Herman Sörgel thought big. In the 1920s the German architect proposed damming Gibraltar and draining the Mediterranean to unite Europe and Africa into a new supercontinent. The century-long project would create land, food, and power to support an industrial economy to rival those of Asia and the Americas, and it would provide Lebensraum in North Africa for an overpopulated Europe.

The Nazis had no interest in Sörgel’s idea, but he found support among leading engineers both before and after the war. In a Zürich speech in 1932, architect Erich Mendelsohn pressed for a supranational New Deal that would unite Europe in “productive technical world tasks,” and the Atlantropa Institute persisted until 1960, eight years beyond its founder’s death.

In 1977 Popular Mechanics evaluated the plan and found it would require a dam 18 miles long and up to 1,000 feet deep and 1,500 feet wide at its base. The volcanic Mediterranean seafloor, relieved of all that weight, might react in eruptions and earthquakes, and the sea level everywhere else in the world would rise by three feet. “Worst of all, England would no longer control the Straits of Gibraltar,” the editors concluded drily. “Well, you can’t have everything.”

(Thanks, Michael.)

The annexed drawing represents a pair of cat-fish, (a species of Silurus? L.) which were taken alive in a shrimp net, at the mouth of Cape Fear river, near Fort Johnston, N.C., in August, 1833, and presented to Professor Silliman. One of them is three and a half, the other two and a half, inches long, including the tail,–the smallest, emaciated and of sickly appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese twins, by the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak, at the line of union. The texture and color otherwise, of this skin is the same as that of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &c., were entire and perfect in each fish …

When these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal size and strength, but one ‘born to better fortune,’ or exercising more ingenuity and industry, than the other, gained a trifling ascendency, which he improved to increase the disparity, and by pushing his extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of the food for himself. Yet though he probably hated the incumbrance of his companion, and wished the ‘marriage tie cut asunder,’ he afforded protection to his ‘weaker half,’ and could not eat it without swallowing himself.

— American Journal of Science and Arts, July 1834

On Aug. 4, 1913, a naked Joe Knowles walked into the forest of northwestern Maine. On Oct. 4 he walked out again wearing a bear skin. In the interval, he said, he’d spent two months living entirely by his wits in the wilderness.

The “modern primitive man” drew thousands at public appearances; Harvard physicians praised his conditioning; and his account of the adventure, Alone in the Wilderness, sold 300,000 copies.

“Any man of fair health could do the same thing, provided he meant business and kept his head,” Knowles wrote. “But, to the best of my knowledge, no other man in the history of civilization ever did what I did; and for that reason the people are marveling at it.”

Knowles’ exploit had been funded by the Boston Post, and in December the rival American claimed that he’d spent most of the time in a lakeside cabin. Knowles denied this vociferously, and he entered the woods twice more to prove it, funded by the American‘s parent. Without witnesses it’s hard to know who’s right; the truth, whatever it was, died with Knowles in 1942.

The following extraordinary accident occurred about five o’clock on the morning of Friday, the 14th of November, 1817, in Caermarthen: — As a drove of oxen were passing through Spilman-street, one of them strayed to the Castle-green, whence, in his headlong course, he fell over the precipice facing the bridge, upon a house, of which the inhabitants were asleep in bed. It will naturally be supposed, that the terror and alarm excited on the occasion were great. Fortunately, however, part of the roof fell in, while the ox was balancing athwart a beam, exactly over a bed, in which were two children, fast asleep, and who were awakened by a rafter falling upon the bed. The parents had hardly removed these poor children from their perilous situation, when the beam, giving way, fell with its burden upon the bed. Notwithstanding all the alarm and bustle created by this occurrence, we are happy to add, no personal injury was sustained on the occasion; and what is remarkable, the ox does not appear to have suffered materially from this extraordinary descent.

— Gloucester Herald-Times, Nov. 27, 1817

In Inverness in 1954, a cow escaped an auction market through an unsecured gate, climbed a stairway over a shop, fell through the floor, and in her struggles turned on a tap, which flooded the shop.

The shopkeeper sued the auctioneers, but the judge declared himself “forced to the conclusion that a gate-crashing, stair-climbing, floor-bursting, tap-turning cow is something sui generis, for whose depredations the law affords no remedy unless there was foreknowledge of some such propensities.”