Wikipedia:Unusual articles

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous.
Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

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Articles about things considered unusual may be accepted in Wikipedia if they otherwise fulfill the criteria for inclusion. This page is not an article, and the only criterion for inclusion is consensus that an article fits on this page.

Lists of unusual things in Wikipedia mainspace (see Category:Lists of things considered unusual) should have an external reference for each entry that specifically classifies it as unusual, to avoid making it a point of view (POV) fork of original research. Still, all such lists risk being deleted for lack of a neutral definition of what counts as "unusual".

Of the over six million articles in the English Wikipedia there are some articles that Wikipedians have identified as being somewhat unusual. These articles are verifiable, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something one would not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. If you wish to add an article to this list, the article in question should preferably meet one or more of these criteria:

The article is something a reasonable person would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
The subject is a highly unusual or ironic combination of concepts, such as cosmic latte, death from laughter, etc.
The subject is a clear anomaly—something that defies common sense, common expectations or common knowledge, such as Bir Tawil, Märket, Phineas Gage, Snow in Florida, etc.
The subject is well-documented for unexpected notoriety or an unplanned cult following at extreme levels, such as Ampelmännchen or All your base are belong to us.
The subject is a notorious hoax, such as the Sokal affair or Mary Toft.
The subject might be found amusing, though serious.
The subject is distinct amongst other similar ones.
The article is a list or collection of articles or subjects meeting the criteria above.

This definition is not precise or absolute; some articles could still be considered unusual even if they do not fit these guidelines.

Each entry on this list should be an article on its own (not merely a section in a less unusual article) and of decent quality, and in large meeting Wikipedia's manual of style. For unusual contributions that are of greater levity, see Wikipedia:Silly Things.

In this list, a star () indicates a featured article. A plus () indicates a good article.

Places and infrastructure

Breast-shaped hill	Laid bare in many places around the world. May have given their name to Manchester.
Eiffel Tower replicas and derivatives	Not as unique as you might have thought.
Folly	Buildings prized for their uselessness.
Gravity hill	A hill that gives the illusion of objects rolling up it.
List of cities claimed to be built on seven hills	Almost 100 different cities across all inhabited continents, trying to get the credibility of having something in common with Rome.
List of micronations	Ever wanted to start your own country?
List of tautological place names	Place names that contain truisms and say what they are.
Phantom island	Like islands, but they don't exist.
Pizza farm	All the ingredients of pizza, grown in one convenient location!
Recursive islands and lakes	Islands in lakes in islands in lakes in islands...
Rocket garden	Landscaping and rocketry, together at last.
Spite house	Various houses built solely out of spite for their neighbors.
Valeriepieris circle	An imaginary cirlce that contains the majority of the world's population, popularized on Reddit.

Africa

	Abuja Airplane House	An aeroplane-themed villa in the capital of Nigeria.
	Akon City	A 2000s R&B singer is planning his very own city in his native Senegal, based around his very own cryptocurrency which he calls "Akoin".
	Bir Tawil	One of the few places on Earth not claimed by any country. An American trekked there and claimed it in 2014 as the Kingdom of North Sudan so he could make his daughter a princess.
	Blue Desert	Following the Egypt–Israel peace treaty, the United Nations gave several tons of blue paint to a Belgian artist, so he could commemorate it by painting a line of boulders in the Sinai Desert blue.
	Boulders Beach	A beach on the Southern African coast, near an urban residential area, known for being home to a colony of several thousand penguins.
	Congo Pedicle	What happens when a tyrannical king decides he wants to hunt game in a swamp.
	Dallol (hydrothermal system)	A region surrounding a volcano in Ethiopia, known for its alien-looking bright colours, and populated by vast salt plains and extremely hot acidic sulfur-emitting hot springs, that according to some studies, are absent of even the smallest microbes. There is a now-abandoned town of the same name nearby, which formerly held the record of the hottest inhabited place on Earth.
	Gaet'ale Pond	A small lake in Ethiopia that was created in 2005 after an earthquake. It's not bitter, it's just really, really salty.
	Giraffe Manor	A hotel in suburban Nairobi where you can eat alongside one of the world's most endangered giraffe subspecies.
	Hoba Meteorite	The largest intact meteorite in the world.
	Jacob's Ladder	It's all very downhill from here.
	Kalakuta Republic	A compound housing Fela Kuti - a famous Nigerian musician - his family, band musicians and recording studio, which he declared independent and used to criticize the Nigerian military junta of the 1970s. They responded by raiding it with over a thousand soldiers, setting it alight, and throwing Fela's mother out of the window.
	Lake Nyos	A lake in northwestern Cameroon that released gas in 1986, killing 1,746 people. One of 2 known gassy lakes, the other being Lake Monoun.
	Lake Retba	A lake in Senegal that is naturally pink and is one of the saltiest lakes in the world.
	Mauritania Railway	Mauritania's entire national rail network consists of a single line connecting the centre of the country's iron mining industry with the port city of Nouadhibou. Said line is also home to the world's longest and heaviest trains, filled with iron ore and as long as 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) in length.
	Oklo	The former site of the world's only natural nuclear fission reactors.
	Palácio de Ferro	A bright yellow iron building in Luanda dating back to the colonial era, that is noted for the fact that there is no record of who or why it was built - although legend has it that it was designed by Gustave Eiffel, architect of the Eiffel Tower.
	Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera	A rock on the Moroccan coast connected to the mainland by an 80-metre-wide (260 ft) tombolo; it is owned by Spain. In 2012, four Moroccan irredentists attempted to storm and take over the territory.
	Republic of Benin (1967)	One of the shortest-lived states in history, it was independent for only seven hours (07:00 to 14:00 on 19 September 1967).
	Socotra	A Yemeni island that is geographically part of Africa, and is known as "the most alien-looking place on Earth" due to its strange flora. This includes the "dragon blood tree" and a tree which produces cucumbers.
	La Tante DC10 Restaurant	A grounded McDonnell Douglas DC-10 passenger aircraft in Accra that has been converted into a giant plane-shaped restaurant.
	Tromelin Island	An island near Madagascar that is famous for being the site of a major humanitarian disaster in the 18th century.
	The Owl House	Not the acclaimed animated LGBT fantasy cartoon that aired on Disney Channel; this is an outdoor museum that was created by a reclusive outsider artist who decorated her inherited house with over 300 glass and concrete sculptures of owls, camels, peacocks, pyramids, and other forms.
	Umoja, Kenya	An entire women's-only village in Kenya established in response to violence against women in Samburu tribal society.

Antarctica

	Blood Falls	A naturally occurring plume of saltwater that is blood red thanks to its high iron oxide content.
	Mawson Peak	The tallest mountain in the Commonwealth of Australia is not on the mainland, but on a barren, uninhabited island more than 3,800 kilometres (2,400 mi) away.
	McMurdo Dry Valleys	An area of Antarctica that a) contains an extremely saline body of water, and b) has not experienced rainfall for over two million years.
	Marie Byrd Land	The largest unclaimed territory in the world. Notable for being bigger than Mongolia, having one of Antarctica's biggest human bases, and being the setting of The Thing.
	New Swabia	The Nazi territory in Antarctica.
	Pole of Inaccessibility research station	A short-lived Soviet research station in Antarctica that is now completely covered by snow - save for a small bust of Vladimir Lenin peeking out the ground.
	Villa Las Estrellas	One of only two civilian settlements in Antarctica.

Asia

	798 Art Zone	How an abandoned complex of military factory buildings became the heart of Beijing's modern art scene.
	Aoshima, Ehime	An island where cats outnumber humans 36:1. Weirdly not the only cat island in Japan (see: Tashirojima).
	Artsvashen	An Armenian town surrounded and controlled by Azerbaijan. One of a number of similar towns on this border; others include Yukhari Askipara, Barxudarlı and Karki.
	Atar, Padang Ganting	An Indonesian village with a monument resembling a photocopier.
	Bust of Ferdinand Marcos	A Mount Rushmore in the Philippines, right down to displacing its indigenous inhabitants. It was mercifully blown up by rebels in 2002.
	Camp Bonifas	The bunkers on this golf course feature machine-guns and landmines.
	Chao Mae Tuptim shrine	A shrine dedicated to penises in Bangkok, built in the early 20th century by a Thai businessman, on the edge of his property.
	Christmas Island	A small island and external territory of Australia close to Indonesia that is mainly known for having up to 100 million crabs migrate to spawn there every year.
	Dahala Khagrabari	India inside Bangladesh inside India inside Bangladesh. Formerly the only third-order enclave in the world.
	Darvaza gas crater	A flaming, 70 m (230 ft) wide, 30 m (98 ft) deep crater in the middle of the Karakum Desert, on fire since 1971.
	Dhekelia Power Station	A Cypriot power station that provides power to a British military base that surrounds it.
	Diomede Islands	Two islands in the Bering Strait separated by 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) and 21 hours' time difference.
	Gangkhar Puensum	The tallest mountain nobody has ever summitted, as the Bhutanese government has prohibited mountaineering since 2003.
	Gate Tower Building	A skyscraper in Japan that has a highway offramp passing through its fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
	Hallstatt (China)	An ongoing replica construction of a town in Austria.
	Haesindang Park	Also known as "Penis Park", this is a park on the Korean coast, known for being full of wooden statues of penises, apparently to do with local shamanic folklore.
	Hanazono Room	An indoor swimming pool in Japan used as the site for many pornographic films.
	Hằng Nga Guesthouse	Vietnam's most fantastical building?
	High-Heel Wedding Church	A glass slipper that Prince Charming would struggle to find a fit for.
	Imsil Cheese Theme Park	I dunno, this place seems a little cheesy to me.
	Jackson Hole, China	A planned resort town outside of Beijing that is based off a small town in Wyoming.
	Jatinga	The Bermuda Triangle of birds.
	Jaxa (state)	A 17th-century microstate located on the Amur River between the Tsardom of Russia and Qing China, with a population mostly consisting of Polish and Ukrainians.
	Jewish Autonomous Oblast	In the depths of Eastern Siberia there's a place with street names in Yiddish, even though 99% of its population is not Jewish.
	Kabul synagogue	The last synagogue in Kabul was inhabited by two men, who both ended up being imprisoned by the Taliban because they got annoyed by the two constantly complaining about each other, before later being converted by one of the men into a kebab restaurant.
	Kai Tak Airport	A major international airport closed in 1998 where planes literally almost crashed constantly into the city due to a right-hand turn over the city.
	Karni Mata Temple	A marble temple famous for 25,000 revered black rats that live in the temple who are considered the ancestors of Charans.
	Khewra Salt Mine	One of the largest salt mines in the world, it was allegedly discovered by Alexander the Great's horses.
	Kijong-dong	Two unique Korean villages, separated by the DMZ and notable for their arms race of giant flagpoles. The North Korean village contains a propaganda-blasting loudspeaker and zero residents to hear it. Meanwhile its Southern counterpart forbids residency except to families that have been there since before the War, and grows "DMZ rice" that makes the farmers exceptionally wealthy.
	Daeseong-dong
	Korea Central Zoo	A zoo with such wondrous animals as a chimpanzee with a smoking habit, a parrot that sings the praises of Kim Il-sung, and dogs.
	Kowloon Walled City	A former enclave in the city of Hong Kong, known for lawlessness and extremely cramped conditions before it was destroyed and turned into a park.
	Li's field	A supposed forcefield that explains why tropical cyclones swerve away from Hong Kong.
	Living root bridge	Double-decker suspension bridges formed of living plant aerial roots of rubber fig trees by tree shaping common in the southern part of the Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya.
	Love Land	An erotic-themed sculpture park on Jeju island in South Korea.
	Maijishan Grottoes	A massive complex of hundreds of man-made caves, stairways and thousands of Buddhist sculptures carved into the side of a mountain in the fifth century, high above the surface.
	Masuleh	A village built on the side of a mountain in such a way that most of the walkable space in the village is on the rooftops of the buildings of the layer below.
	Missing Post Office	Where all the world's undeliverable post goes.
	Modern Toilet Restaurant	Wait, that isn't the kind of bowl I want to eat out of...
	Nahwa	One of only eight counter-enclaves (enclaves of enclaves).
	Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic	A landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan (it is surrounded by three different countries rather than only one, so it is not an enclave).
	Nanjie	A settlement in Henan Province that is often described as "China's last Maoist village", maintaining a collectively-owned economy and public displays and statues of historic Marxist-Leninist leaders.
	National Fisheries Development Board building	Another example of mimetic architecture, this time in Hyderabad, in the form of a building shaped like a humongous fish.
	North Sentinel Island	A small island in the Bay of Bengal, known for being inhabited by a virtually uncontacted isolationist tribe who attack all outsiders who attempt to land on their island. The Indian government leaves them alone, outlawing all travel to the island - although that hasn't stopped some foolish travellers from trying.
	National Route 339	A national highway with a staircase in the middle.
	Neutrality Monument	A massive legged arch built in the capital of Turkmenistan by the eccentric former dictator to commemorate the fact that Turkmenistan is officially neutral. Also used to feature a gold-plated statue of him on top that constantly rotated so that it always faced the sun.
	Okinoshima (Fukuoka)	An entire island that is considered a kami in the Shinto religion, and is continuously inhabited by lone Shinto priests who spend ten-day shifts guarding the shrine on the island. Women are prohibited due to their menstruation, as blood is considered impure in Shinto.
	Ōkunoshima	An island between the Japanese home islands of Honshu and Shikoku formerly home to a chemical weapons plant in WW2, now home to a huge population of feral but largely tame rabbits.
	Om Banna	An Indian shrine dedicated to a supposedly-sentient motorbike.
	Omsk Metro	A metro system with only one station and a total length of zero kilometres.
	Peanut Hole	A delightfully named patch of ocean in the Sea of Okhotsk that is totally surrounded by Russia's EEZ but not inside it. Often the subject of foreign overfishing.
	Porcelain Palace	China's largest and most lavish palace - that is dedicated to the humble public toilet.
	Rednaxela Terrace	A street in Hong Kong, whose name was reportedly reversed due to a clerical error.
	Robot Building	That's not a giant robot looming in Bangkok; it's just a bank's headquarters.
	Roopkund	A small lake in the Himalayas known for mysteriously having hundreds of ancient human skeletons along its edges.
	Ryugyong Hotel	Once, it would have been the world's tallest hotel – except it lacked windows, fittings, or fixtures for over twenty years.
—	San Serriffe	A lesser-known island in the Indian Ocean, subject of the April 1, 1977 Guardian.
	Sansha	A disputed prefecture-level city in Hainan consisting of a collection of atolls and reefs throughout the South China Sea.
	Kingdom of Sedang	In the 1880s, a French adventurer created a kingdom in Vietnam.
	Seikan Tunnel Tappi Shakō Line	The closed funicular that connects an underground train station inside the Seikan Tunnel with a museum.
	Shani Shingnapur	A holy Hindu village that doesn't have any doors.
	Shingō, Aomori	A town in Japan that is (supposedly) home to the tomb of Jesus. The story behind the supposed tomb is even odder.
	Snake Temple	A Chinese temple most notable for having snakes (alive) within its compounds. It also has a snake breeding area.
	Sokh District	An exclave of Uzbekistan enclaved within Kyrgyzstan with a 99% Tajik population.
	Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China	The Communist Chinese government elects delegates to represent an island it has never owned or controlled.
	Tashirojima	An island in Japan notable for being full of cats. Weirdly not the only cat island in Japan (see: Aoshima, Ehime).
	Thames Town	An entire replica English-style town built as an upscale planned community near Shanghai. Mostly empty, but a popular destination for wedding photography.
	The Line	A planned city in Saudi Arabia that was originally planned to be a 110-mile long straight line and has been described by critics as "dystopian."
	Thimmamma Marrimanu	A single tree with a canopy that covers 19,107 m², and consequently is considered sacred among followers of several Indian religions.
	Tomb of Suleyman Shah	One of the burial sites of the first Ottoman emperor's grandfather is part of Turkey despite being 27 kilometres (17 mi) south of the country's border with Syria.
	Trunyan	A village in Bali where residents openly lay corpses on the ground and wait for them to decompose instead of cremating or burying them.
	Tsu Station	By kana, the tersest railway station in Japan, serving the capital of an almost as terse prefecture. By stroke count, the tersest in the world. By transliteration, only second-tersest.
	Underground City (Beijing)	A massive complex of tunnels underneath Beijing, built in the Cold War as a nuclear bomb shelter, fitted with facilities such as schools, clinics, factories and even an ice rink.
	Villaggio Mall	A Qatari shopping mall built to resemble an Italian town, with Venetian canals and gondolas. Also notorious for being the site of a deadly nursery fire in 2012.
	Wang Saen Suk	A place in Thailand dedicated to materialized Buddist's hell scenes.
	Wonderland Amusement Park	The largest abandoned amusement park in Asia.
	X-Seed 4000	The tallest building ever designed, standing 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) tall and housing 500,000 to 1,000,000 people on 800 floors. It is, however, "never meant to be built".
	Yongning Pagoda	A 6th-century pagoda that was possibly the tallest structure in the world until it was destroyed by lightning 18 years after its completion.
	Zhangye National Geopark	A national park known for its mountains with natural multicoloured stripes.
	Zheltuga Republic	An illegal gold mining settlement that developed into a thriving unrecognised country, only surviving because the Chinese government was unaware that it existed.

