Unusual Stuff

This has been an odd year, and the fact that there have been three occurrences of the infamous Friday the 13th  makes it even weirder.  Enjoy today while it lasts, because there won’t be another year with this many Friday the 13ths until 2015 (and we all know the world ends in 2012).  The other […]

All Dustin Reader wanted to do was show support for his favorite professional football team.  Is that so bad?  Well, when you’re an eighth-grade student in Hamilton, Ohio, and you decide to shave your head in an imitation of the Bengals logo, then yes, it is bad.  Thanks to his wild hair style, Dustin is […]

Of the many weird and dangerous creatures of the sea, there’s one that’s particularly dangerous.  Residing off the Mediterranean coast of Israel, the otherwise inoffensive fish is an ocean-going vacuum.  Not only does it eat everything it can fit in its mouth, it’s also poisonous enough to paralyze or even kill a man.  It’s called […]

Requelme Abanto, a 26-year-old construction worker from Cajamarca, Peru, has an unusual claim to fame.  “They call me the hardware store,” he was quoted as saying.  Why is he the hardware store?  Well, apparently he’s been eating coins, scrap metal, nails, and copper wire for the past several months.  When his unusual hunger for metal […]

At £700 a bottle, Vieille Bon Secours is quite the expensive adult beverage. While the beer is pretty steep in terms of cost, it is a 12-liter bottle and it is 8 percent alcohol by volume, which makes it 16 proof. For a beer, that’s pretty strong, and since it’s in a huge […]

Attention students at Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts.  When you go to school you are entering a “No Meeping” zone.  Anyone caught saying the word (or making the sound) meep, as made famous by the Road Runner and The Muppet Show’s Beaker, risks getting suspended.  Danvers High principal Thomas Murry has banned meeping on […]

Indian villagers are leaving garlands of flowers, offerings of rice and fruit, and saying prayers at a temple in Kendrapara, India.  Within the temple is a turtle upon whose back is supposed to be markings signifying him (or her) as an incarnation of Lord Jagannath, one of the more popular of the many Hindu deities.  […]

Childbirth is a wonder.  A sticky, bloody wonder.  The process of the creation of life is an awesomely powerful experience, which is why some women are compelled to have lots of kids.  It’s also really gross, even in the best of circumstances.  However, you haven’t seen gross until you’ve seen Alex Green’s placenta teddy bear.  […]

Stacey Herald suffers from the debilitating medical condition osteogenesis imperfecta. Basically, it means that she has brittle bones, weakened lungs, and failed to grow and thrive as a normal-sized person might. In Stacey’s case, she stopped growing at about 2 feet, 4 inches tall.  Giving birth should be impossible for someone her size. Just don’t […]

They say that the most dangerous place in the world is between a mother bear and her cubs.  I’d imagine it’s not much better to be trapped on an iceberg as it drifts out to sea.  Well, an unlucky teenage hunter found that out the hard way after he found himself trapped on an iceberg […]

Vicki Larrieux, a 22-year-old woman from  Portsmouth, England, has a very unusual fear.  It’s not clowns or horses or the outdoors.  Those are all fairly normal.  Vicki is a lachanophobic, which means that she’s afraid of vegetables.
As it turns out, it’s not just an excuse for kids to avoid eating their greens.  Vicki, when exposed […]

For most people, the scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where he finds himself wandering through a nuclear bomb test is the worst (or second worst) part of the movie.  For them, it’s a strain of the suspension of disbelief that he’d crawl into a lead-lined fridge and survive a […]

To honor the 50th anniversary of the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Japanese Studies, the university’s Japanese Graduate & Researchers Society had a pretty unusual idea.  They decided to get together, dress like ninjas using dime-store costumes, and make the world’s largest California roll.  With a little help from the Alaska Seafood Marketing […]

There’s an old adage that describes soccer (football) as a gentleman’s game played by ruffians and rugby as a ruffian’s game played by gentlemen.  That’s never more true than when the gentlemen playing the game are ladies.  Take, for example, the supremely thuggish antics of Elizabeth Lambert, a 21-year-old defender on the New Mexico Lobos […]

It’s one of the most remarkable buildings of its kind in the world.  Built in 1989 and opened months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War-era nuclear bomb shelter known around Alconbury Royal Air Force base as “Magic Mountain” is one of the most impressively damage-resistant structures in the world.  Due to […]