A cabinet of lovable weirdos
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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Empress Sissi (Elisabeth of Austria)
What does a 19th-century empress do in a room called the Toilette- und Turnzimmer?
She walked ten hours a day, fenced twice some days, and kept gymnastic rings rigged in her bedroom doorway. At fifty-six she weighed 96 pounds and had been diagnosed with edema of hunger. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the Hofburg's hungriest athlete.
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She discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in 1856, and then history erased her name for 154 years.

She funded her physics research by calculating card game odds and winning.

Her neighbors believed she became a genius because lightning killed three women standing next to her when she was fifteen months old.

She discovered the greenhouse effect in 1856, then sat in the audience while a man read her paper aloud because women weren't allowed to present their own work.