Rain which on touching the ground crackles and emits electric sparks is a very uncommon but not unknown phenomenon. An instance of the kind was recently reported from Cordova, in Spain, by an electrical engineer who witnessed the occurrence. The weather had been warm and undisturbed by wind, and soon after dark the sky became overcast by clouds. At about 8 o’clock there came a flash of lightning, followed by great drops of electrical rain, each one of which, on touching the ground, walls, or trees, gave a faint crack, and emitted a spark of light. The phenomenon continued for several seconds, and apparently ceased as soon as the atmosphere was saturated with moisture.

— Western Daily Mercury, Nov. 1, 1892, quoted in Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, December 1892

American businessman Russell Arundel and his friends were drinking rum in a Nova Scotia fishing lodge in 1948 when they got blearily ambitious: They drew up a declaration of independence for tiny Outer Bald Tusket Island, renaming it Outer Baldonia:

Fishermen are endowed with the following inalienable rights: The right to lie and be believed. The right of freedom from questioning, nagging, shaving, interruption, women, taxes, politics, war, monologues, cant and inhibition. The right to applause, vanity, flattery, praise and self-inflation. The right to swear, lie, drink, gamble and be silent. The right to be noisy, boisterous, quiet, pensive, expansive and hilarious.

Baldonia’s currency, they declared, was the tunar; all citizens who caught bluefin tuna would be named princes; and exports would include empty rum and beer bottles. Women were banned — though an exception was eventually made for Arundel’s former secretary, “princess” Florence McGinnis, because “I was doing all the paperwork.”

Baldonia made a modest name for itself: It was recognized in the Washington D.C. telephone directory, and Rand McNally put it on a map. But Arundel tired of the joke and eventually sold the island to the Nova Scotia Bird Society — he’d spent only one night in the “royal palace,” he said, and found it “windy, cold, and miserable.”

Here are two principles about shadows:

1. They don’t pass through opaque objects. Your shadow can fall on a wall, but not through it.
2. Light must strike an object in order to cast a shadow. If you’re in the shade, you have no shadow.

Right? But now suppose the sun is behind you and you’re contemplating a butterfly:

The shadow under the butterfly is not cast by you (Principle 1), and it’s not cast by the butterfly (Principle 2). So what’s casting it?

“This is a genuine problem,” writes philosopher Robert Martin. “The rules for shadows aren’t inconsistent, but they are empirically inadequate — there are phenomena they do not fit.”

The winter of 1886-87 will be long remembered throughout the north-west for the extreme severity of the temperature and the unusual depth of snow. … Near Matt. Coleman’s ranch [in Fort Keogh, Montana] on January 28 the flakes were tremendous, some were larger than milk-pans. Some flakes measured 15 inches square and 8 inches thick. For miles the ground was covered with such bunches, and they made a remarkable spectacle while falling. A mail-carrier was caught in the same storm and verifies it.

— New York World, Feb. 14, 1887, quoted in a letter to Nature, March 3

The celebrated Daniel Wildman will exhibit several new and amazing experiments, never attempted by any man in this or any other kingdom before, the rider standing upright, one foot on the saddle, and one on the neck, with a mask of bees on his head and face. He also rides, standing upright on the saddle, with the bridle in his mouth, and by firing a pistol makes one part of the bees march over the table, and the other swarm in the air and return to their hive again, with other performances too tedious to insert.

— Advertisement for a June 20, 1772, exhibition, quoted in Alfred Neighbour, The Apiary, or, Bees, Beehives, and Bee Culture, 1878

Throughout Europe geologists have found ancient hill forts whose walls have apparently been fused by fire. An intense heat has partly melted some stones and left others encased in a glassy coating. In some cases an entire wall has been merged into a solid mass.

No one knows who did this, how, or why.

With others of our fellow-citizens, I have been highly interested in the discovery of human bones in a solid sandstone rock, of a quarry near Cusick’s mill, about six miles from the city, and with the assistance of Mr. Charles Bobbins and Dr. Ball have taken steps thoroughly to investigate this highly interesting subject. … The bones submitted to my inspection are the bones of an adult female, they were contained in a cavity of the solid sandstone rock, perfectly close, having no communication whatever with any fissure or crack of the rock. The cavity represents the shape of the body, invested with flesh; the leg, thigh, hip and part of the back are moulded with beautiful exactness, and would, if filled with plaster of Paris, give a mould, preserving all the graceful curves of the entire body.

— John G.F. Holston, Zanesville [Ohio] Courier, quoted in Mining Magazine, November 1853