🇬🇧 United Kingdom
Oddlets from United Kingdom.
The Squire Who Taught Darwin Everything
He rode a caiman like a horse, built the world's first nature reserve, and accidentally set in motion the theory of evolution.
The Boy Who Kept Scorpions in Matchboxes
The zoo that once refused to hire him now sends its directors to the training academy he built.
The Surgeon Who Tried the Experiment
He inoculated himself with a patient's discharge to settle a scientific question, and his reputation was so enormous that nobody checked his work for fifty-one years.
The Raven That Wrote Two Masterpieces
A paint-eating raven died, got stuffed, and ended up inspiring two of the most famous works in English literature — from two different writers.
The Duke Who Went Underground
He built the largest ballroom in England and used it to roller-skate alone.
The Man Who Shook the King's Hand
He kept pigs as hunting dogs, trained otters to fish, and when the King of England finally summoned him to court, he had a scheduling conflict.
The Woman Who Dressed Like a Cathedral
She had a coffin she liked to lie in before writing each morning, to focus her mind.
The Woman Who Wrote the Future
She arrived at the Royal Society in 1666, critiqued their methods to their faces, and they used her visit as justification to ban every woman who came after her — for 278 years.
The Man Who Set Himself on Fire to Cure Hiccups
He inherited 132,000 acres at age two and died in a debtors' prison at thirty-seven, and those are not the strange parts.
The Poet Who Brought a Bear to College
When Trinity College banned dogs from student rooms, Byron checked the statutes, confirmed they said nothing about bears, and installed one.
The Man Who Stabbed a Bible
A century before the Civil War, a four-foot-seven cave-dweller in a military coat walked into a Quaker meeting and sprayed fake blood on every slaveholder in the room.
The Man Who Walked Into His Own Secret
He kept his route secret so no rival could reach the city first. More than a hundred people have since died trying to find him.