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 Girl Who Shot the Kaiser
In 1889, a five-foot Quaker in an ankle-length skirt asked the audience for a volunteer, and Kaiser Wilhelm II stood up.
The Return to Life
In 1831, a jilted composer sketched a two-minute plan involving a lady's maid disguise, a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and two vials of poison in case the pistols failed.
The Man Who Counted the Posts
The man who single-handedly disciplined the English language could not walk past a post without touching it.
The Emperor Made of Vegetables
What do you do when your court painter, a decorated cathedral man, starts rendering your jurist as a heap of raw poultry pinned around a syphilitic face?
This Ain't an Egg-Shop
Who walks 130 miles through an Antarctic winter, in total darkness, to fetch a penguin egg?
The Man With an Instinct for the Regrettable
What are the odds that the same man invented leaded gasoline and the chemical that punched a hole in the ozone layer?
The Man Who Counted the Hurdy-Gurdies
The man who designed the first computer spent a quarter of his working life fighting street musicians. Guess which project he finished.
The Drunk Friend
How do you smuggle a corpse past the city guards without anyone asking questions?
The Man Who Went Down
What do you do when you buy ten acres of California sunshine and discover it's a slab of rock at 120 degrees?
The Apprentice Salesman
What do you do after selling the Eiffel Tower to a scrap dealer and getting away with it?
The Cape Compromise
She swam thirteen miles down the Thames, twenty-two down the Danube, and got arrested walking onto a beach in Boston.
The Hermit Who Kept Office Hours
What kind of hermit hires two armed guards, then hands out gin to two hundred children through the bars of his window?