popular-culture/from-amusement-parks-to-the-heartlands-the-evolution-of-getai-in-singapore/
- https://www.malaymail.com/news/singapore/2020/09/08/singapores-concert-for-the-dead-goes-online-during-pandemic/1901136
No. 397 “Three on a match” is older than the Match King
No. 398 The Olympics at eight past eight
- https://www.nhpr.org/2008-08-08/olympics-open-with-spotlight-on-chinese-culture
- https://csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2008/0808/china-welcomes-the-olympics-with-fireworks-and-wedding-bells
- https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/20060608/0515733778.shtml
- https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030819/115254_F.shtml
No. 399 The town that throws tomatoes
No. 400 Telling the bees the Queen had died
9. The Sea Keeps Its Secrets Facts 401–450
No. 401 No warm dinner on the Mary Celeste
No. 402 The women divers of Jeju
No. 403 The sun on the wrong side of Africa
No. 404 Alvin’s lunch survived the deep
- https://www.whoi.edu/multimedia/lost-lunch/
- https://www.whoi.edu/?p=30312
- https://www.apr.org/science-health/2014-11-04/alvin-the-little-submarine-that-could
- https://spectrum.ieee.org/history-of-alvin-submersible
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-sunken-sandwiches-tell-us-about-the-future-of-food-storage-102837326/
No. 405 The pirate queen met Elizabeth I
- https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/grace-o-malley-pirate-history-fact-fiction-legend
- https://graceomalley.com/index.php/grace-omalley/when-the-sea-queen-met-the-virgin-queen
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/grace-omalley-pirate-queen
- https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/irelands-pirate-queen-twelve-fascinating-facts-legendary-grace-omalley-129406
No. 406 The Bermuda Triangle loses nothing extra
No. 407 The sponge diver’s metal biscuits with ears
No. 408 The bath toys that mapped the Pacific
No. 409 The Revolt of the Lash
- https://www.opovo.com.br/agencia/bbc/2025/11/20/a-conturbada-vida-de-joao-candido-lider-da-revolta-da-chibata-preso-expulso-da-marinha-e-internado-como-louco.html
- https://ibw21.org/editors-choice/he-led-brazils-black-sailors-in-mutiny-to-resist-abuse/
- https://blog.twmuseums.org.uk/a-revolta-da-chibata-the-revolt-of-the-lash-november-22nd-1910/
No. 410 The first photographs of a living giant squid
No. 411 There was never an HMS Friday
No. 412 Madagascar was settled from Borneo
No. 413 The aircraft carrier made of ice
No. 414 Columbus met three mermaids
No. 415 The wave nobody believed in
- https://www.whoi.edu/what-is-a-rogue-wave/
- https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/4319/6/PRSDraupner2.pdf
- https://partner.sciencenorway.no/a/1435235
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mathematicians-may-soon-be-able-to-predict-enormous-rogue-waves
No. 416 The pirate who retired in comfort
No. 417 Captains cannot marry you
- https://www.straightdope.com/21341721/are-ships-captains-allowed-to-marry-people-at-sea
- https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2018/12/can-sea-captains-really-officiate-legally-binding-marriages/
- https://static.case.law/ny/250/cases/0313-01.json
- https://www.royalgazette.com/?p=246130
- https://porthole.com/princess-cunard-and-po-now-offer-same-sex-weddings-at-sea/
No. 418 The whale that sank the Essex
No. 419 The divine wind met river boats
No. 420 Huxley’s primeval slime was chemistry
No. 421 A pewter plate nailed to a post in 1616
No. 422 The sailor who faked a voyage round the world
No. 423 Korea’s turtle ships were not iron-clad
No. 424 The sea floor that rose every night
- https://twilightzone.whoi.edu/the-mysterious-false-bottom-of-the-twilight-zone/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ups-and-downs-of-a-great-vertical-migration/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greatest-migration-on-earth-happens-under-darkness-every-day
- https://californiacurated.com/blog/all-the-fish-we-did-not-see-the-discovery-of-the-oceans-false-bottom-off-california/
No. 425 The first woman round the world went as a man
- https://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/2023-10/Barret.pdf
- https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/maritime-history/jeanne-baret-first-woman-sail-around-world
- https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-who-was-jeanne-barret-the-first-woman-to-circumnavigate-the-globe-146296
- https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2013/03/celebrating-womens-history-month-jeanne-baret-the-man-who-was-a-woman
No. 426 Cleopatra’s Needle was abandoned at sea
