At noon on the 12th of July, 1892, Mr. J.E. Muddock, the well-known novelist, then on his way home from Canada in the Sarna, threw into the icy Straits of Belle Isle a soda-water bottle containing a message, which, together with the bottle, is here shown. Exactly 485 days afterwards Mr. Muddock had a letter from Norway saying that his bottle had been picked up by a poor fisherman at the entrance to the Sogne Fiord, 2,500 miles in a straight line from the place where it was committed to the sea. Had it not been picked up it would have gone into the Arctic regions. This experiment was of real scientific value, since it was the means of settling certain matters relating to ocean currents.

— Strand, January 1898

On July 30, 1915, the German submarine U-28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian in the North Atlantic. Captain Georg Günther Freiherr von Forstner and his crew watched the ship sink rapidly under the waves, stern first. Then, a surprise:

When the steamer had disappeared for about 25 seconds it exploded at a depth which we could not know, but one thousand meters will be a safe guess. Shortly afterwards pieces of wreckage, among them a huge marine animal which made violent movements, were thrown out of the water, flying approximately 20 or 30 meters high.

At this moment we were six men on the bridge, myself, the two officers of the watch, the chief engineer, the navigator and the helmsman. We at once centered our attention upon this marvel of the seas. Unfortunately we had not time to take a photograph because the animal disappeared in the water after 10 or 15 seconds. It was about 20 meters long, looked like a giant crocodile, and had four powerful paddle-like limbs and a long pointed head.

“The explanation of this event seems easy to me,” von Forstner wrote. “The explosion of, or in, the sinking steamer caught the ‘undersea-crocodile,’ as we called it, and forced it out of the water.” When the story was attacked, von Forstner stood firm, declaring that he “would not give up a single meter of the length of the animal.” What was it? Who knows?

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the tiny town of Vernon in Florida’s panhandle gained a disturbing reputation for insurance fraud. Only 500 people lived in Vernon, but fully 10 percent of these (all men) reported they had lost arms, legs, and fingers. For a brief period this region of Florida accounted for two-thirds of all loss-of-limb claims in the United States.

“Somehow they always shoot off the parts they seem to need least,” noted one investigator. Another wrote, “To sit in your car on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of Nub City, watching anywhere from eight to a dozen cripples walking along the street, gives the place a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere.”

The trend lasted only a few years, and the allegations were never proven, but the town remained sensitive to its reputation for decades. In 1981 filmmaker Errol Morris was planning a documentary about Vernon (where, he said, the people “became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially”). According to Morris’ Web site, the film “had to be retooled when his subjects threatened to murder him.”

The Rev. T. Jackson says, in referring to sheep being fond of, and variously affected by, music, that the Highland breed of sheep carry off the palm for cleverness and for their partiality to sweet sounds. He knew one of them that would jump and skip about with considerable pleasure whenever a lively, quick tune was played; but the moment it heard the National Anthem, it would hang down its head, appear to be very sullen, annoyed, and much displeased until the music ceased.

— Vernon S. Morwood, Wonderful Animals, 1883

Which of these is Japanese sculptor Hananuma Masakichi, and which is the life-size wooden statue he completed in 1885? Amazingly, the statue’s on the right. Masakichi spent three years posing between two adjustable mirrors to capture every skin blemish, blue vein, and discoloration on his body, even inserting his own body hairs into hand-drilled holes at precise locations. He added glass eyes and eyelashes that were exact facsimiles of his own and applied a coat of lacquer to give the finished statue the appearance of flesh and blood. The finished product is so convincing that crowds reportedly had difficulty distinguishing the artist from his work when he posed next to it at exhibition. “The figure stands with a little mask in one hand and an instrument for carving in the other,” reported the Oriental Review. “The lifelike eyes are apparently gazing at the mask, and the face wears a look of intense absorption.”

This cat has a liking for the gramophone: it loves to get in the trumpet to sleep, and will not move even when a record is put in and played!