Europe

A chandelier, decorating the Sedlec Ossuary, made from human bones.

A mosaic of 4.6 million seashells. Who built it? When? For what purpose?

	Abode of Chaos	An artist buys an old scenic house in a rural town and transforms it into a replica warzone that serves as an open-air museum of radical avant-garde art, angering locals enough to sue him in France's supreme court.
	Ängelholm UFO memorial	A memorial to a reputed UFO landing in Sweden.
	Argleton	A non-existent town in Lancashire, England that appeared on Google Maps.
	Baarle-Hertog	Two municipalities, one of Belgium and one of the Netherlands, that surround each other twice and many times over. Some houses and shops are in both countries.
	Baarle-Nassau
	Barack Obama Plaza	A motorway service area in County Tipperary, Ireland celebrating the work and Irish heritage of U.S. President Barack Obama.
	Barcelona Supercomputing Center	A supercomputer in a medieval chapel.
	Barentsburg	A completely Russian town, inhabited by Russians, with Russian buildings, supported financially by the Russian government, located in Norway.
	Barra Airport	An airport that only operates when the tide allows.
	Battersea Power Station tube station	A train station named after a non-train station.
	Beans and Bacon mine	With such little ventilation, visitors may want to avoid any source of ignition. Nearby mines are not to be outdone and have the following names: Mule Spinner, Frogs Hole, Cackle Mackle, and Wanton Legs.
	Berlin Brandenburg Airport	An airport in Berlin whose construction is finished but which is unfinished in other areas. Construction was finished in 2012; however, the opening date was repeatedly pushed back as the fire suppression system was installed incorrectly. It finally opened in October 2020.
	Bielefeld conspiracy	The Bielefeld-Verschwörung tries to hide the horrible truth about a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany that doesn't exist ... well, maybe.
	Brennender Berg	A German coal mine on fire since 1668.
	The Broomway	Perhaps the most dangerous path in the world. Would you join the hundred others who died walking the invisible path?
	Brusio spiral viaduct	The title says it all, really.
	Bucket Lake	A lake that only exists thanks to the wanton misuse of a plastic bucket.
	Bunkers in Albania	Enver Hoxha loved them so much he decided to fill his country with over 173,000 of them.
	Büsingen am Hochrhein	A German town that is fully contained within Switzerland.
	Butt Hole Road	A tiny residential street in the UK that was so infamous for its name that it became a tourist attraction.
	Buzludzha monument	A futurist monument built by the Bulgarian Communist Party that looks like a communist spaceship – especially on the inside.
	Carpatho-Ukraine	The third-shortest-lived state in history (see Benin Republic in Nigeria); it was independent for only 24 hours.
	Cerne Abbas Giant	An indecent chalk man in the English countryside.
	Clachan Bridge	Walk across the Atlantic in just 30 seconds!
	Colletto Fava	A 1,500-metre (4,900 ft) hill with a 61-metre (200 ft) stuffed pink bunny on top.
	Cologne sewerage system	Probably the only sewers with a Chandelier Hall that hosts music performances. Probably.
	Couto Misto	A de facto independent microstate on the border between Spain and Portugal that existed until the 19th century.
	Crinkley Bottom	An unsuccessful series of three theme parks built across England, devoted to a grotesque and horrifying BBC children's TV character from the 90s. One of them collapsed within four months of opening due to a massive and costly legal dispute with the local council over funding and liquor permits, while the abandoned site of another was demolished after it was used to host illegal raves.
	The Crooked House	A pub along the Staffordshire/Black Country border which was at an angle due to ground subsidence as a result of local mining activity, causing bottles rolled along tables to appear to roll uphill. It was destroyed in suspicious circumstances in August 2023.
	Crooked Forest	A grove of pine trees that are all bent in the same direction just as they emerge from the ground, before going straight back up again as normal. Nobody knows why this is the case.
	Cube house	A group of unusually-shaped houses designed to maximize their space.
	Dancing House	Also known as "Ginger and Fred" for its resemblance to a pair of dancers.
	Dartmouth railway station	A train station that has been open since 1864 despite no trains ever stopping there.
	Dry Bridge	After the river that this bridge spanned was dried up, it remained, connecting two pieces of the same field that don't have any physical barriers between them.
	Dumb Woman's Lane	A lane in East Sussex with a humorous name. Spike Milligan used to live there, and Paul McCartney wrote a poem about it.
	Ebenezer Place, Wick	The world's shortest street.
	Eichener See	A lake in southern Germany that only occasionally contains water.
	Eurobridges Spijkenisse	The generic bridges of the euro banknotes brought to reality.
	Fallen Monument Park	A Russian park best known for its toppled statues.
	Father Pat Noise plaque	O'Connell Bridge bears a tribute to a priest who was as dearly remembered as he was completely fictional.
	Ferdinand Cheval	A postman, who, for thirty-three years, collected stones while making his rounds and used them to build a surreal Palais Idéal ("Ideal Palace") of astonishing proportions and intricate detail.
	Ferdinandea Island	The island that disappeared. And rose again. And sank again. And rose again. And sank again.
	Flannan Isles Lighthouse	Located on Eilean Mór, this lighthouse to the west of Scotland is the subject of an enduring mystery over the disappearance of its keepers in 1900.
	Forest swastika	A gigantic swastika made of larch trees that went unnoticed for nearly sixty years.
	Free State of Bottleneck	When occupation zones don't quite meet closely enough, you get a tiny slice of the Rhineland that acts as its own country.
	Fugging, Upper Austria	A village in Austria that used to be called "Fucking", but changed its profane-sounding name after years of torment in the form of stolen road signs (some of which had to be enstoned in concrete) to something that still sounds kind of profane.
	Galešnjak	An island off the coast of Croatia that is naturally shaped like a heart symbol.
	Gammalsvenskby	A Swedish village, populated by Swedes, who speak an ancient Swedish dialect, in Ukraine.
	Gants Hill tube station	A station on the London Underground designed to look like a station on the Moscow Metro.
	Graun im Vinschgau	This village's most proud landmark is an underwater church tower, the last remnant of the old flooded village right next to it.
	Great Tower Neuwerk	The oldest standing building "in" Hamburg is a lighthouse over 100 km away.
	Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue	A giant artificial palm tree created to remind everyone of the name of the street it's on.
	Gropecunt Lane	A street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages.
	Grūtas Park	Alternatively known as Stalin World, this park answers the little-asked question of "what should we do with all these Soviet-era statues and monuments from our oppressive past?" Won its creator, mushroom magnate Viliumas Malinauskas, the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize.
	Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald	A "village" that covers 180 square kilometres of uninhabited forest, with only two inhabitants: the owners of a restaurant.
	Hill of Crosses	This small hill in northern Lithuania is home to over 100,000 crosses and other Catholic symbols planted in the ground.
	I Love You Will U Marry Me	A graffiti proposal that has long outlasted the relationship, and is now marked by neon lights.
	Icelandic Phallological Museum	A museum in Iceland solely devoted to the collection of penis specimens and penis-related art.
	JASON reactor	The only nuclear reactor in a 17th-century building.
	Kielce Bus Station	A Polish bus station that was deliberately designed to look like a UFO.
	Kőbánya cellar system	Budapest has an expansive underground complex of beer and wine cellars that is so large it totals around 200,000 square metres (2,200,000 sq ft) in area.
	Krzywy Domek	The most interesting house in Poland.
	Kursdorf	A village that was abandoned after being gradually encircled after a nearby major aiport, resulting in an average sound level of nearly 60 decibels. It earned the title of "the loudest village in Germany".
	Lacus Curtius	A pit in the middle of the Roman Forum; even the Romans didn't know why it was there.
	Lahn	A city so unpopular, not only did it only last 2 years, but its only local elections were won by the party that promised to wipe it off the map.
	Lake Karachay	Formerly a lake, it had so much nuclear waste dumped into it that it's now completely dry and possibly the most polluted place on earth.
	Leaning Tower of Suurhusen	Beating the world-famous Leaning Tower of Pisa by 1.22 degrees.
	List of destroyed landmarks in Spain	Over 60 interesting buildings, including larger castles, royal palaces, leaning towers, city gates which were completely or partially demolished and no longer exist, with their respective articles and images.
	Listenbourg	The European country most Americans can't point out on a map (because it doesn't exist).
	Llandegley International Airport	When is an international airport not an international airport? When it's not an airport at all.
	Llanfairpwllgwyngyll	Or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, if you want to get technical.
	Lupanar	A brothel preserved underneath the ashes of Pompeii, complete with 2000-year-old lewd grafitti.
	Magic Roundabout	Only in the United Kingdom would you find a large roundabout with six mini-roundabouts. (Not to be confused with the "Magic Roundabout"s in Colchester, Swindon or High Wycombe – or, for that matter, this "Magic Roundabout".)
	Manneken Pis Jeanneke Pis	A statue in Brussels depicting a urinating child. And its female counterpart.
	Märket	A lighthouse built on this island led to a redefinition of the border between Sweden and Finland.
	Metro-2	A purported secret metro line in Moscow.
	Monte Kaolino	A ski resort without snow.
	Mount Athos	An autonomous polity in Greece home to 20 monasteries, notable for being the only political subdivision in the world in which women (as well as female animals) are prohibited from entering for any reason.
	Municipalities of Liechtenstein	The blotchy, angular borders between these divisions seem almost arbitrarily strange. The UAE's are similarly weird.
	Museum of Broken Relationships	Zagreb is home to this collection of things left behind by break-ups.
	Nelson's Pillar	Dublin used to have its own version of Nelson's Column, that ended up serving as a symbol of British imperialism up until the 1960s, when it was blown up by Irish republicans, leading to the creation of several celebratory folk songs.
	Neutral Moresnet	A tiny European region – approximately 1.4 square miles (3.6 km²) – that existed for a century as neutral territory between Germany and Belgium.
	Newhaven Marine railway station	A railway station that was technically open between 2006 and 2020, despite (a) no passenger trains serving the station during that time, (b) an inability to buy tickets to the station and (c) the station itself being demolished in 2017.
	New York-Dublin Portal	An art exhibit visually connecting the streets of the two cities that was temporarily shut down after multiple instances of flashing, profanities, and showcasing images of the September 11 attacks.
	Other World Kingdom	A micronation and BDSM resort whose ultimate goal is "absolute matriarchy" – for all men to be enslaved by women.
	Paradiskullen	A ski jumping hill with a landing area that goes under one of Sweden's busiest railroads.
	Pheasant Island	An uninhabited river island which switches sovereignty between France and Spain every six months.
	Piața Romană metro station	A station on the Bucharest Metro that was cancelled because the wife of Nicolae Ceaușescu was worried that the students nearby would get fat and need exercise. It was built in secret anyway and thus opened in 1988.
	Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station	An unassuming military station in France became a cause célèbre after French Intelligence tried to threaten Wikipedia into deleting its article on it.
	Predjama Castle	A castle built partially inside the mouth of a nearby cave.
	Principality of Sealand	A micronation located 6 miles (9.7 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England whose population rarely exceeds ten.
	Punkendeich	A former dyke that was once the home of prostitutes, and is now the site of a festival where a tailor walks across the river to check if it's frozen.
	Reality Checkpoint	A lamppost with its own name.
	Röstigraben	The "Coarsely Grated Potato Ditch" in Switzerland, dividing Swiss-German and Swiss-French cuisine.
	Saatse Boot	A piece of Russian territory through which a 900-metre (3,000 ft) stretch of Estonian road passes. Although people are allowed to drive on the road without a permit or visa, it is prohibited to travel on foot, or to stop the vehicle for any reason.
	Schwerbelastungskörper	A piece of Nazi architecture in Berlin, built with the sole purpose of being heavy.
	Scottish Court in the Netherlands	A former Dutch NATO base called Camp Zeist was briefly ceded to Scotland to enable the trial of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombers.
	Sedlec Ossuary	A Christian chapel decorated by the bones of approximately 40,000 people.
	Sexi (Phoenician colony)	An ancient ruins, also known as Sex or Ex, with several Roman-era suburbs, including Pænis, Socordia and Villa Fatuus Maximus.
	Shell Grotto, Margate	A grotto with a mosaic of 4.6 million seashells, hidden underneath a backyard. Nobody knows who built it, when, or for what purpose.
	Shit Museum	Don't worry, it's actually a good museum. For looking at excrement.
	Shitterton	Its sign got stolen so often, they bought a 1.5 tonne stone with the town's name engraved in it. (Surprisingly, that rude name really does mean what you'd think.)
	Smallest House in Great Britain	Only 5.49 square metres (59.1 sq ft) in size, in North Wales.
	SnowCastle of Kemi	The world's largest snow fort and ice hotel, constantly rebuilt and redesigned each winter.
	Sovereign Military Order of Malta	A sovereign state with no land? How is that possible?
	Spreuerhofstraße	The world's narrowest street.
	Svalbard Global Seed Vault	If a global famine occurs, you better hope you live in Svalbard.
	Transnistria	An unrecognized state that broke away from Moldova during the fall of the Soviet Union due to ethnic tensions and has remained in limbo ever since, retaining Soviet-era aesthetics and even a hammer and sickle on its flag.
	Uffington White Horse	A giant chalk figure that has to be hit with hammers regularly to maintain it.
	Unst Bus Shelter	The only of its kind on the island of Unst, Shetland. It is periodically refurnished and contains a sofa and TV.
	Uppland Runic Inscription 53	An 11th century runestone which got accidental fame by being scavenged for the foundation of a 17th century building in the middle of Stockholm.
	Vajdahunyad Castle	A castle in Budapest that was originally partially built out of cardboard.
	Vatican Railway	It consists of a 680-metre (2,230 ft) branch line and was constructed as a direct result of the Vatican's recognition as a country.
	Vennbahn	A disused railway in Belgium which separates five pieces of Germany from the rest of Germany.
	Veyshnoria	A nonexistent border country of Belarus invented for a Union State military exercise and adopted by the Internet. It's totally coincidental that the territory of this "enemy state" corresponds to the most Catholic, most anti-Lukashenko, and least Russian-speaking regions of Belarus, honest.
	Victor Noir	A young journalist killed by the cousin of the French Emperor, who subsequently became a symbol of resistance prior to the fall of the regime... who also got a statue of himself with a massive bulge in his crotch that subsequently became a fertility symbol, with the bulge having become worn and polished due to being fondled by so many members of the public.
	Vilnius-Lublin Portal	A first-of-its-kind project connecting residents on the streets of the two cities, and the predecessor to a much more chaotic one.
	Weißwurstäquator	The "White Sausage Equator" in Germany.
	White's	London's oldest and most famous gentleman's club had several famous people as members, including King Charles III, Prince William, former prime minister David Cameron and so on. The club is pretty much top secret, so yes, the English illuminati definitely aren't lurking and drinking tea there. Also, no girls are allowed.
	Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate	And the best street name has to go to this street in York, England. Also said to be the shortest street in the city too!
	Wooden Spoons Museum	A museum with the largest collection of wooden spoons in the world, ranging from 3,500 to over 6,000. Ladles and 500 erasers can also be found!
	World Map at Lake Klejtrup	After finding a rock shaped like the Jutland peninsula, a Danish farmer was inspired to create a map of the world out of the surrounding countryside over the next 25 years.
	Wrocław's dwarfs	Gotta catch 'em all!
	Zeitpyramide	To celebrate the 1200th anniversary of a Bavarian town, one artist decided to stack concrete blocks for 1200 years. The next block is scheduled for 2033.
	Željava Air Base	An abandoned air base, located on the border between Croatia and Bosnia, that's almost entirely underground.
	Zone rouge	A series of areas in northeastern France that were so devastated by unexploded ordnance and toxins during World War I that they remain uninhabitable a century later.