- https://thamestugs.co.uk/THAT-DARN-NEEDLE!.php
- https://www.victorianlondon.org/buildings/cleopatrasneedle.htm
- https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-original-model-for-cleopatras-needle-sphinxes-is-up-for-sale-91497/
- https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-124870
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(cylinder_ship)
No. 427 The garbage patch is no floating island
- https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html
- https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage-patches
- https://www.wgbh.org/news/2018-03-22/the-trash-patch-in-the-pacific-is-many-times-bigger-than-we-thought
- https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/great-pacific-garbage-patch-dwarfs-previous-size-estimates-298928
No. 428 Vasa was built with two kinds of ruler
No. 429 Nobody has ever seen an eel spawn
- https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/first-direct-evidence-of-adult-european-eels-migrating-to-their-b/
- https://phys.org/news/2022-10-ancient-mystery-european-eel-migration.html
- https://www.slu.se/en/news/2026/04/pa-jakt-efter-alens-hemligheter-mitt-ute-i-sargassohavet/
- https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/johannes-schmidt/
- https://www.livescience.com/european-eel-spawning
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ancient-mystery-of-european-eel-migration-unravelled-to-help-combat-decline-of-critically-endangered-species
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9562336/
No. 430 Ibn Majid never guided da Gama
- https://dichp.bnportugal.gov.pt/historiadores_eng/historiadores_david_lopes4_eng.htm
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46440/pg46440.txt
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ibn-majid-shih
- https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.navigator.ahmad.ibn.majid.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_ibn_Majid
No. 431 The gold coin that stopped a Shiloh bullet
No. 432 The castaway boy who went home a samurai
- https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/manjiro/
- https://whitfield-manjiro.org/john-manjiros-story
- https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nakahama_Manjir%C5%8D
- https://www.tokyoweekender.com/art_and_culture/history/nakahama-manjiro-first-japanese-person-america/
- https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064776/1975-07-24/ed-1/seq-12/
- https://www.discoverfairhaven.org/manjiro-nakahama
- https://discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2025/4/25/nikkei-wo-megutte-61/
No. 433 Women and children first was the exception
No. 434 The whale that carried a Victorian bomb lance
No. 435 The giraffe hailed as a qilin at the Ming court
- https://scroll.in/article/998301/rhinos-to-portugal-turkeys-to-delhi-recalling-the-history-of-animal-gifts-in-pre-colonial-times
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/peculiar-story-giraffes-medieval-china-180963737/
- https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/giraffes-sailed-medieval-china
- https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/181783
- https://www.worldhistory.org/image/10024/giraffe-tribute-to-emperor-yongle/
No. 436 The ghost ship that drifted for 38 years
- https://adn.com/alaska-life/2023/10/29/the-mysterious-fate-of-the-baychimo-the-ghost-ship-that-haunted-the-arctic-for-decades
- https://thenorthernreview.ca/index.php/nr/article/download/192/184/572
- https://www.boote-magazin.de/en/boats/motor-yachts/ghost-ships-the-odyssey-of-the-ss-baychimo-in-the-perpetual-ice/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Baychimo
- https://manitobamuseum.ca/baychimo-the-adventures-of-the-ghost-ship-of-the-arctic/
No. 437 Plimsoll and the coffin ships
- https://liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories/commemorating-mps-furious-outburst-behalf-of-seafarers
- https://heritage.lrfoundation.org.uk/what-is-the-plimsoll-line
- https://victorianweb.org/history/plimsoll.html
- https://mastermariners.org.au/stories-from-the-past/4710-samuel-plimsoll-10-february-1824-3-june-1898
- https://www.folkestonemuseum.co.uk/2024/02/10/samuel-plimsolls-200th-birthday/
- https://www.historyhit.com/the-plimsoll-line-how-samuel-plimsoll-made-sailing-safer/
No. 438 Hardly anyone ever walked the plank
- https://www.history.com/articles/did-pirates-really-make-people-walk-the-plank
- https://wordhistories.net/2025/12/08/walk-the-plank/
- https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/walk-the-plank.html
- https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/08/pirates-rarely-made-people-walk-the-plank/
