A sad catastrophe is reported to have happened to this Italian vessel, the Rosina, bound from Catania for New York. One day at the end of October she was nearly capsized by a sudden squall in the middle of the Atlantic. All hands were summoned instantly to take in sail, and all, together with the captain, were actively engaged, when an enormous wave swept the deck of every living person, leaving only one of the crew, who happened to be below. On running up on deck this man, named Criscuolo, found not a living soul, not even the ship’s dog, and saw himself the sole occupant of a half-wrecked vessel in a tempest in the Atlantic. For eight days he struggled against wind and sea without taking an instant’s repose, constantly on the watch for some sail, and had abandoned himself to despair, when the Marianna, a Portuguese brigantine, descrying the damaged vessel, bore down upon her as she was sinking and rescued Criscuolo, who was taken on to New York.

– “Wrecks and Casualties,” The Shipwrecked Mariner, January 1882

On several occasions, mathematician Maria Agnesi (1718-1799) arrived in her study to discover that a vexing problem had been solved for her — and, eerily, solved in her own handwriting.

Agnesi was a somnambulist. In her sleep she would walk to the study, make a light, and solve a problem that she had left incomplete.

Then she’d return to bed with no memory of what she’d done.

Sailors can navigate Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo easily at night — the sky is lit with almost continuous lightning 150 nights a year. The flashes are visible for hundreds of miles, but there is no thunder.

No one knows what causes it.