Latin America and the Caribbean

	Americana, São Paulo	A town in Brazil founded by Confederate farmers and soldiers in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
	Cancún Underwater Museum	A place where works of art are kept several metres beneath sea level.
	Cândido Godói	A Brazilian town full of Germans that produces five times as many twins as the national average; these two facts combined to create theories that Josef Mengele had conducted experiments there.
	Cashew of Pirangi	Seventy times larger than an average cashew tree, this tree covers approximately two acres of land by itself.
	Cherán	A Mexican town where the residents decided to abolish their own local government and police force in 2011 due to rampant corruption and ties to organized crime. They don't appear to have any regrets.
	Ciudad Mitad del Mundo	This park marking the equator in the country named after it was just a bit off when it was built.
	Colonia Dignidad	A rural community in Chile that has a story that not even the most insane writer could think of.
	Darién Gap	This journey is impossible with the modes you have selected.
	Devil's Island	A notorious penal colony off the coast of French Guiana.
	Ernst Thälmann Island	An island off the coast of Cuba that was (sort of) ceded to East Germany and thus (sort of) remains part of East Germany, which doesn't exist anymore (sort of).
	Guarapari	A Brazilian town with beaches that are naturally radioactive.
	Fordlândia	The man himself was not without his abject failures in Brazil.
	Friendship Park (San Diego–Tijuana)	Where people can shake hands and interact across the Mexico–United States border.
	Hacienda Nápoles	The luxurious estate of the deceased drug lord Pablo Escobar, from which an invasive hippopotamus population spread in Colombia.
	Heladería Coromoto	Held the world record for most ice cream flavors served, including chili, garlic, crab, macaroni and cheese, egg, beef, and many alcoholic flavors.
	Isla Apipé	An Argentine island in the Paraná River surrounded by Paraguayan waters.
	Island of the Dolls	Located in Mexico City, this is an island full of broken and deteriorated dolls of various styles and colors, originally placed by the former owner of the island.
	John Lennon Park	A park with a statue of John Lennon, in a country that used to ban his music in the 60s as it was a Western bloc cultural import. Also noteworthy for the fact that his statue doesn't normally wear glasses, as the glasses on the statue keep getting removed or vandalized, although the park now has a security guard whose job is to hang around near the statue and give him a pair of glasses upon request.
	Lençóis Maranhenses National Park	Wait, deserts don't seasonally flood. They just don't. Or do they?
	Mano del Desierto	A massive sculpture of a hand rising from the middle of the Atacama Desert, meant to symbolize human vulnerability and oppression.
	Nazca Lines	A line museum, exhibited outdoors in southern Peru.
	El Ojo	An almost perfectly circular, constantly rotating island in the marshes of Argentina. Its name is Spanish for "The Eye".
	Parícutin	A volcano that suddenly erupted out of a farmer's cornfield.
	Penedo, Itatiaia	A Finnish resort town... in the middle of Brazil.
	Pig Beach	A place where you can swim with pigs.
	Pizza Pacaya	While many would run from an active volcano, one Guatemalan chef turned one into his own personal kitchen.
	Plymouth, Montserrat	A national capital with zero population, as it was abandoned due to a volcanic eruption.
	Presidente Hayes Department	What happens when a U.S. President is vastly more famous in a South American country than in the actual United States.
	Río Rico, Tamaulipas	A city that was ceded by the United States to Mexico in 1977 due to an earlier diversion of the Rio Grande.
	Santa Cruz del Islote	A tiny artifical island off the coast of Colombia that is said to be the most crowded island on Earth, with its own school, restaurant and other amenities, but without any crime nor police.
	Spiral Island	An artificial island, now destroyed, built from thousands of empty floating plastic bottles.
	Vinicunca	Also known as Montaña Arcoíris (Rainbow Mountain), different minerals in the soil of this mountain made it look truly unique.
	Y Wladfa	A group of settlements in Argentine Patagonia home to the largest Welsh-speaking population outside of the British Isles, and the location of the Patagonian Welsh dialect.
	Yungas Road	An incredibly deadly mountainside road in Bolivia, only 3 meters wide in places and with no guardrails.

North America

It's about reaching out, closing up the distance.

