A cabinet of lovable weirdos
Tiny true stories,
lovingly odd.
Weird science, forgotten history, and human quirks — each one true, each under a minute, each a little stranger than you’d expect.
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Annie Edson Taylor
The Queen of the Mist
What kind of woman test-drives a Niagara Falls barrel by sending a cat over first?
In 1901, she strapped herself into a padded oak barrel with an anvil at her feet and went over Horseshoe Falls. She was sixty-three. A charm-school teacher. Broke. And she had already sent the cat. Meet Annie Edson Taylor, Queen of the Mist.
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The Man Who Painted the Dead
How do you paint a wild bird at exact life size without it moving?
Present But Not Voting
What kind of man spends sixty-three years perfecting the instructions for his own stuffed body?
The Man Who Signed a Treaty With a Wolf
In 1220, when a wolf was eating the citizens of Gubbio, a barefoot friar walked out alone to negotiate terms.
This Way to the Egress
He painted a sign over the back door reading THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, and patrons walked through it expecting a beast.
The Composer Who Flooded His Neighbors
What was the greatest composer in Europe doing upstairs that kept soaking the ceiling below?
The Rope
What do you call a woman who wouldn't cross the lawn for Emerson, but rigged a rope from her window for children she refused to greet at the door?
The Notation on the Buttocks
What if the sheet music tattooed across a damned soul's buttocks in a 500-year-old painting of Hell turns out to be... actually playable?
The Cartwheel Brims
A loom took half her scalp at thirteen; she spent the next eighty-seven years deciding what the world was allowed to see.
The Rational Heat Motor
Why would a millionaire inventor lay out his nightshirt, mark a small cross on his diary, and fold his overcoat beneath the railing?
The Wrapping
The man whose equations run every JPEG, MP3, and MRI scan came back from Egypt convinced heat was the secret to staying alive — and wore several overcoats indoors, in summer, until it killed him.
The Servant of Jesus
In 1602 the Jesuits sent a former soldier to walk from India to China in disguise to settle a geography argument — what could possibly go wrong?
The Man Who Was Seventy-Five People
He cast a horoscope for a man who didn't exist and determined he'd been born nine and a half hours before his own conception.
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