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16/pg16.txt
- https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/120/pg120.txt
- https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3794833/3794837/22/piracy
No. 439 Fritz Haber’s hunt for gold in seawater
No. 440 Inuit memory found Franklin’s lost ships
- https://www.parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nu/epaveswrecks/culture/inuit/qaujimajatuqangit
- https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/65674ship_director_and_inuk_ranger_tell_the_tale_of_terror/
- https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-louie-kamookak-58-teacher-and-inuit-historian-was-the-last-great
- https://nunatsiaq.com/?p=2340
- https://archaeology.org/issues/january-february-2021/collection/canada-franklin-wrecks/top-10-discoveries-of-the-decade/
No. 441 Nelson’s Trafalgar signal was edited by his signal officer
No. 442 The milky sea a captain saw was confirmed from space
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051018073631.htm
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mystery-of-milky-seas-is-finally-being-solved/
- https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/hunting-milky-seas-by-satellite-149017/
- https://www.astronomy.com/science/earths-milky-seas-observed-from-space-and-sea/
- https://eos.org/articles/satellites-allow-scientists-to-dive-into-milky-seas
No. 443 Henry the Navigator ran no school at Sagres
No. 444 The German fleet that sank itself at Scapa Flow
- https://orkneymuseums.co.uk/?p=4488
- https://www.orkney.gov.uk/latest-news/scapa-100-call-for-descendants
- https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/german-battle-fleet-scuttled-scapa-flow
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_fleet_at_Scapa_Flow
- https://orkneymuseums.co.uk/scuttling-the-german-fleet-the-scuttling/
- https://historynet.com/behind-lines-scuttled-scapa-flow-1919/
No. 445 Black Tot Day, the end of the Navy’s rum
- https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1970/jan/28/royal-navy-rum-ration
- https://rna-norwich.org.uk/2022/07/on-this-day-31-july-black-tot-day/
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56595/day-royal-navy-ended-its-daily-rum-ration
- https://navymuseum.co.nz/explore/by-themes/customs-and-traditions/rnzn-and-the-rum-issue/
No. 446 A future king’s journal records the Flying Dutchman
No. 447 The Wilhelm Gustloff, the deadliest sinking
No. 448 The Warrimoo’s night in two centuries is unproven
No. 449 Mel Fisher and “Today’s the day”
- https://www.melfisher.org/copy-of-1622-galleons
- https://store.melfisher.com/blogs/news/the-mel-fisher-story
- https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19981221/2790121/mel-fisher-florida-treasure-hunter-dies----cancer-takes-king-of-the-conch-republic
- https://www.antiquetrader.com/collectibles/fisher-shipwreck-silver-selling
- https://numa.net/?p=1779
- https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep458/usrep458670/usrep458670.pdf
No. 450 A message in a bottle 132 years at sea
10. Machines That Think and Machines That Don’t Facts 451–500
No. 451 The chess machine with a man inside
No. 452 The first PC virus came with a phone number
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/story-worlds-first-free-range-computer-virus-flna915385
- https://welivesecurity.com/2018/11/05/malware-1980s-brain-virus-morris-worm
- https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mikkohypponendefendinginternet.htm
- https://ethw.org/Computer_Viruses
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_(computer_virus)
No. 453 The medieval castle that pranked its guests
- https://daily.jstor.org/the-medieval-castle-that-pranked-its-visitors/
- https://www.rug.nl/research/centre-for-religious-studies/research-centres/centre-religion-conflict-globalization/blog/adventures-in-eden?lang=en
- https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mechanical-spectacles
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesdin_Castle
No. 454 The computer forecast nobody dared to broadcast
No. 455 The ancient robot that winked at the court ladies
No. 456 The robot hotel that laid off its robots
No. 457 Lady Lovelace’s objection
No. 458 Kinshasa’s robot traffic police
- https://adf-magazine.com/2014/10/robots-direct-traffic-in-drcs-capital/
- https://africanvibes.com/remember-kinshasa-traffic-robots-can-they-be-a-solution-to-africas-traffic-problem/
- https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/therese-kirongozi-robotic-traffic-controllers
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se_Kirongozi