— Strand, August 1906

A curious legend attends the Viscounts Gormanston of Ireland. It is said that when the head of the house dies, the foxes leave the surrounding countryside and congregate at the door of the castle. The following statements, collected at the death of Jenico William Joseph, the 14th Viscount Gormanston, on Oct. 28, 1907, appeared in the New Ireland Review of April 1908:

• Lady Gormanston: “At the time he was dying, foxes were seen about the house and coming towards the house for some days before. His valet who was sleeping in his room heard what he thought was a dog barking, and on going over to the window found that it was a fox sitting under the window and barking. … At the death of Edward, 13th Viscount, the foxes were also there. He had been rather better one day, but the foxes appeared, barking under the window, and he died that night contrary to expectation.”
• Lucretia P. Farrell, daughter of the 13th Viscount: “On the day before my grandfather … died, the foxes came in pairs (an unusual thing) into the demesne from all the country round; they sat under his bedroom window, which was on the ground floor, and howled and barked all night, although constantly driven away only to return. … At my father’s death, in 1876, I had nursed him till the end, and before he died I fell ill, and my family told me that the foxes appeared in the same way, but not so many. … The Preston crest is a running fox, which we were told no other family has. This is all I can tell, and very creepy it was in those days.”
• Anthony Delahan, coachman, and Patrick White, steward: “On Monday night, the 28th October, at about 8 o’clock, I saw two foxes in the chapel ground and five or six more round the front of the house and several more in the cloisters, which were circling round in a ring, crying all the time. I saw them continuously from then till about 11 o’clock when I went to bed. I took White with me who also saw the foxes.”
• Richard Preston: “On Wednesday, 30th October, 1907, at about 10 p.m., I went down to the chapel at Gormanston Castle to watch by the remains of my father. … About 3 a.m. I first became consciously aware of a slight noise without the chapel. … [When I opened the side door,] sitting on the gravel path within four feet of where I stood was a full-grown fox. Just in the shadow, sitting close up against the walls of the chapel, was another. I could hear several more moving quietly about within a few yards, and was almost sure that I saw some of them. … Neither of the two which saw attempted to move until I left the chapel and took a step towards them. They then walked quietly off into the shadow.”

“We venture no comment on the evidence,” the editors write. “Our readers will appreciate it for themselves. Whatever be their interpretation of the facts, they will, at least, allow that in them there is something of the marvellous.”

During the German siege of Paris in 1870, residents had to eat whatever animals were at hand. Daily News correspondent Henry Labouchère recorded his opinions:

• Horse: “eaten in the place of beef … a little sweeter … but in other respects much like it”
• Cat: “something between rabbit and squirrel, with a flavor all its own”
• Donkey: “delicious — in color like mutton, firm and savory”
• Kittens: “either smothered in onions or in a ragout they are excellent”
• Rat: “excellent — something between frog and rabbit”
• Spaniel: “something like lamb, but I felt like a cannibal”

“This siege will destroy many illusions,” he wrote, “and amongst them the prejudice which has prevented many animals being used as food. I can most solemnly assert that I never wish to taste a better dinner than a joint of a donkey or a ragout of cat — experto crede.”

On the afternoon of June 21, 1818, the crew of the packet Delia, plying between Boston and Hallowell, Maine, came upon a struggle between a sea serpent and a large humpback whale, according to a statement sworn before a local justice of the peace. From Henry Cheever’s The Whale and His Captors (1850):

The serpent threw up his tail from twenty-five to thirty feet in a perpendicular direction, striking the whale by it with tremendous blows rapidly repeated, which were distinctly heard and very loud for two or three minutes. They then both disappeared, moving in a west southwest direction, but after a few minutes reappeared in shore of the packet, and about under the sun, the reflection of which was so strong as to prevent their seeing so distinctly as at first, when the serpent’s fearful blows with his tail were repeated and clearly heard as before. They again went down for a short time, and then came up to the surface under the packet’s larboard quarter, the whale appearing first and the serpent in pursuit, who was again seen to shoot up his tail as before, which he held out of water some time, waving it in the air before striking, and at the same time, while his tail remained in this position, he raised his head fifteen or twenty feet, as if taking a view of the surface of the sea. After being seen in this position a few minutes, the serpent and whale again sunk and disappeared, and neither were seen after by any on board.

Sea serpents, it seems, tend to win these contests — the English barque Pauline witnessed a similar drubbing half a century later.