	11 foot 8+8 Bridge	Also known has the "Can Opener", this is a bridge that slices the roof off of trucks that have fallen victim to it.
	33 Thomas Street	A windowless skyscraper in New York and suspected NSA mass surveillance hub. Not suspicious at all.
	A Mountain	Also known as Sentinel Peak, this hill in Tucson, Arizona literally has a big letter "A" on it.
	Agloe, New York	A fictional town in New York. Originally a phantom settlement, created as a copyright trap for a mapmaker, that ended up developing into an actual landmark.
	Alcohol and Drug Abuse Lake	Supposedly named after the treatment center nearby.
	Aroma of Tacoma	"What an incredible smell you've discovered" could have been this Washington city's motto.
	Aquarius Reef Base	A real-live underwater laboratory.
	Badlands Guardian	A natural topographic feature in Alberta, Canada, which, when viewed from above, looks remarkably like a human wearing a Native American headdress and earbuds.
	Beatosu and Goblu	Two non-existent towns that appeared on Michigan's official highway map as a reference to the University of Michigan and its rival, Ohio State University.
	Big Blue Bug	Officially named Nibbles Woodaway, this 58-foot long termite overlooking I-95 is a Providence landmark and is claimed to be the world's largest artificial bug.
	Bishop Castle	A rocky castle in the Rocky Mountains! This fire-breathing construction project seems to endlessly... drag on.
	Borscht Belt	For those who love borscht and find the Bible Belt and Rust Belt too boring.
	Bubblegum Alley	70 feet of alleyway with its walls covered in used chewing gum.
	Bubbly Creek	The branch of the Chicago River that was so contaminated with blood from the Stock Yards that it gained this appetizing moniker.
	Bullfrog County, Nevada	A former county in Nevada established around a mountain which was to become a radioactive waste disposal site. As of 2022, it is the only uninhabited county-equivalent to ever be created in the United States.
	Busta Rhymes Island	Otherwise unnamed island because it had "rope-swinging, blueberries, and ... stuff Busta would enjoy."
	Canusa Street	A road that's in both Canada and USA.
	Capitol Hill mystery soda machine	A machine that offered rare drinks with nobody knowing who operated it. It was in operation from the 1990s to 2018, when it disappeared and a note was left saying: "Went for a walk".
	Cat Girl Manor	A manor described as "the Playboy Mansion of the kitten play community".
	Centralia, Pennsylvania	A town that's been on fire since 1962.
	Citgo Sign	This advertisement for an oil company was placed in the perfect spot for it to become a recognizable landmark of the Boston skyline.
	Clinton Road (New Jersey)	In addition to having the longest traffic light in the country, the road is also notorious for reported occurrences of paranormal activity.
	Colma, California	A town where the dead outnumber the living by 1000 to 1.
	Conch Republic	As a protest against the actions by the United States federal government, Key West in Florida seceded from and then declared war on the United States, surrendered one minute later and then applied for $1 billion in foreign aid.
	Corporation Trust Center	A small single-story building where over 285,000 companies, or over 15% of all companies in the United States, are legally based.
	Crush, Texas	A temporary "city" established as the site of an 1896 publicity stunt, a staged train wreck. The wreck unexpectedly caused two deaths and numerous injuries among spectators.
	Crazy Horse Memorial	The Native American answer to Mount Rushmore, started in 1948 and still nowhere near completed.
	Cuyahoga River	Environmentalism in the United States essentially started because a river in Cleveland kept on catching fire.
	Dave Thomas Circle	A six-way intersection in Northeast D.C. with a Wendy's restaurant located in the middle until 2021. The site of numerous traffic fatalities, it's currently being converted into a city park.
	Desert of Maine	A 20-acre patch of sand right in the middle of the most forested state in the U.S.
	Dixie Square Mall	A shopping mall that stood abandoned for over twice as long as it was in business until it was finally demolished in 2012. It was featured in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers and became a popular target for urban explorers.
	Donald J. Trump State Park	The most tremendous, fantastic, amazing state park you've ever seen. The media wants to say it has poor upkeep, it should be renamed, that it's not even a real state park; but they're all liars and very bad people, believe me.
	Dorset, Minnesota	A town that, on multiple occasions, has had a child as their "mayor".
	Dude Chilling Park	Originally a sign placed in a Vancouver park as a prank, now officially recognized public art.
	eBART	An extension of the BART system that, despite functioning as its own railway line and is powered by unique diesel trains, is officially shown as an extension of the Yellow Line.
	Exorcist steps	A set of steps in 36th Street most famous for having the character of Father Karras fall to his death after being possessed.
	Fenelon Place Elevator	The shortest and steepest railroad in the world, (supposedly) located in a town of around 60,000 people.
	Florence Y'all Water Tower	A Northern Kentucky town's unique "welcome" sign.
	Foamhenge	An exact recreation of Stonehenge made entirely out of styrofoam.
	List of former counties, cities, and towns of Virginia	All the places that are no longer found in Virginia, such as Illinois County, and a few that never were (including Walton's Mountain).
	Gann Valley, South Dakota	The county seat of Buffalo County, South Dakota, despite nearby Fort Thompson having a population more than 120 times larger than Gann Valley.
	Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport	Consists entirely of a deeply rutted unmanned strip of soil/gravel and a windsock.
	Gum Wall	A brick wall in Seattle burdened by chewing gum. Cleaned in 2015, only to be turned into a memorial for Paris.
	Habitat 67	A futuristic residential complex built in the 1960s that resembles a mass of cuboids haphazardly balanced on top of each other.
	Hans Island	A deserted Arctic island fought over by Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark for decades. The 2022 settlement created a land border between a North American and a European country.
	Hawaii 2	A quaint island in Maine purchased by Cards Against Humanity in 2014.
	Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump	Life lesson: if you see hunters chasing buffalo off a cliff, don't stand at the bottom.
	Hess triangle	This used to be part of a bigger plot of land but a road destroyed it but the planners couldn't plan correctly so it left this piece of land.
	Holy Land Experience	A defunct Christian theme park built next to Disneyworld that has been accused of trying to convert Jewish visitors. Also a great Loo Loo Land alternative.
	Horace Burgess's Treehouse	A tree house built by a minister who claimed to have received a vision from God.
	Indianapolis Catacombs	Despite the name, never used as a burial place.
	Interstate 180 (Wyoming)	An Interstate Highway that isn't really a freeway at all.
	Interstate 19	The only U.S. highway marked in SI units, a relic of a historical push for metrication.
	Island of California	The third-largest U.S. state was formerly an island – at least on paper.
	Jackass Flats	The aptly named test site for the world's first and only nuclear-powered rocket engines.
	Jerimoth Hill	The highest natural point in Rhode Island. For years, one of the toughest highpoints in the U.S. to scale, not because of its 812-foot (247 m) height, but because of an angry old man who lived nearby.
	John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant	A sewage plant in Danbury, Connecticut named after John Oliver after he satirically insulted the city on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
	Joker Stairs	We live in a society where a movie can make a star out of flight of stairs.
	Just Room Enough Island	This island is about one-thirteenth of an acre in size but that didn't stop the Sizeland family from building a house on it.
	Lake Peigneur	A 10-foot-deep swimming lake at one time, it was turned into the deepest lake in Louisiana thanks to a salt mining accident.
	Landsat Island	A lonesome island with a frankly humorous tale.
	List of gaps in Interstate Highways	Traffic-lighted intersections, drawbridges, and other oddities in the Interstate Highway System which violate the standards.
	List of Las Vegas casinos that never opened	What happened on the drawing board stayed on the drawing board.
	Lizzie Borden House	The location of one of the most famous ax murders in history, which was turned into a B&B in 1996. According to the building's former owner, the room where Abby Borden was murdered is its "most requested room."
	London Bridge	An over century year old authentic English bridge...that now resides in the middle of the desert.
	M-185 (Michigan highway)	The only state highway in the country that bans motor vehicles. It's also the only state highway to not have an accident until 2005.
	Mary Ellis grave	A grave that found itself in the middle of a movie theater parking lot.
	Memphis Pyramid	The tenth-largest pyramid in the world, located in Memphis, Tennessee, and home to a Bass Pro Shops megastore.
	Michigan left	Directions are more complicated in Michigan.
	Mickey pylon	A powerline pylon with a shape reminiscent of a certain fictional rodent.
	Mill Ends Park	The smallest park in the world – 452 in² (0.292 m²) – in Portland, Oregon.
	Mojave phone booth	A public phone booth that stood for several decades in the middle of a desert, miles away from any roads or other structures.
	Mountain Home Air Force Base	A Singaporean air force base in Idaho.
	Mollie's Nipple	The name of multiple places in Utah... including at least one butte.
	Monowi	A village in Nebraska with a population of one. Hi, Elsie!
	Mr. Trash Wheel	A trash interceptor with giant googly eyes that patrols the Baltimore Inner Harbor, consuming trash. Has its own Instagram page.
	Murder Kroger	A supermarket with a dark story.
	Nataqua Territory	A failed U.S. territory that was, quite literally, beside itself.
	National Mustard Museum	Collecting and chronicling the common condiment.
	National Raisin Reserve	Created after World War II to control raisin prices. Run by the Raisin Administrative Committee, of course.
	Ned Flanders Crossing	A bridge over Interstate 405 in Portland, Oregon, which was originally called Flanders Crossing, but was renamed after a fictional character himself named after the road.
	Nettilling Lake	Located on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It's the largest lake on an island and also contains the largest lake on an island on a lake on an island, which in turn contains the world's largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.
	New York-Dublin Portal	An art exhibit visually connecting the streets of the two cities that was temporarily shut down after multiple instances of flashing, profanities, and showcasing images of the September 11 attacks.
	Nitt Witt Ridge	A house in California, built out of beer cans, abalone shells, car parts, and other garbage previously tossed out by local residents, is now a historic landmark.
	Northeast Greenland National Park	The world's largest national park consists of over a quarter of Greenland's total land area, is larger than 166 sovereign states, and has no permanent human population.
	Northwest Angle	This little spoke jutting out of northern Minnesota was created as the result of a surveying error, and its land is completely cut off from the rest of the U.S. by the Lake of the Woods.
	Old Man of the Mountain	A rock formation in northern New Hampshire resembling the side profile of a person. Collapsed in 2003, but is immortalized on the state's license plates, highway signs and state quarter.
	Peter Camani	A (now retired) Canadian art teacher who built a massive complex of sculptures of screaming faces on his property in his spare time, and converted his house into a castle with a turret of a screaming face.
	Point Roberts, Washington	When defining international boundaries, sometimes a straight line isn't the best solution.
	Polar Bear Holding Facility	A prison for polar bears.
	Poozeum	A museum dedicated to coprolites.
	Prada Marfa, Texas	For your luxury shopping bug, a Prada store in the desert.
—	Pyramid mausoleums in North America	Arizona Governor George Hunt will hereafter be addressed as "Pharaoh George I".
	Rabbit Hash, Kentucky	A town whose mayors, since 1998, have all been dogs.
	Raising of Chicago	During the 1850s, the city was raised on jacks, building by building.
	Rainbow Farm	The only place where gay married couples could guard their marijuana plants with guns. Notably visited by Merle Haggard and Tommy Chong.
	Republic of Indian Stream	An area of land in northern New Hampshire that was an independent country from 1832 to 1835.
	Republic of Molossia	A 34-person micronation in Nevada which takes the meaning of the phrase "a man's home is his castle" to new extremes.
	Rock N Roll McDonald's	A rock 'n roll-themed McDonald's restaurant located in Chicago, famous for being the subject of a song by outsider musician Wesley Willis.
	Rocky Steps	Thanks to their appearance in a certain movie, the steps leading up to the main entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is as popular of a tourist attraction as the museum itself.
	Rough and Ready, California	This mining town seceded from the Union in 1850, but came back three months later because they realised they couldn't celebrate Independence Day.
	Santa Claus, Arizona	In Mohave County, visit an abandoned tourist trap deep in the desert where Santa Claus, of all people, allegedly resides!
	Sam Kee Building	Known as the world's narrowest commercial building.
	Slab City, California	A massive off-the-grid trailer park on a former military base in the Sonoran Desert, that became a large-scale alternative community of misfits and wanderers that has persisted for decades, complete with various displays of colourful experimental sculptures made from whatever the residents can get their hands on.
	S.N.P.J., Pennsylvania	A municipality consisting solely of a Slovenian fraternity's recreation center, established (in part) to get around liquor laws.
	State of Franklin	A proposed state in Eastern Tennessee that tried its hand at independence and fell into debt to Spain.
	State of Scott	Scott County in northern Tennessee seceded and formed its own state in opposition to Tennessee joining the Confederacy. It remained this way for over a century until it rejoined Tennessee in 1986.
	Statue of Lenin (Seattle)	How a statue of Lenin made its way from Czechoslovakia to Seattle's Fremont neighborhood.
	Texas State Highway 165	The only state highway in the country specifically designated to serve a cemetery...and nothing more. It's also the only state highway in the country to be partially closed every night.
	The Greenbrier	A luxury resort that, for three decades, housed an emergency bunker for Congress to work from if a nuclear war broke out.
	Track 61 (New York City)	A secret train platform located below the Waldorf Astoria New York designed for use by U.S. Presidents when they would visit the hotel.
	Truth or Consequences, New Mexico	A New Mexico town that chose to rename itself after the Truth or Consequences game show in 1950, then never bothered changing back.
	U Thant Island	An island in the East River with a surprisingly in-depth history for only being 2,000 square feet (190 m²) in area.
	U.S. Route 19 Truck (Pittsburgh)	A road in Pittsburgh that features a number of wrong way concurrencies, including one with itself.
	Vulcan Bridge	A bridge in rural West Virginia whose repairs were almost funded by the Soviet Union after a local mayor, tired of the West Virginia state government ignoring his requests for funding, reached out across the Iron Curtain.
	Weather Station Kurt	That time when the Nazis landed in North America.
	Wedge	It's harder than you think to construct the state of Delaware with a ruler and compass.
	Whittier, Alaska	A city in Alaska where (almost) all of its residents live in one building: Begich Towers.
	Winchester Mystery House	A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles.
	World's littlest skyscraper	The result of a fraudulent investment scheme, it's a four-story brick building constructed in 1920 in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas that has only one room on each of its four floors.
	Zilwaukee, Michigan	"Is this Milwaukee?" "Uh...yeah, it sure is!"
	Zone of Death	The part of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho, where any crime can technically be committed without punishment – but don't tempt fate!

Oceania

	American Samoa	Despite having a functional legislature (the Fono) and a population of 46,366, American Samoa is considered an 'unincorporated unorganized' territory. It is also the only U.S. territory where people are not automatically born citizens, despite much of the population being involved in the military.
	Baldwin Street	A short suburban road in Dunedin, New Zealand, reputedly the world's steepest street.
	Ball's Pyramid	A nearly 600-metre-tall (2,000 ft) stone stack in the middle of the ocean.
	Banjawarn Station	Did a Japanese apocalypse cult test a nuke in the middle of rural Australia?
	Bayswater Subway	Bridge in Perth that has been hit by trucks 50 times between 2014 and 2020.
	Burning Mountain	A straightforwardly named mountain that has been on fire for over 6000 years.
	Cardrona Bra Fence	An eccentric tourist attraction in New Zealand.
	Coober Pedy	A mining town where most of the residents live underground.
	Concrete bus shelters in Canberra	These brutalist cylindrical bus shelters are an icon of Australia's capital city.
	Egmont National Park	This national park's boundaries created a circular forest.
	Horizontal Falls	This pair of Australian "waterfalls" appear to be falling straight across the land.
	Hundertwasser Toilets	Why the town of Kawakawa is the world's best place for a rest stop.
	Hunga Tonga	An island that was created in 2015 after a volcano erupted between two islands and connected them until another volcanic explosion in 2022 split them up again.
	Jellyfish Lake	A lake where jellyfish have evolved without stingers due to a lack of predators.
	Jervis Bay Territory	Briefly ceded to the ACT to give it access to the sea despite not bordering the ACT.
	Kalawao County, Hawaii	The second-least populous county in the United States (after Loving County, Texas), with a population of 90 as of the 2010 United States Census. Established as a leper colony in 1866, it occupies a peninsula on Molokai and is not connected by road to the rest of the island.
	Kingman Reef	It's designated as its own US overseas territory despite having an area of only 0.03 square kilometres (0.012 sq mi) and being almost entirely underwater during low tide.
	Macquarie Island	The only place on earth where rocks from the Earth's mantle get exposed to the surface.
	Montague Street Bridge	A bridge in Melbourne that has had so many trucks crash into it and get stuck under it, the government used millions of dollars to install prevention measures (it did nothing).
	Mount Wycheproof	Considered a mountain when only 43 metres (141 ft) above surrounding terrain and 143 metres (469 ft) above sea level. There are parts of Sydney which have a higher elevation and are not considered a mountain.
	Murray Valley Highway	A 671-kilometre (417 mi) road that has a road route number of B400 for 668 kilometres (415 mi) in the Victorian section and unmarked for 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) in the New South Wales section making the Victorian road network not connected to the New South Wales Network in that area.
	Nelson–Blenheim notional railway	A road that was officially considered to be a railway by the New Zealand Government for 22 years.
	New Zealand State Highway 78	A road in Timaru, New Zealand, that is designated a highway despite being only 900 metres (3,000 ft) long.
	Ninety Mile Beach	A 55-mile beach.
	Octopolis and Octlantis	A pair of settlements built by octopuses, discovered on the seabed off the coast of the aforementioned Jervis Bay.
	Palmyra Atoll	The United States' only 'incorporated unorganized' territory, despite there being no government and virtually no permanent residents for the Constitution to apply to...
	Pitcairn Islands	A British Overseas Territory where the entire population is Seventh-day Adventist and descended from the mutineers from the HMS Bounty. The entire population moved to Norfolk Island for three years in the 1850s and is currently at risk of going extinct due to the high number of emigrants. Also the site of a scandal where 13 Pitcairn Islands men, almost a third of the islands' population, were convicted in a sex abuse scandal, giving the islands the highest rate of sex offenders in the world.
	Pink Lake	A lake that is naturally pink, but suddenly turned blue in 2010.
	Princes Freeway (east)	A freeway with houses, traffic lights, and a 60-kilometre-per-hour (37 mph) limit in some areas. What are VicRoads thinking?
	Carstensz Pyramid	The tallest mountain in Australia is administrated by the Republic of Indonesia.
	Sandy Island	An island which was shown on Google Maps satellite view until 2012 despite not existing.
	That Wānaka Tree	A tree named after a hashtag on Instagram.
	Taumata	With a full name consisting of 85 characters, this hill may be the longest place name in the world.
	Te Urewera	A forested area in New Zealand that is also a legal person (see below).
	Whanganui River	A river in New Zealand that is legally a person.
	Wedding Cake Rock	A rock that looks exactly like a wedding cake.
	Whangamōmona	A township in New Zealand that also happens to be a self-declared republic, whose past presidents include a goat and a poodle.

History

Pre-modern

Bal des Ardents	A masquerade ball in which the king and some noble dancers dress in wild man costumes and accidentally get set on fire by the king's drunk brother.
Burned house horizon	The horizon which consumed cultures in the Balkans and around the Black Sea.
Cadaver Synod	A deceased Pope was exhumed and put on trial!
Cagots	A group that were a persecuted minority in France and Spain into the 20th century, and nobody really knows why.
Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir	The progenitor of the one-star Yelp review is a gripe about poor-quality copper.
Criterion of embarrassment	You know it's true because it's too embarrassing for anyone to have made it up.
Daughter of Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei	A disputed first female monarch of Chinese history before Wu Zetian, whom the Empress Dowager Hu declared was a boy and was emperor for a day before being replaced by another infant.
Elagabalus	The number one Syrian teenage sun cultist polygamist possibly-transgender Roman emperor!
Erfurt latrine disaster	It's incredible how quickly someone's life can go to shit. Literally.
House of Colleoni	A former Italian noble family whose arms included three pairs of testicles.
John the Posthumous	King of France from the minute he was born to the minute he died (total: 5 days).
Kottabos	The world's first drinking game. Care to play? All you need is a bronze "lamp stand" with a tiny statuette on top and some wine.
Máel Brigte of Moray	A Pictish nobleman who somehow managed to bite a man to death despite being long-dead himself.
Nika riots	Kind of like football hooliganism, except for chariot racing, and also if it resulted in tens of thousands dead, half of Constantinople being burnt to the ground and the Emperor nearly being lynched.
Onfim	A 7 year-old medieval Russian boy whose homework tablets, complete with doodles of himself as a "wild beast", were preserved for 700 years before being excavated and becoming a primary source for life in the Novgorod Republic.
Phantom time conspiracy theory	A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Therefore, it is now 1727 rather than 2024.
Pope Benedict IX	He became pope at twenty, and later sold the papacy. He was pope three times.
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories	Native Americans are among the Ten Lost Tribes? The Zuni are related to Japanese peasants? This and more wild theories are found here.
Publius Afranius Potitus	If you're going to say you'd trade your life for your sick emperor's, make sure he doesn't get better.
Roland The Farter	If only we were all a jump, whistle & fart away from posterity!
Sacred Band of Thebes	An elite fighting force consisting of a hand-picked groups of 150 pairs of male lovers.
Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation	The home of the first flush toilet, as it turns out, is Punjab.
Sino-Roman relations	These empires inched progressively closer to each other in the course of the Roman expansion into the ancient Near East and of the simultaneous Han Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. Mutual awareness remained low, and firm knowledge about each other was limited.
Wise Men of Gotham	So-named after they acted like idiots so the king would go away.

