Florence Nightingale had a pet owl. She found it in 1850 on the Parthenon, where it had fallen out of its nest. She named it Athena and carried it away in her pocket, “where I regret to say he ate a live Athenian grasshopper, but failed to make any impression on two small tortoises which I was also bringing to England.”

At home, Athena became Nightingale’s “constant & sociable companion.” He slept in her pocket and nested in a bookcase, “where he made his presence known by uttering a peculiar cry, some 150 times, like a prayer.”

That cry would come to haunt her. The owl died during her preparations for the Crimea, but he visited her dreams as late as 1855, when she was in Constantinople: “Athena came along the cliff quite to my feet, rose upon her tiptoes, bowed several times, made her long melancholy cry, and fled away.”

“Poor little beastie,” she said. “It was odd how much I loved you.”

The parsnip of which a figure is annexed, represents a human hand, particularly the back of it so correctly, that it could not be surpassed by the best painter. This root was bought at the market of a woman who sold vegetables, and as it was shewn to several persons, it came at last into the hands of an engraver. Though roots of this kind, especially of the parsnip species, are not rare, yet there could scarcely be found one that so nearly resembles a human member. Dr. Menzel, however has seen a parsnip which accurately exhibits the figure of a man, complete in all its parts.

— Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum, 1820

Events in the life of Welsh coal miner David Wilson, born 1846:

• Aug. 26, 1857: Fractured the forefinger of his right hand.
• Aug. 26, 1859: Fell from horseback and broke his left leg below the knee.
• Aug. 26, 1860: Broke both bones of his left forearm.
• Aug. 26, 1861: Broke his left leg above the ankle.
• Aug. 26, 1862: Broke both legs, the right one so badly that it had to be amputated.

Seeing a pattern, he renounced for 28 years doing any work on Aug. 26, but in 1890 he forgot the date, went to work, and broke his left leg for the fourth time.

“The number of accidents the man has had is wonderful, but by far the most remarkable fact in connection with his history is their all happening on a certain day in the year,” wrote Walter Kruse in the Strand. “It is only explainable on the supposition that some natural law is at work, and that this law is in some way connected with the earth’s revolution around the sun, because the accidents always happened precisely when the earth reaches the same position in its orbit around the sun. It is very evident we have not arrived at the summit of our knowledge, and that there are causes and influences at work which are not noticed by the casual observer.”

The Diomede Islands of the Bering Strait are a world apart, though only 2.4 miles separate them. Little Diomede belongs to the United States, Big Diomede to Russia, and the international date line runs between them.

So when Lynne Cox swam between them in 1987, she set a peculiar endurance record: Though the waters were cold enough to kill an average swimmer in 30 minutes, she departed “Yesterday Isle” at 1 p.m. on a Friday … and arrived safely on Tomorrow Island on Saturday.

The workmen on my father’s estate were cutting up some fallen timber in the park, when, on splitting open a certain beech tree, a peculiar marking in the form of a cross, with an ‘M’ above, was discovered in the centre of it. The whole measures about twelve inches by six, and is very clearly marked, as the accompanying photograph shows.

No one has any explanation to offer as to how these marks came. Perhaps some of your readers could do so. In the photograph the two moieties are displayed side by side. — Miss Rosemary E. Greville-Nugent, Clonyn Castle, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, Ireland.

— Strand, July 1908

See “Singular Discovery.”

Journalist Dan De Quille meant only harmless fun with his 1865 story “The Traveling Stones of Pahranagat Valley,” a tale of mysteriously moving stones in the Nevada desert. When placed on a level surface, he had written, the strange stones would move toward a common center and form a clutch, “like a lot of eggs in a nest.”

Reportedly the account caused a furor among German scientists, and P.T. Barnum offered De Quille $10,000 for a set of the strange stones. He put them off, but the legend spread. In response to an 1871 inquiry, he wrote, “We have none of said rolling stones in this city at present but would refer our Colorado speculator to Mark Twain, who probably still has on hand fifteen or twenty bushels of assorted sizes.” (Twain and De Quille had been roommates at Virginia City.)

Still the inquiries came. Finally, seven years later, De Quille learned his lesson and confessed. “We are now growing old, and we want peace. We desire to throw up the sponge and acknowledge the corn; therefore we solemnly affirm that we never heard of any such diabolical cobbles as the traveling stones of Pahranagat — though we still think there ought to be something of the kind somewhere in the world.”

Ironically, less than 200 miles away, there were.

A remarkable instance of a sleep-walker came well authenticated, during the course of the month. Between eleven and twelve o’clock, a boy who serves the bricklayers in Maidstone, got out of bed in his sleep, went through a casement, and walked over the ridges of several houses, after which he returned, and came in at the same window, where he awaked in great tremor, occasioned by a fall on his entrance; this extraordinary circumstance happened in sight of several spectators, one of whom, not knowing him to be in a dormant state, had in contemplation a design of firing at him with a gun, from a conclusion that he intended to break into some house; but seeing him return, without any attempt to effect such a purpose, both parties think themselves happy at the interposition of Providence, to prevent so dreadful a catastrophe.

— Gentleman’s Magazine, August 1786