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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Grandma Moses
Ribbons for the Jam
At the Cambridge Country Fair, Anna Mary Robertson Moses entered her paintings alongside her preserves, and won ribbons for the jam.
At seventy-six, arthritis ended her embroidery, so she took up painting — house paint on Masonite, glitter for snow. She entered canvases beside her preserves at the county fair and won ribbons for the jam. Her name was Anna Mary Robertson Moses.
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The Man Who Knew Paris
He kept a shoebox labeled Mouse Material; the archivist who finally opened it found the contents of a vacuum cleaner.
The Prince Who Painted Hell
What kind of man commissions an altarpiece of himself praying, then hangs it in the room where he prays?
The Man Who Fed His Foot to Worms
What do you do when worms keep falling out of the ulcer on your foot, fifty feet above the ground, and you've been standing on a pillar for thirty-seven years?
The Surgeon Who Believed
What does a royal surgeon do after publishing a forty-page pamphlet certifying that a clothier's wife gave birth to rabbits, four days before she confesses?
The Admiral and the Unicorn
A giraffe walked into the Ming court in 1414, and the Confucian scholars decided it was proof from heaven.
The Autobiography No One Has Read
If you sealed your life story in an ancient jar, hid it with a chest of gold, and someone paid $48,000 for it six years ago — would you want to know why they never cracked the wax?
The Chevalier Who Wouldn't Lie Down
What kind of person enters a fencing tournament against an entire garrison while their brain is swelling inside their skull?
The Man Who Sewed Up a Heart
What happens when a former barber decides to stitch a beating heart by lamplight, twelve years after the most famous surgeon on Earth said it couldn't be done?
Hugo Ball and the Lobster Bishop
What happens when a man in a cardboard lobster suit accidentally starts chanting Catholic mass?
The Liar's Liar
What happens when a wanted gem thief decides he's the right person to publish someone else's tall tales?
Lord Berners and the Elephant Problem
What happens when a man Stravinsky called Britain's best composer places a classified ad selling elephants he doesn't own — and names the buyers?
The Saint Who Never Applied
What happens when colonists canonize a dead chief they never asked, dress up in bucktail hats, and dance "in the style of those people" while actual Native delegations watch from the docks?