Early modern

Affair of the Sausages	One of the major events of the early Protestant Reformation in Switzerland was a religious dispute on whether sausages could be eaten during Lent.
Architecture terrible	An architectural style advocated by French architect Jacques-François Blondel.
Charles II of Spain	The last Habsburg King of Spain, who was so severely inbred that he could barely rule his nation due to his constant health problems. Upon his death, his autopsy revealed internal organs so withered and atrophied that witchcraft was actually suspected.
Curonian colonisation	A Latvian duchy's little-known colonial empire, consisting of bits of land along the Gambia River and the island of Tobago.
Dancing plague of 1518	In 1518, around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, some of those affected died of heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.
Darien scheme	An attempt to colonize the inhospitable Darién Gap, backed by the Kingdom of Scotland. The failure of the colony ruined the Scottish economy, and may have led to the Union of England and Scotland.
Defenestrations of Prague	When was the last time throwing someone out of a window started a war?
Timothy Dexter	Genius businessman or loony?
False Dmitry	A weird phenomenon in Russian history for all the fake kings that they once had. One, in reality, did become a ruler.
Glass delusion	Believing oneself to be made of glass was quite in vogue among Renaissance-era European nobility.
Gilles de Rais	Friend of Joan of Arc, and convicted serial killer.
The Great Cheese Riot	A riot that broke out in Nottingham in 1766 over Lincolnshire merchants buying Nottingham cheese with the intent of selling it in Lincolnshire.
Loveday	Can holding hands and going to church end a civil war? Turns out: no.
Makassan contact with Australia	Over a century before Europeans made contact with Australia, Makassarese people from Sulawesi seeking sea cucumbers traded with the Aboriginal Australians of Kimberley and Arnhem land, bringing Islamic and Indonesian influence to the local culture, art, language, and lifestyle.
The Miracle of 1511	When the people of Brussels protested against their rulers by building satirical and pornographic snowmen.
Mutiny on the Bounty	The true story starting with a stern captain and a lustful crew on a Royal Navy ship and ending with the British-Polynesian Seventh-day Adventist culture of the Pitcairn Islands. Plenty of drama in-between.
Order of the Pug	A fraternal order that existed for Roman Catholics in Bavaria in the 18th century.
George Psalmanazar	A Frenchman who was so successful in convincing 18th-century Britain he was a Taiwanese man, that he wrote an elaborate and blatantly fictitious history of the island.
Crown Prince Sado	To prevent him from becoming the new monarch of Joseon Korea, his father, the king, locked him in a rice chest for eight days, killing him through dehydration.
Yasuke	An African man who ended up becoming a retainer for Oda Nobunaga, one of Japan's most important feudal lords, in 1581.

19th century

The infrastructural shortcomings of Faraday's times proved especially overpowering in the summer of 1858.

Andrew Johnson's drunk vice-presidential inaugural address	What happens when you start your important new job fortified by three full glasses of straight whiskey, filled to the brim, after spending the week leading up to it in (more or less) a drunken stupor.
Kinjirō Ashiwara	Emperor of Japan, but only in his own mind.
John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland	A reclusive English nobleman who built a vast maze under his home.
Confederados	A small group of white Brazilians with roots in the southern United States.
Drapetomania	"Those slaves want to be free? They must be mentally ill!"
Dublin whiskey fire	In 1875, a whiskey brewery warehouse in Dublin caught fire leading to the deaths of 13 people—not from the fire, but from alcohol poisoning as they drank free, undiluted whiskey from the streets.
Johann Georg August Galletti	The early-19th-century master of the bizarre turn of phrase.
Great Moon Hoax	An infamous article by The Sun that claimed that animals such as unicorns and bat-winged humans were found living on the moon.
Great Stink	A London summer so smelly it prompted government action.
Charles J. Guiteau	The strangest man to ever assassinate a US President. Highlight: the self-penned poem from the point of view of a child that he wrote for his execution.
Jerome of Sandy Cove	A man, unable to speak any language known to locals, was discovered on the beaches of Nova Scotia in 1861 with his legs cut off. He lived for fifty more years, but remains unidentified to this day.
Kentucky meat shower	Not as sexy as you'd imagine it to be.
Knights of the Golden Circle	A secret society of American slave masters that planned to invade lands in Latin America to spread their pro-slavery views.
London Beer Flood	Nine people drowned by a flood of over 300,000 gallons of beer.
Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême	King of France for 20 minutes.
Gregor MacGregor	That's his real name. Possibly the only honest thing about him.
New England vampire panic	An outbreak of tuberculosis in the late 1800s led some superstitious New Englanders to burn the internal organs of their dead relatives, in some cases feeding them to sick family members, to try to prevent the disease from spreading.
Nongqawuse	During (and likely because of) colonization, a Xhosa teenager became an apocalyptic prophetess, ordering the Xhosa to destroy their own crops and livestock—which they did.
Heinrich Schliemann	A pioneer of archaeology, but not for good reasons.
William Walker	Trying to create new slave-holding colonies, he became president of Nicaragua for a year and inspired Latin America to come together for the first time (to oust him).
Watermelon Riot	A deadly riot that unfolded over a stolen slice of watermelon.

20th century

Are There Men on the Moon?	An essay written by Winston Churchill in 1942 about the possibility of alien life.
Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany	Somehow, Nazi Germany was a pioneer of policies of this kind.
Eduard Bloch	The Jewish doctor that treated Hitler's mother and was the only Jew that was protected by the dictator himself when Nazi Germany invaded Austria.
Hugo Boss (businessman)	The founder of the Hugo Boss clothing brand... that started his business working with the Nazis
Burning of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala	One of the most tragic episodes in the history of relations between the two countries.
Chewing gum sales ban in Singapore	The curious case of the banning of gumballs in an Asian nation.
Christmas truce	An unofficial armistice in WW1 where nations celebrated Christmas and played football (soccer).
COINTELPRO	The FBI's name for their undercover operation of investigation, and at times disruption, of influential groups and people in the inland United States during the Cold War. Some of the most famous individuals observed in this operation include: Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Charles Chaplin and Malcolm X.
Crocker Land Expedition	An expedition to a non-existent island created to swindle a businessman.
Czechoslovak Togo	A landlocked Eastern European country proposed getting a colony in Africa, to be administered by its troops in Siberia.
Đorđe Martinović incident	A man goes to the emergency room with a bottle up his anus, and kicks off the collapse of Yugoslavia...
East Germany balloon escape	One of the most famous cases of East Germans escaping to the West.
Elizabeth, Lady Hope	A woman that became famous for creating a hoax where Charles Darwin renounced his theories of evolution at his final moments.
Dorothy Gibson	An actress famous for surviving the Titanic sinking, and also for living a rather turbulent life afterwards.
Great Michigan Pizza Funeral	"Ashes to ashes, crust to crust."
Great Molasses Flood	A storage tank burst and flooded the streets of Boston with a 25-foot (7.6 m) high wave of molasses.
Mango cult	It takes quite the cult of personality to have a fruit you gave as a gift be venerated.
Masabumi Hosono	The only Japanese survivor of the Titanic sinking, and someone who wasn't welcomed in his home country after the disaster.
Violet Jessop	An Argentinian nurse known for surviving three separate maritime disasters, including the sinkings of both the Titanic and the Britannic.
Charles Joughin	Another Titanic survivor, famous for being so drunk that the freezing waters wouldn't kill him.
Kilroy Was Here	A meme from World War II.
Bobby Leach	Went over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survived, attempted to swim the rapids under it and survived... then died after slipping on an orange peel.
Li Guangchang	A Chinese man who founded a cult and declared himself Emperor of China in the 1980s.
Madagascar Plan	An abandoned Nazi plan to transport all of the Jewish population of Europe on to one little island.
Francisco Macías Nguema	What happens when a mentally unstable, self-proclaimed "Hitlerian-Marxist" becomes the leader of a nation? Mary Hopkin's music getting played during a mass execution becomes one of the less strange events during a presidency.
MKUltra	The CIA's dabblings in brainwashing, sensory deprivation and LSD experiments.
Moscow gold	At the start of the Spanish Civil War, more than 70% of the Bank of Spain's gold reserves were transported to the Soviet Union by the Republican government. The controversy and mystery of where it went continues to echo through Spain.
Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás	takes a deep breath He’s a baron, paleontologist, geologist, aristocrat, adventurer, scholar, albanologist, and one-time spy. Among other things, he was the first to postulate that certain dinosaurs got smaller on islands, was almost the king of Albania, and named a fossil turtle after his male lover’s arse.
North Hollywood shootout	In 1997, two heavily armed men were involved in a bank robbery, which turned into a 44-minute shootout with police officers. 20 people were injured as a result, and only the criminals died.
Octobering	In a country where Christianity has been banned as "counter-revolutionary", but still want to have a christening? No problem!
Kenzō Okuzaki	A WW2 Imperial Japanese Army veteran whose determination to hold the Emperor responsible for the hardships of the war resulted in some particularly strange acts involving obscenity, murder and pachinko balls.
Operation Paperclip	Whereby Nazi scientists (including "father of rocket science" Wernher von Braun) were granted amnesty by the US in exchange for their secrets.
Emilio Palma	An Argentine national who was the first person to be born in Antarctica.
Assassination of Olof Palme	The murder of a Swedish prime minister that became one of the country's most durable mysteries.
Punjabi Mexican Americans	Two groups discriminated against in 1910s California intermarried, creating a unique, dynamic community and a delectable new fusion cuisine.
Puyi	He became the last Emperor of China at the age of two and died as an ordinary citizen, ending 2,133 years of dynastic rule in China. In his twilight years, he also did community theater.
Radcliffe Line	The real reason for the many conflicts between India and Pakistan? They gave one man who'd never been there five weeks to draw a border.
Rangoon bombing	A relatively unknown case of North Korean violence aimed at South Korean representatives in Burma.
Reggio revolt	A coalition of Christian democrats, fascists and anarchists started an armed revolt because the Italian government chose the wrong city as the regional capital.
Mathias Rust	The West German who landed on a bridge in Moscow in 1987.
Satanic Verses controversy	One book caused the death of thousands and put Middle Eastern relations with the West in the sorry state they are today. Also don’t forget about when the author of the book got stabbed.
Self-propelled barge T-36	A Soviet barge that floated all the way across the Pacific, with no casualties.
Khalid Sheldrake	The story of an English pickle merchant who became a devout Muslim and was declared king by Uyghur rebels during the Chinese Warlord Era.
Shindo Renmei	Japanese Brazilians who refused to believe Japan had surrendered and continued the cause... by killing other Japanese Brazilians.
Stanley Lord	The captain of a ship that could've been the savior of the victims of the Titanic disaster.
Albert Stevens	The most radioactive human ever.
Tanganyika laughter epidemic	Not so funny.
Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln	A Hungarian-Jewish man who was, at various times, a UK Member of Parliament, German World War I spy, Nazi collaborator and self-proclaimed Dalai Lama.
Tuskegee Syphilis Study	One of the darkest and most bizarre biological experiments in US history, one which spanned decades.
Roman von Ungern-Sternberg	During the Russian Civil War, an ultra-reactionary Baltic German general converted to Buddhism and tried to revive the Mongol Empire.
United States involvement in regime change	Now, this is perhaps the most complicated and long article in this list. However, you'll find many surprises once you read it. See also Operation Condor.
West Papua	Following intercontinental invasion from Indonesia, the region became the largest territory in United Nations administrative history and the only administration then transferred by the United Nations to an aggressor.
John Zegrus	Turned up in Japan in 1959, claiming to be a war hero and a military recruiter for the UAR (and possibly also claimed to be from Africa). His true identity and motives are still a mystery.

21st century

Cottage cheese boycott	A protest against rising staple food prices in Israel.
Dean scream	A presidential bid that was ended by a scream.
Rudi Dekkers	How the September 11 attacks changed everything for the flying instructor of two of the hijackers.
Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist	Thieves stole 3,000 tons of it! Is it really that valuable?
Uday Hussein	Saddam Hussein's oldest son and a real-life Far Cry or James Bond villain. Among other things, he was a rapist and murderer, had a doppelganger named Latif Yahia, (whom Uday would send to torture) and also had the habit of kidnapping women at wedding celebrations.
Laser Kiwi flag	The real New Zealand flag in all our hearts.
Norwegian butter crisis	A massive inflation of butter prices caused illegal smuggling and an "emergency appeal" from a Danish television show.
John P. O'Neill	As special agent in the FBI, he'd investigated Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden but quit due to internal politics. He then took up a job at the World Trade Center in 2001. (Quote from his friend on hearing he'd taken that job: "At least they're not going to bomb it again". His reply: "They'll probably try to finish the job.")
Pepsi fruit juice flood	A PepsiCo warehouse collapse flooded the streets of Russia with an assortment of juices.
Stellar Wind	The codename for a part of the President's Surveillance Program, the digital response of the Presidency of George W. Bush to 9/11. Internally, the FBI personnel responsible for the administration of this program often referenced Stellar Wind's cases as "pizza cases", because they often turned out to be simple food takeout orders.

Mathematics and numbers

Is this identical to one?

"BEGhIL0S", "hELL0", "B00BLESS", etc. – there are many words that can be spelled on a calculator.