- https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/04/03/2015/robocops-take-on-kinshasa-traffic
No. 459 The mechanical duck that only pretended to digest
No. 460 Love letters from a 1950s computer
- https://old.rhizome.org/editorial/2013/apr/09/queer-history-computing-part-three
- https://if50.substack.com/p/christopher-strachey-and-the-dawn
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey
- https://blog.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/can-you-code-love/
- https://daily.jstor.org/the-love-letter-generator-that-foretold-chatgpt
No. 461 Tipu Sultan’s tiger and its wailing victim
No. 462 Houdini against the makers of a driverless car
- https://www.intervalmagic.com/houdini/articles/1925_07.22.html
- https://www.intervalmagic.com/houdini/articles/1925_07.23.html
- https://www.intervalmagic.com/houdini/articles/1925_08.05.html
- https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-driverless-car-era-began-more-than-90-years-ago-1327
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdina_Radio_Control
No. 463 The famous moth was not the first computer bug
- https://daily.jstor.org/the-bug-in-the-computer-bug-story/
- https://www.si.edu/object/log-book-computer-bug:nmah_334663
- https://sciencenotes.org/september-9-today-science-history-first-computer-bug/
- https://www.advance.hr/en/articles/history/calendar/the-day-when-the-computer-bug-really-had-wings
- https://www.computerworld.com/article/2515483/epic-failures-11-infamous-software-bugs.html
No. 464 The mechanical servants that brought soap and a towel
- https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1945.383.a
- https://muslimheritage.com/overview-on-al-jazari-and-his-mechanical-devices/
- https://aljazaribook.com/en/2019/02/24/auto-pitcher-en/
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/history-magazine/article/ismail-al-jazari-muslim-inventor-called-father-robotics
No. 465 The robot that hitchhiked across Canada
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/welcome-home-hitchhiking-robot-s-cross-canada-journey-success-n185906
- https://wtop.com/news/2014/08/hitchhiking-robot-charms-its-way-across-canada/
- https://www.inquirer.com/history/hitchbot-philadelphia-robot-20260731.html
- https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/USA/USA-Update/2015/0803/Fans-demand-justice-for-hitchBOT-killed-after-only-two-weeks-in-US
No. 466 Japan’s first robot sat at a desk and wrote
- https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b00906/
- https://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1928-gakutensoku-pneumatic-writing-robot-makoto-nishimura-japanese/
- https://pinktentacle.com/2008/04/80-year-old-gakutensoku-robot-revived-wvideo/
- https://gendai.media/articles/-/71317
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakutensoku
- https://eiga.com/movie/37930/
No. 467 HAL was not named by shifting IBM one letter
No. 468 The Peacock Clock still performs in the Hermitage
- http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/12/2006/hm12_1_22.html
- https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-peacock-clock-james-cox/MwHh2POEjQax9g?hl=en
- https://www.gw2ru.com/arts/243262-hermitages-legendary-clock-british-adventurer-duchess
- https://lidenz.com/peacock-clock-interesting-sight-seeing-inside-hermitage/
- https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/exhibitions/online/fromparchmenttopixels/duchessofkingston.aspx
No. 469 The computer made of matchboxes
No. 470 Chile’s cybernetic control room
- https://americasquarterly.org/article/allendes-strange-plan-to-connect-chile-long-before-the-internet/
- https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/longview-cyber-socialism-chile
- https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2018/08/project-cybersyn-afterlife-chile-s-socialist-internet
- https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/project-cybersyn/
No. 471 Descartes never had a clockwork daughter
No. 472 The first factory robot sank a putt on TV
- https://www.automate.org/robotics/engelberger/joseph-engelberger-unimate
- https://www.invent.org/blog/inventors/George-Devol-Industrial-Robot
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimate
- https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/article/21795591/joseph-engelberger-robotics-move-from-industry-to-space-to-elder-care
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-first-industrial-robot-180967442/
No. 473 The chess machine with nobody inside
No. 474 The airline that blamed its own chatbot
- https://www.mondaq.com/canada/new-technology/1427926/airline-ordered-to-compensate-a-bc-man-because-its-chatbot-provided-inaccurate-information
