The magnificently named Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone is just that — an odd carven stone, about 4 inches long, turned up by workmen digging a fence post in New Hampshire in 1872.

No one knows who carved it, when, or why. On one side are carved an ear of corn, a deer’s leg, and several other figures. One the other side are inverted arrows, a moon shape, a spiral, and some dots.

When the stone first came to light, the American Naturalist suggested that it “commemorates a treaty between two tribes.” But after an analysis in 1994, state archaeologist Richard Boisvert said that the holes drilled in the top and bottom are more consistent with power tools from the 19th or 20th century. He said that scratches in the lower hole suggest that the stone was placed on a metal shaft and removed several times. We’ll never know its real origin.

Like Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, the Shipwreck Coast of Australia combines rare beauty with treacherous seas. Explorer Matthew Flinders said, “I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline.” More than 50 ships have been lost here, most of them supply ships carrying immigrants and convicts to Victoria and New South Wales in the 1800s, but the coast’s strangest victim may have come much earlier.

Periodically since 1836, travelers have reported stumbling on the wreck of a very old ship of “hard dark timber — like mahogany.” The descriptions are quite specific. Here’s a letter by Captain John Mason of Belfast, published in the Melbourne Argus on April 1, 1876:

Riding along the beach from Port Fairy to Warrnambool in the summer of 1846, my attention was attracted to the hull of a vessel embedded high and dry in the Hummocks, far above the reach of any tide. It appeared to have been that of a vessel about 100 tons burden, and from its bleached and weather-beaten appearance, must have remained there many years. The spars and deck were gone, and the hull was full of drift sand. The timber of which she was built had the appearance of cedar or mahogany. The fact of the vessel being in that position was well known to the whalers in 1846, when the first whaling station was formed in that neighbourhood, and the oldest natives, when questioned, stated their knowledge of it extended from their earliest recollection.

Despite well-financed searches in 1890, 1992, 1999, and 2004, no trace of the ship has been found. If it ever existed, it may have been the missing ship of Portuguese sea captain Cristóvão de Mendonça, which was wrecked in 1522. If that’s true, there’s a strange irony here: The introduction of livestock and pests from Europe have destabilized the local dunes, which may have buried all evidence of Australia’s first European visitor.

Accomplishments of Lewis Gordon Pugh:

• One month after his first swimming lesson, swam from Robben Island to Cape Town, South Africa
• Shortly thereafter, swam the English Channel
• First person to swim around the southernmost point in Africa, the northernmost point in Europe, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Cape Peninsula
• First person to complete a long-distance swim in all five oceans
• First person to swim down the entire length of Norway’s Sognefjord, 204 kilometers
• First person to swim across an African Great Lake (Lake Malawi)
• Gold medal in the 500-meter freestyle at the 2006 World Winter Swimming Championships in Finland
• World record for the northernmost long-distance swim (Spitsbergen, 1,000 kilometers from the North Pole) and southernmost long-distance swim (Petermann Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula)

Most recently Lewis became the first person to swim the entire length of the River Thames, to raise awareness about the problems of global warming. Along the way, he stopped in London to visit Tony Blair.

If you have one of these, hold on to it. Produced by a 1918 misprint, only 100 of these stamps have been found. That puts them among the most valuable stamps in the world — in 2003, an “Inverted Jenny” would sell for $150,000.

Born in 1868, Myrtle Corbin had two separate pelvises, side by side — each of her large outer legs was paired with a small inner one. She could move the small ones, but they were too weak for walking.

The condition didn’t slow her down — she married a doctor at 19 and eventually gave birth to four daughters and a son.

When the English jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham died in 1832, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet at University College London. That was his request. It’s still there — you can see it at the end of the South Cloisters in the college’s main building. Occasionally it’s brought to council meetings, where Bentham is listed as “present but not voting.”

Unfortunately, students kept stealing the head (apparently a disquieting English custom), so the trustees replaced it with a wax one. Bentham’s real head is locked up in an undisclosed location.

Sadly, there are no Friendly’s restaurants on Shades of Death Road, which runs for fully 7 miles through Warren County, N.J.

The sign is stolen so frequently that local residents have started greasing the pole. That’s a good trick, but it’s not appropriate everywhere.