−0	Zero has a negative flavor in the worlds of computing, experimental science and statistical mechanics.
0.999...	An infinitely long way to write 1.
2 + 2 = 5	...or perhaps it equals 1984...
616 (number)	The real number of the beast?
65537-gon	This many-sided polygon can be constructed with a compass and straight edge... but then again, so can a circle, and it's not like you'd notice the 15 parts per billion of difference.
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates	A pioneering book that does exactly what it says on the cover. Somehow, not the only random number book either.
All horses are the same color	Flawed mathematical induction proof that all horses are the same color.
Almost everywhere	Does not refer to advertising or corrupt corporate practices, but is instead a term in measure theory.
Almost integer	By a strange coincidence, $e^{\pi }-\pi \approx 20$ - and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Almost periodic function	Well, at least they tried.
Banach–Tarski paradox	Tutorial to make two spheres from one.
Belphegor's prime	1 followed by 13 zeros followed by 666 followed by 13 zeros followed by 1.
Bertrand's postulate	Despite now being a theorem, still conventionally called a postulate.
Calculator spelling	5318008!
The Complexity of Songs	A treatise on the computational complexity of songs by venerable computer scientist Donald Knuth.
Cox–Zucker machine	This machine does what?!
Homicidal chauffeur problem	What does a murderous driver have in common with a guided missile?
Erdős–Bacon number	A combination of the degrees of separation from actor Kevin Bacon and mathematician Paul Erdős.
Extravagant number	Don't take it shopping. Not very friendly with the frugal number either.
Gabriel's horn	A geometric figure with an infinite surface area but finite volume. So even if the horn was filled with paint, you could never paint its surface.
Graham's number	A number so large that the observable universe is not big enough to write it in full in decimal notation or even scientific notation.
Hairy ball theorem	Seriously... Couldn't you come up with a better name?!
Happy number	Not just a cheery song on the radio.
Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel	A fully occupied hotel cannot accommodate any more guests. Or can it? Or, once it can, can it not?
Illegal number	Does the US government forbid knowledge of the existence of certain numbers?
Illumination Problem	A room with a bit of a shadow.
Indiana Pi Bill	A notorious attempt to legislate the value of pi as 3.2.
Infinite monkey theorem	An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will (almost surely) produce all possible written texts.
Interesting number paradox	Either all natural numbers are interesting or else none of them are.
Kruskal's tree theorem	TREE(1) = 1; TREE(2) = 3; TREE(3) = ...wait, where did all my disk space go?
Legendre's constant	After 91 years and much effort, this legendary constant was found to be ... 1. Just 1.
Look-and-say sequence	Also known as the Cuckoo's Egg.
Mathematical fallacy	Trying to prove that 2 = 1 or that 1 < 0.
Mathematical joke	Complex numbers are all fun and games until someone loses an i. That's when things get real.
Minkowski's question-mark function	A function with an unusual notation and possessing unusual fractal properties.
Monty Hall problem	The counter-intuitive way to prevail when playing Let's Make a Deal.
Moving sofa problem	What is the largest area of a sofa that can be manoeuvred through an L-shaped corner?
NAND logic	Turns out you only need one logic gate to do anything.
Narcissistic number	The pluperfect digital invariant says "Count me in"!
Nothing-up-my-sleeve number	A number which is "above suspicion".
Number of the beast	For beastly people bored of the number of unluckiness.
Numbers station	[Six bars of The Lincolnshire Poacher play] "¡Atención! ¡Atención! One, four, seventeen, twenty-four..."
Pi is 3	Did Japanese education guidelines shockingly redefine pi as exactly 3? No, they didn't, but where's the news story and public outcry in that?
Pointless topology	Not as useless as it sounds.
Potato paradox	If potatoes consisting of 99% water dry so that they are 98% water, they lose 50% of their weight.
Ramanujan summation	What do you get when you add all positive integers, up to infinity? You get a negative fraction.
Schizophrenic number	Can numbers have mental disorders?
Sexy prime	Prime numbers that differ from each other by sex. Er... six.
Six nines in pi	A mathematical coincidence, the sequence "999999" appears a mere 762 digits into the decimal expansion of pi. Nice.
Tarski's circle-squaring problem	How to square the circle for real.
Spaghetti sort	An algorithm for sorting rods of spaghetti.
Squircle	Not quite a square, not quite a circle, definitely not a Pokémon either.
Taxicab number	Never tell a Numberphile that a number is uninteresting.
Tetraphobia	Sometimes found in conjunction with triskaidekaphobia (see below) in East Asian cultures. More prevalent in Japan, where 49 is associated with "suffering until death".
Titanic prime	Surprisingly, not discovered by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Tits group	The perfect sporadic group doesn't exi-
Triskaidekaphobia	No, it's not related to the Code of Hammurabi. No, it's not always considered unlucky. Yes, space exploration has been touched by it.
Tupper's self-referential formula	A formula that draws itself!
Ulam spiral	A bored mathematician discovers an unusual numerical pattern while doodling.
Umbral calculus	A mathematical method successfully used for over 100 years, despite the notable limitation of no one on Earth knowing exactly how or why it worked.
Unexpected hanging paradox	If you're told you'll be hanged on a day you'll never expect it, you can prove logically that there's no day you can be hanged at all. Which, of course, means you won't expect it when the hanging does happen as planned.
Unknot	The least knotted of all mathematical knots.
Vacuous truth	All pigs with wings speak Chinese.
Vampire number	Integers with real bite; some even have multiple pairs of fangs.
Wheat and chessboard problem	Do not mess with exponential growth, especially while agreeing to a suspiciously-low reward for a commoner.
Will Rogers phenomenon	When moving an element from one set to another set raises – counter-intuitively – the average values of both sets. Also known as the Will Rogers paradox.
Zenzizenzizenzic	You know how x³ is called "x cubed"? Well, x⁸ is called...
Zeroth	An ordinal number popular in computing and related cultures.

Dates and timekeeping

Abolition of time zones	No more asking "So what time is it there?"
Ruth Belville	She followed her parents in the business of selling people Greenwich Mean Time.
Chrismukkah	A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C..
Cinnamon Roll Day	A day too good for this world, too pure.
Festivus	December 23: Holiday celebrated by the Costanza family on the television show Seinfeld, since appropriated by many.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day	Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19.
List of non-standard dates	Including, among other things, January 0, February 30, and May 35.
Manhattanhenge	Twice every year, the setting sun aligns with Manhattan's street grid.
Mole Day	The Avogadro constant is celebrated on October 23rd starting at exactly 6:02 am.
Pi Day	The day – March 14 – on which the constant π is celebrated.
Pocky & Pretz Day	A day in Japan celebrating long, thin biscuits. Due to their shape, it is celebrated on 11/11.
Singles' Day	One is the loneliest number. 11/11 makes an appropriate date to celebrate being single.
Square Root Day	Any date when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year (the next being 5th May 2025).
Star Wars Day	May the 4th be with you.
Steak and Blowjob Day Cake and Cunnilingus Day	Male alternative to Valentine's Day and female response to that day.
Swatch Internet Time	In 1998, Swatch tried to reshape our timing system.
Thanksgivukkah	A Thanksgiving-Hanukkah hybrid when the two overlap in November in the US; maybe your Hanukkah present can be a Thanksgiving Dinner.
Towel Day	Don't forget to bring a towel, terrible or otherwise.
Undecimber	In Java, the thirteenth month of the year.
Winterval	An attempt to erase Christmas? No, just a word for Birmingham City Council's collective festive plans, but that didn't stop the UK media from going wild.
Year 2000 problem	A possible computing problem in the 1990's that was supposed to have occurred when the 21st century and 3rd millennium arrived. Of course, that never happened.
Year 2038 problem	The computing problem that will arise due to the Unix time representation used in many computers.
Year zero	Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1?

Language

"Which këÿs för this heävy plästic müsïc?"

The Voynich manuscript is written in an undeciphered script.

-ussy	Yes, it means what you think it does.
2002 renaming of Turkmen months and days of week	For almost six years, the months and days of the week in the Turkmen language had their names changed at the order of Turkmenistan's despotic President for Life.
Académie de la Carpette anglaise	A satirical French organisation that awards prizes to "members of the French élite who distinguish themselves by relentlessly promoting the domination of the English language over the French language in France and in European institutions".
Antiqua–Fraktur dispute	A dispute over which typeface was more "German". At first, the Nazis were for Fraktur...
Apples and oranges	According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought.
Argumentum ad crumenam Argumentum ad lazarum	Even if money can't buy you happiness, it (or a lack thereof) might win you an argument.
Arebica	Turns out, Slavic-based languages can also be written in the Arabic script.
Belarusian Arabic alphabet
A Book from the Sky	A must-see for connoisseurs of gibberish.
Bouba/kiki effect	You instinctively know exactly which is which, no matter what language you speak.
Bow-wow theory	Competitors include the pooh-pooh theory, the ding-dong theory, and the yo-he-ho theory.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo	A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about bullying amongst Western New York's bison population.
Capitalization of Internet	There is internet and Internet... and Internets.
The Chaos	The poem that mocks English spelling and pronunciation. Try to read it out loud!
Chinese characters of Empress Wu	Ever needed to be taken seriously so hard that you invented completely new characters and forced people to use them?
Chinese word for "crisis"	More notable among Americans than among the Chinese, apparently.
Codex Seraphinianus	A made-up enigmatic text released in 1981.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously	A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical.
Comparative illusion	More people have researched these nonsensical sentences than I have. [sic]
Contronym	Sometimes you need oversight to prevent oversight.
Controversies about the word niggardly	How a simple word can cause so much controversy.
Crazy English	"Li Yang's unconventional method of teaching English includes screaming popular and random English phrases at a rapid pace and occasionally, involves hand movements in patterns that reflect the word's pronunciation."
Cryptophasia	The secret language of identical twins, also called idioglossia.
Disambiguation (disambiguation)	Sometimes people do dumb things.
Dord	A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939.
The Dozens	A usually good-natured African American game in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback.
Duck test	A humorous abductive reasoning test based on the activities of a duck.
Dze	This Cyrillic letter looks exactly the same as the Latin letter S, making it the ultimate weapon in IDN homograph attacks.
Eggcorn	When you say something wrong but it still sounds kinda right.
English as She Is Spoke	A 19th century Portuguese-English phrasebook that became legendary for its overtly literal and inaccurate translations.
Engrish	Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases.
Eskimo words for snow	The claim that Eskimo languages have an unusually large number of words for "snow".
Etaoin shrdlu	Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting.
Expletive infixation	Linguists abso-fucking-lutely love to shock students with this knowledge.
Faggin–Nazzi alphabet	What? That's its real name. What did you think it was about?
Faux Cyrillic	Give text some of that Яussiaи flavour.
Fictitious entry	The content may be fictitious, but the entry is a fact.
Fnord	Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordians.
Garden-path sentence	A sentence that doesn't seem grammatically correct, but that's because it tricks you into thinking the verb isn't where it is. It's very easy to catch yourself doing double takes when reading this article.
Ghoti	As good an argument as any for English-language spelling reform.
Glossary of Wobbly terms	Would you see the beanmaster fry a couple eggs on the banjo?
Grelling–Nelson paradox	Is "autological" autological?
Hamburgevons	Literally all you need to know if a typeface is any good.
Hopi time controversy	A long-lived academic debate about the concept of time in the Hopi language.
Hyphen War	A dash between communism and independence.
Ingressive sound	In many languages and dialects around the world, a loud inhalation means "yes".
Inherently funny word	Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle, wankel, ni...
Intentionally blank page	The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank".
Irony punctuation	Is your irony too subtle?
Irreversible binomial	Or, why it's fish and chips and not chips and fish.
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher	Repetition gone wrong.
A language is a dialect with an army and navy	A solid test.
Latin profanity	Latin for the profane.
Law of holes	If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!
La plume de ma tante (phrase)	One of the first phrases stereotypically learned in French, and outside of being possesed by an ancient Mesopotamian demon, is one of the least likely phrases ever actually be used.
Language deprivation experiments	Also known as "the forbidden experiment".
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den	A 92-character poem written in Classical Chinese, in which every syllable has the sound "shi" (in different tones) when read in modern Mandarin Chinese.
List of common false etymologies of English words	Believe it or not, "crap" did not originate from Thomas Crapper.
List of English words containing Q not followed by U	A Scrabbler's dream article.
List of English words without rhymes	Does anything rhyme with orange? Or silver?
List of ethnic slurs	Ever wondered why they got so angry at you?
List of proposed etymologies of OK	There's more than you think, OK?
List of shorthand systems	Featuring Gregg, Pitman, and other quickly-written but only-theoretically-readable scripts.
Longest words	How are you even gonna say these?
Longest word in English	How are you even gonna say these?
Mamihlapinatapai	The Guinness World Record holder for the "most succinct word".
Martian language	Chinese language + Internet = new language.
May you live in interesting times	The worst curse you can put on someone. Probably not Chinese in origin.
Metal umlaut	Gïvë thë lögö för ÿöür hëävÿ mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänïc fëël.
Muphry's law	Proceed very cautiously before correcting someone else's grammar.
Murad Takla	Converting the Bengali language to Latin script can sometimes have interesting consequences.
My postillion has been struck by lightning	A perfectly normal thing to say, as recommended by 19th century multilingual phrasebooks.
Newton's flaming laser sword	Not an actual weapon, but a philosophical razor created by an Australian mathematician.
Nucular	Enough people have mispronounced nuclear that it's apparently a real word now.
Ough (orthography)	The combination that has inspired delightful poems through tough thorough thought.
Phaistos Disc	Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs.
Placeholder name	You know, thingamajigs, doohickeys, whatchamacallits...
Pompatus	All Steve Miller's fault.
Potrzebie	A Polish word best known to American readers of MAD magazine.
Pronunciation of GIF	Remember when the internet spent most of 2014 arguing about this? Good times.
RAS syndrome	...which is itself an example of RAS.
Rebracketing	How an ickname became a nickname.
Response to sneezing	Achoo! A great fortunate occurrence!
Robert Shields	You think you are hooked on recording every detail of your life...?
Rohonc Codex	A mysterious book found in Hungary that to this day remains unsolved.
Scientific wild-ass guess	Please excuse my SWAG.
Scots Wikipedia	What happens when an American teen writes 23,000 articles in a language he has no idea how to speak?
Shavian alphabet	A new (well, 1960s) alphabet made exclusively for English.
Shibboleth	A type of slang used to identify an individual with a very specific region, usually with accompanied value judgments. Also, a funny word.
Shit happens	A statement of philosophical existentialism boiled down to two words.
Shm-reduplication	Ah, Wikipedia-shmikipedia.
Skunked term	If "it's all downhill from here", shouldn't it mean it's easy?
Spelling of Shakespeare's name	What is the correct spelling of the famous English playwright?
Taito	A kanji with 84 strokes, the most for any CJK character by some distance.
Talk to the hand	...'cause the face ain't listening.
Tenevil	Chukchi man who independently created his own writing system for the Chukchi language.
Thagomizer	The word referring to those spikes on the tails of Stegosauria originated from the same guy that made "Cow tools".
That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is	Punctuation matters, people.
The Moon is made of green cheese	Is it really made out of cheese?
There is no sex in the USSR	Did you know that?
Thinking about the immortality of the crab	A colorful Spanish idiom for daydreaming; try using this one if your teacher notices you becoming inattentive in class.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana	Another example of syntactic ambiguity.
Toynbee tiles	Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages.
Tsundoku	Buy a book and then don't read it.
Tuffet	What did Miss Muffet sit on?
Unknown unknowns	Things that we don't know we don't know, as immortalised by Donald Rumsfeld.
Uncleftish Beholding	"Atomic theory" in Anglish.
Unpaired word	Can you be shevelled, kempt, and gainly?
Voynich manuscript	An undeciphered illustrated book written six hundred or so years ago by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet.
Wine-dark sea	Homer's epithet that raises a theory that Greeks of Homer's time were color blind.
Yan tan tethera	The proper, Brythonic way to count sheep oop North.
"Yo mama" joke	What is this article about? Your mom
Zhemao hoaxes	An editor on Chinese Wikipedia created over 200 articles about fake Russian history, making it one of the largest hoaxes on Wikipedia.
Zzxjoanw	A fictional word that really confused linguists.

