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 Woman Who Rewrote French Opera With a Sword at Her Hip
She broke a woman out of a convent by stealing a dead nun's body, and then went back to singing.
The Man Who Laughed at Everything
He correctly described the structure of all matter in the universe. Plato tried to have his books burned. Plato won.
The Woman Who Thanked the Taxi Driver
She was in a taxi crash at seventy-five and discovered she could now sing a higher F than ever before. She did not sue. She sent cigars.
The Man Who Translated Everything Wrong
He translated the hieroglyphics on a famous Roman fountain. They are complete nonsense, chiseled in stone, and tourists photograph them every day.
The Paper Men Who Launched a Barnyard Into the Sky
The king suggested testing the balloon on condemned prisoners. The Montgolfiers had a better idea.
The Knight Whose Insult Became a Mozart Composition
He had a second, fancier iron hand built for Sundays.
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 Woman Who Started the War Early
She raised a revolutionary flag twelve days before the revolution was declared — on a warship that was, on paper, a trading ship.
The Woman Who Covered the World in Polka Dots
She sent fourteen unsolicited watercolors to a stranger in rural Japan. That stranger was Georgia O'Keeffe, and she wrote back.
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 Man Who Could Not Fail
He shipped coal to Newcastle during a miners' strike and sold every piece at a premium.
The Man Who Moved a Castle for a Girl Who Never Came
He never let anyone watch him work.