Phantom ships, as they have been called, have repeatedly been seen by various observers. Mr. Scoresby, in his voyage to Greenland, in 1822, saw an inverted image of a ship in the air, so well defined that he could distinguish by a telescope every sail, the peculiar rig of the ship, and its whole general character, insomuch that he confidently pronounced it to be his father’s ship, the Fame, which it afterwards proved to be.

— Charles Kingsley, The Boys’ and Girls’ Book of Science, 1881

See also The Wizard of Mauritius.

A remarkable instance of the salutary effects of atmospheric electricity on the human body is told by the Wolverhampton correspondent of the London ‘Times.’ He states that during a thunder-storm a collier named Bates, who had lost his sight through an accident, was being led home, when a flash of lightning was reflected on the spectacles he was wearing to conceal his disfigurement. After the peal of thunder which followed he complained of pain in his head. The next moment, to his surprise, he found that he had regained possession of his eye-sight. The occurrence caused considerable excitement in the locality.

— Popular Science Monthly, 1889

See also “Cure of a Palsy by a Stroke of Lightning.”

The market square in the Wiltshire town of Devizes contains the following inscription:

On Thursday, 25th January, 1753,
RUTH PEARCE
of Potterne, in this County,
Agreed with Three other Women to buy a Sack of Wheat
in the Market, each paying her due proportion
towards the same.
One of these Women, in collecting the several quotas of
Money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of
RUTH PEARCE the sum which was wanting
to make good the Amount.
RUTH PEARCE protested that she had paid her Share,
and said she wished she might drop dead if she
had not. — She rashly repeated this awful wish; —
when, to the consternation and terror of the surrounding
multitude, she instantly fell down and expired,
having the money concealed in her hand.

In the early 1930s, a farmer turned up a rock while clearing a field in Idaho. It had been carved into the shape of a man’s head, and it bore the inscription JOHN COLTER on one side and 1808 on the other.

John Colter had left the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806 to venture alone into the northwest. He returned two years later with stories of strange geysers, hot springs, and bubbling pools of mud. Few believed him.

If the stone is authentic, then Colter did indeed explore Wyoming, cross the Grand Tetons in the dead of winter, and descend alone into Idaho — the first white man to do so.

A remarkable instance of rapid growth in the human species was noticed in France, in 1729, by the Academy of Sciences. It was a lad, then only seven years old, who measured four feet eight inches and four lines high, without his shoes. His mother observed his extraordinary growth and strength at two years old, which continued to increase with such rapidity, that he soon arrived at the usual standard. At four years old he was able to lift and throw the common bundles of hay in stables into the horses’ racks; and at six years old, he could lift as much as a sturdy fellow of twenty. But although he thus increased in bodily strength, his understanding was no greater than is usual with children of his age; and their playthings were also his favourite amusements.

— John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876

An optical illusion. Nothing’s moving.

In The Atmosphere (1873), Camille Flammarion reports that in the latter part of October 1844, during a hurricane in the south of France, hailstones fell weighing 11 pounds. On May 8, 1802, a piece of ice fell “which measured more than three feet both in length and in width, with a thickness of two and a quarter feet.”

Nature (Aug. 30, 1894) reports that a gopher turtle, measuring 6 by 8 inches and entirely encased in ice, fell at Bovina, Miss., during a severe hailstorm there in 1893. Meteorologist Cleveland Abbe suggested that some “special local whirls or gusts” had carried it aloft. The turtle, evidently, had no comment.

In Curiosities of Human Nature (1852), Samuel Griswold Goodrich records that the duke of Argyle discovered a Latin copy of Newton’s Principia on the grass one day during a walk on his grounds. The book was claimed by Edmund Stone, the 18-year-old son of a gardener, and the astonished duke discovered that the young man was conversant with geometry, Latin, and Newton.

Argyle asked how he had come to know these things, and the youth replied that a servant had taught him to read 10 years earlier, and that he had taught himself arithmetic and geometry from textbooks, and Latin and French from dictionaries.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that we may learn everything when we know the 26 letters of the alphabet.”

In a typical Powerball lottery drawing, there are four or five second-place winners.

On March 30, 2005, there were 110.

Officials suspected fraud at first, but it turned out that most of the winners had received the same mass-produced fortune cookie, which listed five of the six winning numbers.

The coincidence cost the lottery association $19 million.

A curious race was recently witnessed in Westphalia, the contest being between pigeons and a number of bees, the respective owners of which had wagered their favorites to win. The course was three miles and a half, and a dovecot which happened to be near a hive was selected as the winning post. It was found no easy matter to mark the bees so as to make their identity unmistakable, but the difficulty was at last surmounted by rolling them in flour previous to starting them on their journey. This, while making them easily recognized on their arrival, probably retarded their flight; but nevertheless, and though the pigeons were looked upon by those interested as the most likely winners, the race resulted in a victory for the bees; the first bee arriving at the post twenty-five seconds before the first pigeon, and three other bees before the second.

— Henry Williams, A Book of Curious Facts, 1903