Specific languages, dialects, and pidgins

Abercraf English	How an all-new variety of English has developed in a single Welsh village since World War II.
Algonquian–Basque pidgin	The linguistic fruit of the travels of Basque whalers.
Basque–Icelandic pidgin	The linguistic fruit of the travels of Basque whalers.
Anāl language	Its phonemic inventory, sadly, doesn't include the voiced anal fricative.
Andalusian language movement	A group of people have attempted to promote Andalusian Spanish as a distinct language. They have successfully created an Andalusian version of Minecraft.
Antarctic English	Not spoken by penguins.
Arcaicam Esperantom	How do you make things look "old" in a constructed language? By inventing a new one!
Boontling	Bet it seems pretty crazeek to harp boont to a kimmie Brightlighter like you, huh?
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin	A pidgin formed in 20th century Western Australia from Aboriginal Australian English, Japanese, and Kupang Malay to facilitate communication between the variety of groups working on pearling boats in the Kimberley region.
Cia-Cia	A language in Indonesia that came to use the Korean script.
DoggoLingo	Hoomanz wrote thiz cool article about mai language!
Dravido-Korean languages	A discarded and mostly-forgotten hypothesis that Korean and the Dravidian languages of Southern India made up a single language family, despite being thousands of kilometres apart and sharing very little common history.
E-Prime	A form of English without the verb 'to be'.
High Tider	Some people in rural coastal areas of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland still speak a dialect derived from the English spoken over 300 years ago.
Ithkuil	Try learning this in a weekend!
Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language	A creole language with Akan vocabulary that is spoken by Jamaican Maroons in rituals involving spiritual possession.
Kebabnorsk	The delicious-sounding ethnolect prevalent in multi-ethnic Oslo.
Leet	T3h 1@ngu/\&e 0f H@xx0rz.
Lojban	A constructed language based on predicate logic.
Mediterranean Lingua Franca	The original lingua franca. Spoken from the 11th to the 19th centuries with substratum from Venetian, Genoese, Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Greek, Sicilian, Galician, and many more.
Nicaraguan Sign Language	Nicaraguan deaf children create their own language after only being taught to lip-read Spanish, fascinate linguists.
Pandanus language	"Don't use regular words, you'll ruin the screwpine nuts." A prime example of an avoidance language.
Pirahã language	A language spoken by the Amazonian Pirahã people, and an example of a language that can be whistled. The subject of controversial claims that it proves the theory of linguistic relativity.
Plains Indian Sign Language	Despite (mostly) not being deaf, the indigenous peoples of the North American Plains developed a sign language to use as a lingua franca.
Proto-Human language	The (completely hypothetical) genetic ancestor to all the world's languages.
Pseudo-Chinese	If you speak Japanese and want to translate something to Chinese, all you do is just remove all the kana, keep only the kanji, and say that it's written in Chinese. Simple, right?
Russenorsk	A Slavic-Scandinavian pidgin that lasted only 150 years.
Silbo Gomero	The inhabitants of La Gomera of the Canary Islands communicate across valleys by whistling in Spanish.
Solresol	A constructed language based around musical notes.
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh	The native name of the indigenous Squamish language of British Columbia, which uses the number 7 as a letter.
Toki Pona	The opposite of the previously mentioned Ithkuil. Inspired by minimalism and Taoist philosophy, this constructed language has only 137 regularly used words.
Ubykh language	A very recently extinct Circassian language with 84 phonemic consonants (a record for non-click languages), but only 2 distinct vowels.
Wenzhounese	And you thought Mandarin was hard? A Chinese dialect nicknamed "the devil's language" for its extreme divergence and difficulty.
ǃXóõ	A click language with 122 consonants spoken by groups of San people in Namibia and Botswana.
Yaminjeongeum	세종머앟늰익 읚머한 윾산.
Yerkish	An artificial language developed for use by non-human primates.

Unusual names

See Nominative determinism for the idea that people gravitate toward careers that fit their names, e.g. urologists named Splat and Weedon.

Amandagamani Abhaya of Anuradhapura	A king of Anuradhapura whose name has way too many As for me to be comfortable with.
Alfonso de Borbón y Borbón	A Spanish nobleman with a whopping 88 forenames.
Arses of Persia	Unfortunately, 4th century BC Persian rulers were unable to predict modern profanity.
Dick Assman	What? He was a celebrity for four months!
Harry Baals	Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1950s and had a really unfortunate name. Almost immortalized in the Harry Baals Government Center, but it ended up being named Citizens Square instead.
C. H. D. Buys Ballot	No evidence of electoral fraud by the chairman of a precursor to the World Meteorological Organization.
Praise-God Barebone	Christened Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone; not to be confused with his son Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon.
Bishop Bishop (disambiguation)	There have been four different bishops named Bishop in England.
Dick Bong	The most successful American fighter pilot's legal name was Richard, but he only ever went by the name "Dick Bong".
Bumpy Bumpus	He bumped too hard and too far. Rest in peace, Bumpy Bumpus.
Dick Butkus	A Pro Football Hall of Famer who played 9 years for the Chicago Bears.
Cesar Chavez	Formerly Scott Fistler, this right-wing, pro-business politician changed his name to match the Hispanic left‑wing labor activist in an attempt to get more votes.
Thursday October Christian I	The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Seymour Cocks	British MP between 1929 and 1953.
Deportivo Wanka	An unfortunately named Peruvian football team whose strips are remarkably popular in Britain.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft	An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria, of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.
Preserved Fish	A historical New York City shipping merchant.
FM-2030	A transhumanist philosopher changed his name to this, inspired by his predictions for the year 2030.
Gag name	Deliberately humorous names based on double entendres, with quite a few examples listed on the page.
Goodspaceguy	Perennial political candidate in the Seattle area of the United States who legally changed his name to align with his passion for space colonization.
Gregor Fučka	A Slovenian-born Italian basketball player with another socially problematic last name.
Guy Standing	Observed sitting in the infobox photo.
John le Fucker	His surname probably didn't mean what you think it might mean.
Argel Fucks	A Brazilian footballer with a socially problematic last name. An unforgettable newspaper headline once declared "Fucks Off to Benfica".
Jakob Fugger	One of the richest men in history, with another quite unfortunate surname.
States Rights Gist	A Confederate general during the American Civil War.
John B. Goodenough	Being good enough, this guy invented random access memory and the lithium-ion battery.
Curtis Hidden Page	An American writer whose middle and last names accidentally predicted the Internet, and the countless pages on it that could only be accessed by typing their URLs in the URL bar manually.
Ima Hogg	American society leader, philanthropist, patron and collector of the arts, and one of the most respected women in Texas during the 20th century.
Huang Hong-cheng, Ah Cheng from Taiwan, World’s Greatest Man, God of Wealth, and President	A performance artist who took full advantage of Taiwan's naming law.
Christmas Humphreys	A British judge, named after the festival celebrating the birth of Christ, who helped make Buddhism popular in the UK.
Tiny Kox	A Dutch politician.
Jennifer 8. Lee	A former New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight. And you thought Harry S. Truman had an exceptional middle name...
List of examples of Stigler's law	Bode didn't discover Bode's Law, and Pascal didn't discover Pascal's Triangle. (And Stigler didn't create Stigler's law.)
Henry Lizardlover	Yes, he appreciates reptiles.
Seán Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus	An Irish politician who changed his name to emphasize political affiliations.
Mannanafnanefnd	A committee in Iceland that determines whether a name is suitable for integration into the Icelandic language. Apparently voted yes about themselves.
Adolf Lu Hitler Marak	This Indian politician does not dispraise his parents' questionable name choice.
Mister Mxyzptlk	Sometimes called Mxy, a fictional impish character who appears in DC Comics' Superman comic books.
Names of Soviet origin	In the wake of the Russian Revolution, there was a craze for parents giving names of overtly revolutionary or Soviet inspiration. Examples include "Vladlen" (short for Vladimir Lenin), "Revmir" ("Revolution of the world"), "Elmira" (electrification of the world), "Barrikad" (barricade) and "Geliy" (helium).
Naming law in Sweden	An odd Swedish law regulating children's names, which has led to disgruntled parents submitting names such as Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, A (both pronounced "Albin"), and Metallica.
Neville Neville	The father of English footballers Phil Neville and Gary Neville.
Metta World Peace	An NBA player who wants to promote World Peace and has a reputation for on-court brawls.
Pro-Life	A perennial political candidate with strongly held views.
Public Universal Friend	An 18th century Quaker who died, and was then revived, becoming an evangelist, gaining this unusual name, and becoming one of the earliest instances in recorded history of a person identifying as genderless.
Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz	And that's the short title of this German beef labelling law.
Tokyo Sexwale	Despite not being Japanese or a sperm whale, he has control over the global diamond industry.
Sjokz	Commentator with an equally unpronounceable real name (Eefje Depoortere). Watch out! Eep!
Mansfield Smith-Cumming	The first head of MI6, whose name became appropriate as he promoted the use of semen as invisible ink.
M. K. Stalin	What if old Joe was Tamil?
Téa	This name is surprisingly French and not English.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos	A warning to us all about taking double-barrelled surnames too far...
Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache	Somehow, it's not even the longest or most extravagant name among his family.
Tonibler	A name given in Kosovo in honor of a certain British politician.
Turnipseed	Only the most hardcore turnip farmers have this name!
Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Sr.	The longest name ever given. Note: the page title is only the short form.
Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck	Educational professional who earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on uncommon Black names in the classroom.
Osama Vinladen	Brother to the equally concerning Sadam Huseín and Georgia Bush.
Vladimiro Lenin Ilich Montesinos	Did you know that Russian revolutionary and leader of the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin was a CIA asset?

Science

Archaeoacoustics	Can ancient pottery be used to play back recorded voices from the distant past?
Airborne radioactivity increase in Europe in autumn 2017	It's bizarre, but it did happen.
Ota Benga	The tragic story of a Pygmy man from the Belgian Congo who was briefly exhibited in the Bronx Zoo.
Beringer's Lying Stones	Fossils planted by God? No, just a prank created to discredit a professor whom the hoaxers didn't like.
Buttered cat paradox	If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...?
Buttered toast phenomenon	But only if you're eating at a table.
Campanology	For the good of society, we must study how to properly ring bells.
Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre	SI rules says you can't use a capital letter for a unit unless it's named after a person, but everyone uses L for the litre... so they made up a namesake.
Cneoridium dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, at an Elevation of about 1450 Meters on Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South of Bahía de Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently for a Southeastward Range Extension of Some 140 Miles	This scientific paper has the longest article name on Wikipedia (250 characters out of a possible 255). The paper itself only has five words, though.
Vladimir Demikhov	Eminent Soviet biologist and father of the canine head transplant.
Drake's Plate of Brass	A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry.
Elvis taxon	A taxon (species, genus, family, etc.) that is extinct but is later imitated by others.
Further research is needed	Some journals have banned this infuriating and redundant cliché. Some researchers are researching its effects, but FRIN...
Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory	You may have had a chemistry set when you were a child. I bet it didn't come with radioactive substances in the box.
Greeble	Stimuli used in studies of object and face recognition with hilarious names.
Kardashian Index	There is an inverse relationship between a scientist's social media presence and their citation metric.
Lazarus taxon	Leaping Lazarus! Somewhat like Monty Python's Dead Parrot, it's not really dead; it's just resting.
List of Ig Nobel Prize winners	Nobel Prize meets Weird Science. Result: Award-winning papers like "Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts" and "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans".
Nylon-eating bacteria and creationism	The intersection of science and religion in a simple bacterium.
'Pataphysics	A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.
Archaeological interest of Pedra da Gávea	Did ancient Phoenicians visit Brazil centuries before the Portuguese? Actually, no, they did not.
Pathological science	A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field.
Physics envy	When the social sciences are infused with mathematics- and physics-like principles.
Planck's principle	The idea that "science progresses one funeral at a time".
Project Steve	In response to creationists' attempts to create a list of evolution-denying scientists, this even longer list consists of scientists who believe in evolution and are called Steve (or some variation).
Raven paradox	First, you'll grant that all ravens are black, yes...?
Sokal affair	Physicist Alan Sokal demonstrates that at least some postmodernists can't see an emperor with no clothes.
Timeline of the far future	The ultimate list of spoilers. Also gives you an existential crisis.
Halomonas titanicae	A unique species of bacteria found at the wreck of the Titanic.
John G. Trump	A physicist and inventor with a quite underrated career. Among other things, he was the co-inventor of one of the first million-volt X-ray generators and the man that analyzed Nikola Tesla's hotel room after his death. Also the paternal uncle of Donald Trump.
Women-are-wonderful effect	A subconscious bias that makes people consider positive attributes to be connected to women more than men, regardless of the gender you ask.

Physics

"It's Professor Pauli! Quick, pack that stuff away!"

Anatoli Bugorski	What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator?
Colors of noise	Including white, pink, purple, blue...
David Hahn	A 17-year-old, known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, who irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Demon core	A two-time radioactive killer.
Deutsche Physik	Or "German physics" during the Third Reich.
F. D. C. Willard	The pen name of a cat who wrote academic papers in the field of cryogenics.
Fictional elements, materials, isotopes and subatomic particles	Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
Fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position	Named after a famous cereal phenomenon.
Flying ice cube	They happen to live inside the computers of scientists trying to simulate molecules.
Frog battery	A curious experiment to determine the existence of animal electricity.
Impossible color	Try to see it!
Kundt's tube	A serious piece of scientific apparatus whose name has induced sniggering among English-speaking schoolchildren for over 150 years.
List of unusual units of measurement	Fortnights and nibbles, super feet and Sagans.
Mpemba effect	Hot water freezes faster than cool water, and no one is sure why. Also probably the only scientific term named after a Tanzanian schoolboy.
Oh-My-God particle	Proof that physicists have a dramatic flair.
Pauli effect	Something in the lab not working? Technical difficulties? Blame this guy.
Quantum suicide and immortality	An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube	What happens when you blow in a hole in a tube? Hot air comes out one end and cold air comes out the other. No consensus reached on why it happens yet.
Rheology of peanut butter	A serious analysis of the tastiest viscoelastic colloid.
Shower-curtain effect	Nobody knows why when you turn on the hot water in the shower, the curtain blows in.
Smoot	A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sound of fingernails scraping chalkboard	Urrrgggh!
The Hum	A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations.

