On March 14, 1887, Rhode Island evangelist Ansel Bourne woke up in an unfamiliar room. To his astonishment, he found that he was in Norristown, Pa., where he had been running a stationery and confectioner’s shop for two months, calling himself A.J. Brown.
His nephew helped him return to Providence, where psychologists diagnosed a case of dissociative fugue, multiple personality, and amnesia.
Inspired, Robert Ludlum borrowed the preacher’s surname for his novel The Bourne Identity.
In 1760, was brought to Avignon, a true lithophagus, or stone-eater. He not only swallowed flints of an inch and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick; but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such as marble, pebbles, &c. he made into paste, which was to him a most agreeable and wholesome food. I examined this man, says the writer, with all the attention I possibly could; I found his gullet very large, his teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary, which I imputed to the vast number of flints he had swallowed, being about five-and-twenty, one day with another. Upon interrogating his keeper, he told me the following particulars: ‘This stone-eater,’ says he, ‘was found three years ago, in a northern uninhabited island, by some of the crew of a Dutch ship. Since I have had him, I make him eat raw flesh with the stones; I could never get him to swallow bread. He will drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor gives him infinite pleasure. He sleeps at least twelve hours in a day, sitting on the ground, with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on his right knee. He smokes almost all the time he is not asleep, or is not eating. The flints he has swallowed, he voids somewhat corroded, and diminished in weight; the rest of his excrements resembles mortar.’
— John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876
The great thing about Gustave Verbeek’s comic strips is that when you reach the end of a page, you can invert it to see the story continue.
He created 64 such comics for the New York Herald between 1903 and 1905.
In 1963, an Indiana construction engineer discovered a small hoard of coins on the bank of the Ohio River. Two of them eventually passed to a Clarksville museum, which identified them as Roman coins from the third century.
No one has explained how they came to be there. The engineer who found them said they’d been grouped as though in a leather pouch which had since disintegrated. But his name, and the rest of the hoard, has been lost.
The Isle of Dogs. An 18th-century engraving.
In May 1797, William Maddison, of Sunderland, very much intoxicated, being warned by the bye-standers not to leap off the Quay into a Keel, which he was meditating; he replied with a volley of oaths, that he would go to hell in a flying leap: he instantly jumped off, and his breast having struck against the gunnel, caused his instant death.
— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803
On the 7th of November, 1492, a little before noon, a dreadful thunder-clap was heard at Ensisheim, in Alsace, instantly after which a child saw a huge stone fall on a field newly sown with wheat. On searching, it was found to have penetrated the earth about three feet, and weighed 260 lbs. making its size equal to a cube of thirteen inches the side. All the contemporary writers agree in the reality of this phenomenon, observing that, if such a stone had before existed in a ploughed land, it must have been known to the proprietor.
— Cabinet of Curiosities, Natural, Artificial, and Historical, 1822
Account of Samuel Bisset, “famous for teaching quadrupeds to perform very remarkable actions,” given in John Platts, Encyclopedia of Natural and Artificial Wonders and Curiosities, 1876:
Being a man of unwearied patience, three young cats were the next objects of his tuition. He taught those domestic tigers, to strike their paws in such directions on the dulcimer, as to produce several tunes, having music-books before them, and squalling at the same time in different keys or tones, first, second, and third, by way of concert. … He procured a leveret, and reared it to beat several marches on the drum with its hind-legs, until it became a good stout hare. … He taught canary-birds, linnets, and sparrows, to spell the name of any person in company, to distinguish the hour and minute of time, and play many other surprising tricks; he trained six turkey cocks to go through a regular country dance.
“In the course of six months’ teaching, he made a turtle fetch and carry like a dog; and having chalked the floor, and blackened his claws, could direct it to trace out any given name in the company.”
Sit with a blank white wall to your right. Have a friend sit facing you. Hold up a hand mirror between you, positioned so that your left eye sees your friend’s face and your right eye sees a reflection of the wall. Now sweep your hand in a circular motion across the wall. Your friend’s face will disappear except for his eyes and mouth, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
This is worth the trouble to try, as the effect is startling. Your friend’s disembodied eyes may float before you for five seconds if he doesn’t blink or smile.
