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 Company He Kept
In 1825 an eighteen-year-old from New York couldn't get cast in an American theatre, so he sailed to London and played Oroonoko; thirty years later, what was Prussia giving him a gold medal for?
The Woman Who Drowned in the Desert
How does a woman who spent her whole life trying to vanish into the Sahara end up killed by it in the one way no one saw coming?
The Hippopotamus in the Marsh
What does a chess grandmaster do when his brain is hijacked, mid-game, by a children's poem about a stuck hippopotamus?
The Ping-Pong Ball
What are the odds the first autobiography in English survived because a colonel hunting a ping-pong ball was talked out of burning it?
The Soot and the Spit
What does a self-taught artist do when the family finally retires the wood stove and his only source of ink disappears?
The Composer Found Under His Coat Stand
What does a man do for twenty-five years after walking offstage at the Paris Conservatoire in disgust?
Notre Grande Chasublerie
His ceilings were 1.65 metres high, which suited him perfectly. Every guest he ever received had to crouch.
The Schoolboy Who Kidnapped a General
Expelled at eighteen for holding a greengrocer's daughter's hand, he was saluted through twenty-two German checkpoints eleven years later wearing a stolen general's cap.
Mary Mallon Keeps Cooking
She gave her word, in 1910, that she would never cook again.
The Steersman Goes Home
What does it look like when the man who taught Wall Street to predict the future can't predict where he parked?
The Buckingham Palace Duel
At six, mid-reverse-bow out of Buckingham Palace, the Queen's poodle came for him — so he drew his sword.
The Bandleader From Saturn
What does a man who insists he was sent here from Saturn do when NASA rejects his application?