It’s somehow appropriate that Francesco Lentini was born in Italy, “the boot of Europe.” He had three legs, four feet, and 16 toes — his third leg had a rudimentary foot growing from the knee.

When doctors determined they couldn’t safely remove the extra parts, Lentini moved to the United States and made a career kicking soccer balls in sideshows. Eventually he married and raised four children.

He died in 1966 at age 77, setting a record as the longest-lived man with three legs.

At five o’clock in the afternoon of October 19th, 1874, an immense concourse of people assembled in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, to witness the ascent of a bride and bridegroom in a balloon to be married in the air by a clergyman who ascended with them, and delivered an address to the crowd before the machine was set free. The couple were horse-riders in a circus, and the idea was, no doubt, that of combining business with pleasure, since hundreds would be curious to see them in the circus after their marriage, who, before that remarkable event took place, would only regard them with the ordinary amount of curiosity due to their skill as riders.

— The World of Wonders, 1883

One of the carriers of a New York paper, called the Advocate, having become indisposed, his son took his place; but not knowing the subscribers he was to supply, he took for his guide a dog which had usually attended his father. The animal trotted on ahead of the boy, and stopped at every door where the paper was in use to be left, without making a single omission or mistake.

— The Scrap Book, Or, A Selection of Interesting and Authentic Anecdotes, 1825

George Story was aptly named: He appeared as a baby in the first issue of Life magazine in 1936, and he died 63 years later — as the magazine announced it was ceasing publication.

On May 13, 1872, the barque St. Olaf was sailing from Newport to Galveston when a crewman called out that “he saw something rising out of the water like a tall man”:

On a nearer approach we saw that it was an immense serpent, with its head out of the water, about 200 feet from the vessel. He lay still on the surface of the water, lifting his head up and moving the body in a serpentine manner. We could not see all of it, but what we could see from the after-part to the head was about 70 feet long, and of the same thickness all the way, excepting about the head and neck, which were smaller, and the former flat like the head of a serpent. It had four fins on its back, and the body of a yellow, greenish colour, with brown spots all over the upper part, and underneath white.

The weather was calm, the sea smooth. “The whole crew were looking at it for fully ten minutes before it moved away,” Captain A. Hassel reported later. “It was about 6 feet in diameter.”

In February 1959, a search was organized when nine Russian ski hikers failed to return from a trek in the northern Ural Mountains. After six days, their abandoned camp was found in a mountain pass.

All the hikers were dead. Two were found on the opposite side of the pass, near the remains of a fire; three others had died closer to camp, apparently trying to return; and the remaining four were found only three months later, under 4 meters of snow in a nearby stream valley.

Apparently the victims had fled the tent suddenly on the night of Feb. 2, tearing their way out from the inside and running down the mountain. Though the temperature had been around -25° C, all were inadequately dressed, some wearing only underwear. Though the bodies had no external wounds, one showed severe skull damage and two had major chest fractures. One woman’s tongue was missing.

In the end, Soviet investigators could conclude only that a “compelling unknown force” had caused the hikers’ deaths. That’s all that’s known.

When 5-year-old May Pierstorff asked to visit her grandmother, her parents had no money to buy a rail ticket.

So they mailed her.

On Feb. 19, 1914, May’s parents presented her at the post office in Grangeville, Idaho, and proposed mailing her parcel post to Lewiston, some 75 miles away. The postmaster found that the “package” was just under the 50-pound weight limit, so he winked at their plan, classed May as a baby chick, and attached 53 cents in stamps to her coat. May passed the entire trip in the train’s mail compartment–and was duly delivered to her grandparents in Lewiston by mail clerk Leonard Mochel.

There is found, in some of the rivers of British North America, a species of smelt so rich in oil that it may when dried be used as a candle or torch. … At certain seasons the fish swarms up the rivers from the sea, and is then caught by the natives in wickerwork traps. … When a candle is required a dried fish is stuck, tail upwards, in a lump of clay or in a cleft stick; a light is applied to the tail, which instantly flames up, and the fish burns steadily downward, giving a light superior to that of the best quality of ‘dips.’

— The World of Wonders, 1883