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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Alfred Jarry
Notre Grande Chasublerie
His ceilings were 1.65 metres high, which suited him perfectly. Every guest he ever received had to crouch.
The ceilings were 1.65 metres. He stuffed broken windows with newspaper, wore the whitewash that rubbed from above, and called his bicycle 'that which rolls.' At the centre, a stone phallus from Rops. Alfred Jarry lived around it for nine years.
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The World's Best Loser
A Glasgow grocer spent thirty-one years and five yachts chasing the same silver cup, and lost every single race.
The Smell of Sin
What does it take for a 13th-century shepherdess to become the patron saint of psychiatrists eight hundred years later?
The Abbess Who Hid the Grave
What does a twelfth-century abbess do when an archbishop orders her to exhume a body she has decided to keep?
The Architect Who Wore a Sailor's Coat
Who designs the gilded ceilings of British democracy in pilot trousers and jack-boots, then sails out to pull drowning men from the Goodwin Sands?
The Man Who Drew the Curtains
He sailed to Tahiti, India, and Japan in 1920 and never left his cabin — so what exactly was he doing in there?
The Painter Who Painted the Room
She started on Masonite, then cookie sheets, then scallop shells, then the breadbox — and then she ran out of small things.
The Helmet His Wife Made
Who packs a pre-mixed glob of Vaseline and cotton into his pocket before climbing into a balloon, and what exactly does he expect to happen up there?
The Hatchery Sessions
What does a composer do when the bulldozers show up before the last take is finished?
The Vanishing of the Inventor of Cinema
Three weeks before the demonstration that would have made him the undisputed inventor of cinema, he boarded a train and stopped existing.
A House for Foss
A Victorian poet built a second house identical to his first, same rooms, same floor plan, so his cat wouldn't feel disoriented.
I Have Not The Time
In prison, drunk for the first time, he told his cellmates he would die in a duel over a woman. Nine months later, a woman wrote him a letter.
The Guest of Honor
What does it take for a toll collector who painted tigers in his off-hours to end up enthroned on a packing crate at a banquet thrown by Picasso?