On Nov. 24, 1984, the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review reported the discovery of a massive chunk of earth, 10 feet long by 7 feet wide, that had somehow been plucked from the ground and put down, right side up and intact, 73 feet away. Roots had been torn apart rather than cut, and, strangely, the debris between the hole and the slab traced an arc rather than a straight line.

“All we know for sure is that this puzzle piece of earth is 73 feet away from the hole it came out of,” said geologist Greg Behrens.

Similar “cookie-cutter holes” have been observed elsewhere; the earliest known reference is in the Royal Frankish Annals of the 8th century:

In the land of the Thuringians, in the neighborhood of a river, a block of earth fifty feet long, fourteen feet wide, and a foot and a half thick, was cut out, mysteriously lifted, and shifted twenty-five feet from its original location.

No doubt there’s a mundane explanation for this, but for now no one knows what it is.

From the American Annual of Photography, 1908:

It is a natural snow-cap resting on the stump of a felled tree. The cap is nine feet in diameter and nearly four feet thick. Its weight has caused the rim to bend so that the top becomes a curved dome. The originally horizontal strata of the snow slope steeply downwards near the rim and small pieces break off where the strength is least, hence the edges are rough though the top is smooth. The cap acts as an umbrella sheltering the ground beneath from snowfall. The structure had taken some months to grow and would have been difficult to dislodge, for the snow was firmly welded by its own pressure. The total weight of the snow cap was calculated at about one ton.

See also Mushroom Rocks.

In 1878, neurologist George Miller Beard noted a strange trait among the French-Canadian lumberjacks in the Moosehead Lake area of Maine — they reacted strongly when startled:

• “One of the jumpers while sitting in his chair with a knife in his hand was told to throw it, and he threw it quickly, so that it stuck in a beam opposite; at the same time he repeated the order to throw it, with cry or utterance of alarm resembling that of hysteria or epilepsy.”
• “He also threw away his pipe when filling it with tobacco when he was slapped upon the shoulder.”
• “Two jumpers standing near each other were told to strike, and they struck each other very forcibly.”
• “One jumper when standing by a window, was suddenly commanded by a person on the other side of the window, to jump, and he jumped straight up half a foot from the floor, repeating the order.”
• “One of these jumpers came very near cutting his ‘throat’ while shaving on hearing a door slam.”
• “They had been known to strike their fists against a red-hot stove; they had been known to jump into the fire and into water; they could not help striking their best friend, if near them, when ordered.”
• “It was dangerous to startle them in any way when they had an axe or knife in their hand.”

The condition, whatever it was, ran in families, chiefly among men, and the jumpers were otherwise “modest, quiet, retiring, deficient in power of self-assertion and push.” Similar cases have since been observed in Malaysia and Siberia, but no one knows whether the disorder is ultimately neurological or psychological.

Remarkable outcome of a London séance, June 3, 1871, as reported in The Spiritual Magazine, July 1:

After a considerable time an object was felt to come upon the table, and when the light was struck their visitor was found to be Mrs. [Agnes] Guppy. She was not by any means dressed for an excursion, as she was without shoes, and had a memorandum book in one hand and a pen in the other. The last word inscribed in the book was ‘onions,’ the ink of which was wet, and there was ink in the pen. When Mrs. Guppy regained her consciousness, she stated that she had been making some entries of expenses, became insensible, and knew nothing till she found herself in the circle.

In his Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects (1696), antiquarian John Aubrey writes that a gentleman of his acquaintance, “Mr. M.,” was burned by the inquisition in Portugal in 1655 “for being brought thither from Goa, in East-India, in the air, in an incredible short time.”

On the night of Dec. 12, 1978, the German barge carrier München issued a distress call in the North Atlantic. A week’s search collected four empty life rafts, but the ship itself was never found.

Two months later another ship discovered the München‘s starboard lifeboat. Its supporting pins had been bent, suggesting that a huge force had passed along the München from fore to aft, tearing the boat from its supports.

That boat had hung 20 meters above the waterline. What did the München encounter that night?

The French newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur is published only on leap day, Feb. 29 — which means a new issue appears only once every four years.

You can buy a century’s subscription for 100 euros.

The following account of unusual phenomena was received March 10, at the Hydrographic office, Washington, from the branch office in San Francisco. The bark Innerwich, Capt. Waters, has just arrived at Victoria from Yokohama. At midnight of Feb. 24, in latitude 37° north, longitude 17° 15′ east, the captain was aroused by the mate, and went on deck to find the sky changing to a fiery red. All at once a large mass of fire appeared over the vessel, completely blinding the spectators; and, as it fell into the sea some fifty yards to leeward, it caused a hissing sound, which was heard above the blast, and made the vessel quiver from stem to stern. Hardly had this disappeared, when a lowering mass of white foam was seen rapidly approaching the vessel. The noise from the advancing volume of water is described as deafening. The bark was struck flat aback; but, before there was time to touch a brace, the sails had filled again, and the roaring white sea had passed ahead.

— Science, March 20, 1885

A narrow escape from destruction by an immense meteor was reported this morning by officers of the steamer Cambrian, which arrived from London. The huge fiery mass struck the water within fifty yards of the Cambrian’s starboard bow last Friday evening when the ship’s position was longitude 51.10 west, latitude 42.05 north, several hundred miles south of Cape Race.

[Third officer Daniel Vittery:] ‘The air was filled with a deafening din such as a thousand railroad trains in a tunnel might create. The hiss of dropping fragments gave me the fleeting impression of the ship’s boilers leaking in every plate. … With a crash that shook the ship the monster struck the sea not fifty yards away, and the upheaval was terrific. Not a rope nor a spar was scathed when the meteor, big as a fair-sized house, went squarely over us and struck the sea.’

— The Friend, Sept. 21, 1907