- https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/techlex/moffatt-v-air-canada-misrepresentation-ai-chatbot
- https://dailyhive.com/canada/air-canada-chatbot-decision
No. 475 A robot programmed with string in AD 60
- https://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/07/programmable-robot-from-60ad.html
- https://uqantiquitiesonlineexhibitions.omeka.net/exhibits/show/wondrous-machines/movementmechanism
- https://kotsanas.com/exhibits/top20/the-mobile-automaton-of-heron-of-alexandria/
- https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/07/07/1924248/ancient-robot-was-programmed-with-rope
No. 476 The computer that counted in threes
No. 477 The talking head nobody wanted
No. 478 The boy who did not pass Turing’s test
No. 479 The boy who writes any forty letters
- https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/pierre-jaquet-droz/
- https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/trio-of-antique-robots-lure-visitors-to-neuchâtel/2709464
- https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/date/2015/04/14
- https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-gb/experiences/events/automates-jaquetdroz-demonstration/
No. 480 Apollo’s software was woven by hand
No. 481 The doll-maker who founded Toshiba
- https://www.city.kurume.fukuoka.jp/1080kankou/2015bunkazai/3050kurumeshishi/files/No.39TanakaHisashigeaninventor-engineerretake.pdf
- https://toshiba-mirai-kagakukan.jp/a-guide/en/history-zone/founders/yumihiki.htm
- https://toshiba-mirai-kagakukan.jp/a-guide/en/history-zone/founders/man-nendokei.htm
- https://toshiba-mirai-kagakukan.jp/a-guide/en/history-zone/founders/hisashige.htm
- https://museum.seiko.co.jp/en/knowledge/inventors_04/
- https://interestingengineering.com/the-inventor-who-upgraded-japans-mysterious-robots-250-years-ago
No. 482 Good vodka, rotten meat, no computer
No. 483 Robot jockeys of the Gulf
No. 484 Eric, Britain’s first robot
- https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/rebuilding-eric-the-uks-first-robot/
- https://futilitycloset.com/2018/12/18/eric-the-robot
- https://www.wgbh.org/news/2016-05-16/london-museum-hopes-to-reboot-eric-britains-first-robot
- https://newatlas.com/historical-uk-robot-eric-rebuild/43269/
- http://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1928-eric-robot-capt-richards-english/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_(robot)
No. 485 The bug that may have rattled Kasparov
No. 486 The talking android Aquinas never smashed
No. 487 He owns a robot on the Moon
- https://www.space.com/moon-property-rights-lunokhod-2-richard-garriott
- https://www.npr.org/2010/03/20/124956591/lunar-rover-is-spotted-for-first-time-in-37-years
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2
- https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/766342-first-commercial-spacecraft-to-land-on-the-moon
No. 488 The economy in water pipes
No. 489 Tesla’s boat with a borrowed mind
No. 490 ENIAC never dimmed Philadelphia
No. 491 The one game AlphaGo lost to Lee Sedol
- https://deepmind.google/research/alphago/
- https://www.wgbh.org/news/2016-03-13/after-three-losses-master-go-player-scores-a-win-against-computer
- https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/technology/2019/11/28/news/champion-go-player-quits-because-ai-cannot-be-defeated--1777577/
- https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/27/googles-alphago-ai-is-retiring/?ncid=rss
- https://www.eurogofed.org/ai-technologies-hit-the-go-world/
No. 492 The most expensive hyphen was not a hyphen
No. 493 The tea-shop company that built a computer
- https://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/3319-60th-anniversary-of-worlds-first-business-computer-leo.html
- https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/leo/story
- https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6993/LEO-The-First-Business-Computer/
- https://www.leo-computers.org.uk/leo-moments-in-history/
No. 494 The Mercedes that drove itself to Denmark
No. 495 The six women who programmed ENIAC
No. 496 ILOVEYOU and the law that did not exist
No. 497 HAL’s last song came from a real computer
No. 498 The coffee pot that became the first webcam
No. 499 The secretary who wanted privacy with ELIZA
- https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-people-demanded-privacy-to-confide-in-the-worlds-first-chatbot
- https://newrepublic.com/article/181189/inventor-chatbot-tried-warn-us-ai-joseph-weizenbaum-computer-power-human-reason
- https://www.mentalfloss.com/technology/computers/eliza-chatbot-history
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai