In 1882, L.C. Woodman of Paw Paw, Mich., wrote to the Michigan Medical News reporting “a singular phenomenon in the shape of a young man living here”:

His name is Wm. Underwood, aged 27 years and his gift is that of generating fire through the medium of his breath, assisted by manipulations with his hands. He will take anybody’s handkerchief and hold it to his mouth, rub it vigorously with his hands while breathing on it and immediately it bursts into flames and burns until consumed. … He will, when out gunning and without matches, desirous of a fire, lie down after collecting dry leaves, and by breathing on them start the fire and then coolly take off his wet stockings and dry them. … I have repeatedly known of his setting back from the dinner table, taking a swallow of water and by blowing on his napkin, at once set it on fire. He is ignorant, and says that he first discovered his strange power by inhaling and exhaling on a perfumed handkerchief that suddenly burned while in his hands.

“It is certainly no humbug, but what is it?” Woodman asked. “Does physiology give a like instance, and if so where?”

‘In the foot of an elm, of the bigness of a pretty corpulent man, three or four feet above the root, and exactly in the centre, has been found a live toad, middle-sized, but lean, and filling up the whole vacant space: no sooner was a passage opened, by splitting the wood, than it scuttled away very hastily: a more firm and sound elm never grew; so that the toad cannot be supposed to have got into it. …’ This is attested by M. Hubert, professor of philosophy at Caen.

— The London Encyclopaedia, 1839

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.”