On the 8th of August, 1823, a young man, named Thomas Clements, lost his life in a manner as dreadful as it was extraordinary. He was fishing with a draw net, near Elizabeth Castle, Jersey, and taking a little sole out of the net, he put it between his teeth to kill it, when the fish, with a sudden spring, forced itself into his throat, and choked him. The unfortunate man had just time to call for assistance, but it came too late; he expired soon after in dreadful agony.

— The Cabinet of Curiosities, 1824

10/18/2017 UPDATE: It happened again in 2017, this time with a happy ending. (Thanks, Anatoly.)

Albert Einstein’s brain sat in a cardboard box for 43 years. After the physicist’s death in 1955, Princeton pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed the organ and took it with him as he moved around the country. He gave it up only in 1998.

Travelers are sometimes surprised to find hundreds of evenly spaced “barrels” of snow on a field or lake. Are they the work of elves?

In fact they’re created when strong winds arise after a fall of light, sticky snow.

When the conditions are right, they can reach 3 feet in diameter.

Engineer Claude Sawyer left the Australian steamer Waratah when it docked in Durban in July 1909. He said he’d seen a vision of a man “with a long sword in a peculiar dress. He was holding the sword in his right hand, and it was covered in blood.”

The Waratah left for Cape Town carrying 211 passengers. It was never seen again.

A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on ‘Conjuring Rats,’ printed in The Journal of American Folk-Lore (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a specimen of such a letter, dated, ‘Maine, Oct. 31, 1888,’ and addressed in business style to ‘Messrs. Rats and Co.’ The writer begins by expressing his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street, uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they ‘can live snug and happy’ in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use ‘Rough on Rats.’ This threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the Church.

— E.P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, 1906

On Nov. 11, 1918, 47-year-old Harry H. Gardiner opened an insurance policy with the Bank of Hamilton in Ontario.

That wouldn’t be big news, except for the circumstances: He was clinging to the outside of the building at the time, and sticking his head in through one of the open windows.

Gardiner had been a professional “human fly” since 1905, climbing more than 700 buildings throughout Europe and North America, using no special equipment and usually wearing ordinary street clothes.

His other conquests included Detroit’s 12-story Majestic Building (1916, wearing tennis shoes); the 16-story Empire Building in Birmingham, Ala. (1917); and Vancouver’s 17-story World Building (now the Sun Tower) (1918), home of the Vancouver World.

Gardiner must have been glad to get the policy. History doesn’t record how he died … which probably isn’t good.

06/01/2018 Yikes, it sure wasn’t. (Thanks, Ben.)

M. de Bossanelle, captain of cavalry in the regiment of Beauvilliers, relates in his ‘Military Observations,’ printed in Paris in 1760, ‘that in the year 1757 an old horse of his company, that was very fine and full of mettle, had his teeth suddenly so worn down that he could not chew his hay and corn, and that he was fed for two months, and would still have been so fed had he been kept, by two horses on each side of him that ate in the same manger. These two horses drew hay from the rack, which they chewed, and afterward threw before the old horse; that they did the same with the oats, which they ground very small and also put before him. This was observed and witnessed by a whole company of cavalry, officers and men.’

— Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

In 1900, Johann Hurlinger walked on his hands from Paris to Vienna. He covered 870 miles in 55 days, averaging 10 hours a day. That’s about 1.5 miles per hour.

See also The Stilt-Walkers of Landes.