On Feb. 3, 1947, the Yukon’s Snag airport recorded a temperature of minus 81.4 degrees. One worker reported:

Becoming lost was of no concern. As an observer walked along the runway each breath remained as a tiny motionless mist behind him at head level. These patches of human breath fog remained in the still air for three or four minutes before fading away. One observer even found such a trail still marking his path when he returned along the same path 15 minutes later.

And: “We threw a dish of water high into the air, just to see what would happen. Before it hit the ground, it made a hissing noise, froze, and fell as tiny round pellets of ice the size of wheat kernels.”

It would appear, from numerous observations, that soldiers are hit during battle according to the color of their dress in the following order: Red is the most fatal color; Austrian gray is the least fatal. The proportions are — red, twelve; rifle green, seven; brown, six; Austrian bluish-gray, five.

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

The first person to go over Niagara Fall in a barrel was actually a woman. Hoping to make money from the publicity, schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor climbed into a pickle barrel on Oct. 24, 1901, and was set adrift north of Goat Island. Twenty minutes later she emerged downstream with only a gash on her forehead.

But “if it was with my dying breath,” she later said, “I would caution anyone against attempting the feat. … I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the fall.”

There are some reports that she was accompanied by a black kitten. One says it emerged as a white kitten.

See also Niagara in a Barrel and “Sending Vessels Over Niagara Falls.”

On April 15, 1912, the German liner Prinze Adelbert was steaming through the North Atlantic when its chief steward noticed an iceberg with a curious scar bearing red paint. He took this photo.

He learned only later that the Titanic had gone down in those waters less than 12 hours earlier.

In December 1796, a young man named Graham, a resident of Lancaster, went to Workington, to fulfil a promise of marriage made to a young woman of that town. — On entering the room in which she also was, he became indisposed, and tottering to where she sat, fell dead at her feet.

— Kirby’s Wonderful and Scientific Museum, 1803

Charter pilot Trevor Wright was flying over South Australia in 1998 when he discovered something astonishing: the colossal image of a human being, 4.2 kilometers long, carved into the earth.

It must have taken weeks to etch the figure into the arid soil with a tractor and a plough. Even planning the work probably required aerial photography or satellite imagery, surveying skill, and GPS technology.

But no one knows who created the figure, when, or why.

On the 20th of May, 1736, the body of Samuel Baldwin, Esq., was, in compliance with a request in his will, buried, sans ceremonie, in the sea at Lymington, Hants. His motive for this extraordinary mode and place of interment was to prevent his wife from ‘dancing on his grave,’ which she had frequently threatened to do in case she survived him.

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