Earth sciences

"No, this definitely isn't flat, but it's the other way!"

Aachenosaurus	A fossil plant that was mistakenly identified as a dinosaur.
Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition	An ill-fated attempt to reach the North Pole in 1897.
Ararat anomaly	A strange geological element that, for years, has confused practicing Christians and geologists.
Bloop	A mysterious underwater animal-like sound that was loud enough to be heard across the Pacific Ocean.
Catatumbo lightning	At one lake in Venezuela, constant thunderstorms are just a regular occurrence.
Floyd Collins	A cave explorer from the early 20th century that got stuck in a cave in Kentucky. Despite a massive rescue effort, he ended up dying there, but that wasn't the end of his story.
Continental drip	A playful theory devised to explain why the continents are tapered toward the south.
Expanding Earth	A theory that the Earth is growing.
Gore effect	Whereby it gets colder when climate change campaigners come to town.
Hector (cloud)	A cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia, from approximately September to March each year. Also known as "Hector the Convector."
Kentucky meat shower	It's raining meat. Hallelujah it's raining meat.
List of unexplained sounds	Must've been the wind.
Mumbai "sweet" seawater incident	Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle.
Rain of animals	When it's literally raining cats and dogs.
Red rain in Kerala	Did blood rain from the sky?
Snow in Florida	Yes, snow is not unknown in the "Sunshine State".
South-up map orientation	The crew of Apollo 17 snapped Earth with Antarctica on top. NASA followed Ptolemy and rotated it "back".
Roy Sullivan	An unlucky park ranger who was hit by lightning on seven separate occasions. He survived them all, but came to his own tragic end.
Tinnunculite	A recently discovered mineral that forms from bird feces.
Waffle House Index	The U.S. government's alternative measure of disaster impact.
Weather rock	The only 100% active and 100% accurate meteorologist.

Chemistry and material science

9,10-Dithioanthracene	The molecule that walks.
Botulinum toxin	One of the most deadly substances known is nonetheless extremely common in the cosmetic industry.
26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union	The largest gem diamond ever found in Russia.
Dihydrogen monoxide	A commonly used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to global warming, erosion, acid rain, torture and countless other maladies. Or... that's what they want you to think.
Elephant's Foot	One of the world's most toxic objects, created as a product of the Chernobyl disaster.
Fogbank	A nuclear warhead-related material so classified that its creators – the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration – forgot how to make it.
Goiânia accident	The world's worst nuclear incident that didn't begin in a radioactive power plant.
List of chemical compounds with unusual names	Some a consequence of their constituents or origins, others simply the work of whimsical chemists.
Thomas Midgley Jr.	Inventor of two of the world's most severe pollutants – and a device that killed him.
NanoPutian	A series of organic molecules having a structure that looks human.
New car smell	Ahh, that new car smell. What do you mean, it might be toxic?
Nitrogen triiodide	What's purple and explodes if a feather brushes it?
Orotidine 5'-phosphate decarboxylase	Known for its extreme catalysis, this enzyme can reduce the time required for a reaction from 78 million years to 18 milliseconds.
Pitch drop experiment	The world's most viscous liquid, dripping out of a funnel at the University of Queensland since 1927. There's been 9 drops so far.
James Price	An alchemist who went to the most extreme lengths possible to avoid having to prove his findings.
Pykrete	A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound once used in an attempt to create an aircraft carrier.
Smell of freshly cut grass	A nostalgic odor that plays a role in plant communication as a chemical cry of agony.
Thiotimoline	A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water.
Trimethylaminuria	Do you smell something fishy? It may be you!
Unobtainium	A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess.

Space and astronomy

"Of course, it never reached the Moon..."

1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg	Perhaps one of the first "alien" sightings in recorded history.
Apollo 15 postal covers incident	Three astronauts never flew to space again after being paid to take postal covers with them on Apollo 15. But that's not much of a punishment though, considering they got to go to the freakin' Moon.
Blue Origin v. United States & Space Exploration Technologies Corp.	Two companies got into a brat fight and sued NASA in the process.
Judith Love Cohen	One of the most important female scientists involved with the Apollo program, and Jack Black's mother. Some might say this is not the best article on Wikipedia.... this is just a tribute to her.
Cosmic latte	The average colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white.
Cydonia (Mars)	You've heard of the man on the Moon, now get ready for the "Face on Mars", well, sort of...
Edward Makuka Nkoloso	The leader of a non-government Zambian space program planned to send "Afronauts" to Mars with the goal of establishing a Christian ministry to civilise Martians.
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster	Driving in space becomes reality.
Embryo space colonization	A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.
Extraterrestrial real estate	Want to buy a housing plot on the Moon?
Fallen Astronaut	A small statuette which is the only sculpture on the Moon.
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, and Phooey	Five mice who circled the Moon 75 times on Apollo 17, among the last eight Earthlings to travel to the Moon. Upon returning to Earth, the four remaining living mice were soon murdered and dissected in the name of science. ("That's one small squeak...")
Finger of God Globule	A molecular cloud known for resembling the middle finger, a hand pointing at other stars, and worst of all, ...a penis?
Gauss's Pythagorean right triangle proposal	Proposal of Pythagorean theorem "drawing" to be constructed in the Siberian tundra as a signal for extraterrestrials.
Harlan J. Smith Telescope	Have you heard about the telescope that got shot? Contrary to initial reports, the harm from the bullets was extraordinary small.
Hot, dust-obscured galaxy	Hot DOGs, anyone?
International Space Station cannabis experiment hoax	Need we say more?
Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect	Sadly, the alignment of two planets wouldn't allow the British public to float. Maybe the fact that the news came out on April 1 should have clued them in.
List of hypothetical Solar System objects	The planets that could have been. You think Pluto had it rough? At least it got its fifteen minutes of astronomical fame.
Lunarcrete	Perfect for building your own cut-price Moon base.
Mars Climate Orbiter	Failed Mars mission that disintegrated in the Martian atmosphere due to a unit conversion error.
Matrioshka brain	Star-sized computer.
Milkdromeda	The birth of a future galaxy, and the death of our own.
Mimas (moon)	A moon that looks like the Death Star.
The Moon is made of green cheese	Scientific consensus says it isn't, but are there people (or wolves) who think so?
Moon landing conspiracy theories	Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Moon Museum	Only two people have ever seen its exhibits in person.
Nazi UFOs	Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there.
Nuclear pasta	Gnocchi, spaghetti, lasagna, bucatini and Swiss cheese may sound tasty at first, until you realized that one teaspoon of this pasta outweighs Mount Everest...
Peryton (astronomy)	Don't use microwaves next to radio telescopes!
Seatbelt basalt	A lunar sample spotted by David Scott while driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the moon. He assumed that mission control wouldn't allow him to stop and get it, so he pretended he was fastening his seatbelt.
Sex in space	And when you've exhausted the list, here's something new to try!
Solway Firth Spaceman	"Wasn't there when I took the pic – honest!"
Space advertising	Plans to launch giant billboards into space.
Space elevator competitions	How high can you go?
Spaghettification	What happens when you fall into a black hole.
Space Poop Challenge	A challenge in 2016 to design a new toilet system for use in space.
Space selfie	Doing it for the 'gram.
Stolen and missing Moon rocks	The rocks were out of this world! Unfortunately, they fell into the wrong hands.
Supermoon	It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Supermoon! (Actually, this is a phenomenon where the moon appears slightly larger than normal. Still impressive, though.)
Sylacauga (meteorite)	The first fallen meteorite in recorded history to have verifiably injured a human.
Tabby's Star	A star that has been suggested to have an alien megastructure surrounding it.
Timekeeping on Mars	How Martians know when they are.
Vatican Observatory	One of the few official scientific institutions linked with the Catholic Church.
Voyager Golden Record	A compilation of sounds and images of humanity on a phonograph record made of gold-plated copper. It was sent to space in 1977 and is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth.
Vulcan (hypothetical planet)	A proposed planet that some astronomers in the 19th century believed existed between the Sun and Mercury. The fact it used to be believed means that no planet can ever be named after Vulcan from Star Trek because the name's already been taken.
274301 Wikipedia	An asteroid named after Wikipedia. We truly came to the stars.
Wow! signal	Alien radio transmission, or, at least, the strongest candidate for that role.
Writing in space	How do you write in space?
iPTF14hls	A star that seems to have exploded 6 times in the past 70 years.

Medicine and health

Accessory breast	Some people have more than two.
Alien hand syndrome	An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take on a life of its own.
Anal wink	Here's looking at you!
Auto-brewery syndrome	Like a microbrewery in your digestive system.
Banana equivalent dose	A banana for scale.
Black hairy tongue	Really?
Bristol stool scale	Taking a close look at a toilet bowl for the sake of science. The scale was inspired by eye charts.
ChIA-PET	Chromatin Interaction Analysis by Paired-End Tag sequencing, that is.
Chronic Lyme disease	A conspiracy theory about long-lasting effects of Lyme disease, not to be confused with actual latent symptoms of lyme disease
Coffee enema	A bizarre type of alternative medicine.
Danger triangle of the face	A very specific area of your face where bursting a boil could mean certain death.
Dimples of Venus	For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face.
DNA origami RNA origami	Two different types of nanoscale origami.
Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators	Forcibly withdrawn after officials clamped down on them.
Eigengrau	The color seen by the eye in perfect darkness.
Fart lighting	The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence.
Fiddler's neck	Maybe this is proof that God hates violinists.
Five-second rule	The notion that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds.
Geographical tongue	When a map appears on your tongue.
Gynecomastia	Also known as "man boobs" or "moobs".
Hair-grooming syncope	Who knew that brushing your hair could be deadly?
Human–animal breastfeeding	If you have breast milk to spare, a puppy, piglet or monkey would like to hear from you.
Hypertrichosis	Also known as "human werewolf syndrome".
Hypoalgesic effect of swearing	Got hurt? Swear the pain away!
Jenkem	Huffing the gas from fermented human feces for a hallucinating effect.
Jogger's nipple	That uncomfortable friction some people get while running has a name.
Louse-feeder	In search of a cure for typhus, humans let lice feed on them.
Lucky iron fish	Treat anemia by putting an iron fish in your soup.
Maggot therapy	Those hungry, wriggling little larvae will clean up festering wounds because they are hungry.
Male lactation	Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it.
Maple syrup urine disease	For once, a sweet smell you don't want your infants exuding.
Medical students' disease	A condition frequently reported in medical students who perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of the diseases they are studying.
Mellified man	A legendary medicinal substance from Arabia involving honey.
Michelin tire baby syndrome	Babies that look like the Michelin man.
Moebius syndrome	A disease, most envied by poker players, that makes facial expressions impossible.
Mucophagy	The consumption of mucus.
Nacirema	An obscure New World tribe with some interesting practices.
Navel lint	A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it.
Nasal sebum	Yes, that stuff on the surface of your nose.
Old person smell	Apparently developed to allow humans to avoid partnering with people who are too old for them. Not to be confused with death smell (though they're not incompatible in some places).
Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis	A tooth in the eye (is worth two in the foot?).
Paleofeces	Our ancestors' poop. Worth a close look, apparently.
Peanut butter test	A diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease which measures subjects' ability to smell peanut butter through each nostril.
Photic sneeze reflex	People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis	That's a mouthful! Good thing it has a much shorter name: silicosis.
Powder of sympathy	Healing a wound of war by applying a powder... to the weapon that caused it.
Rapunzel syndrome	Chewing on your hair is one thing, but actually eating it can have some untoward results.
Resting bitch face	Some people may look angry or contemptuous when they're actually perfectly relaxed.
Retained surgical instruments	An unfortunate possible side-effect of surgery.
Schmidt sting pain index	An entomologist is stung by just about everything known to sting and, en route, describes the pain involved in terms of a four-point comparative scale.
Supernumerary nipple	A condition in which one has an additional nipple. Apparently 1 in 18 people have this condition.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy	Yes, you can die from a broken heart.
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body	Just because you're not a rhino, or a tiger, or a pangolin, doesn't mean you're safe.
Trepanation	A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness.
Uncombable hair syndrome	Not just a bad hair day.
White-nose syndrome	Bats with white noses: sounds cute, is horrifying.

Human sexuality and reproduction

Autocunnilingus	Like autofellatio (see below), but much more difficult.
Autofellatio	Acts of oral self-stimulation.
Armin Meiwes	Wanting to be eaten is one thing, but actually having it done to you is quite another.
Bathroom sex	Ever wanted to defecate and have sex at the same time? Well now you can!
Bread dildo	A supposed sex toy originating from Ancient Greece, made of bread.
Cello scrotum	A hoax illness allegedly affecting male cello players.
Coregasm	An orgasm caused by exercising of the core abdominal muscles.
Death during consensual sex	Talk about going out with a bang...
Donkey punch	Allegedly a sex move involving punching one's partner in the back of the head during intercourse.
Female hysteria	A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation.
Footsies	Did you know? It's possible for a couple to flirt by touching each other's legs.
Gerbilling	An urban legend about a sexual practice purportedly conducted. It was made popular by South Park.
Global Orgasm for Peace	Oh yeah, the end of human conflict just turns me on...
Hamster zona-free ovum test	A test – sometimes called a "hamster test" – involving human semen, hamster eggs and a petri dish.
Human penis size	Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends.
Koro	A condition where one (mistakenly) believes that his or her genitals are slowly disappearing.
Lithopedion	The rare condition of an unborn fetus calcifying.
Male pregnancy	For now, it's just a seahorse thing, but...
Napoleon's penis	(Allegedly) cut off after his death and, among other things, displayed at a museum in Manhattan.
National Masturbation Day	Not related to the week, and certainly not related to the month.
Parasitic twin	A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially formed fetus developing within the body of the other.
Persistent genital arousal disorder	Not as funny as it may sound.
Post-coital tristesse	"But after the enjoyment of sensual pleasure is passed, the greatest sadness follows." –Baruch Spinoza
Puppy pregnancy syndrome	A condition found in remote regions of India in which people believe they have conceived a puppy shortly after being bitten by a dog.
Scrotal inflation	For real now, boys: DO NOT try this at home. You can put your life at risk while doing it.
Self-inflicted caesarean section	A harrowing practice, verified to have occurred at least five times.
Sexual headache	Not the one that wives pretend to have to dissuade their husbands; this type happens during the act.
Sleep sex	A form of parasomnia (similar to sleepwalking) that causes people to engage in sexual acts while they are asleep. Not to be confused with somnophilia.
Soggy biscuit	Don't finish last, whatever you do.
Vorarephilia	Not exactly cannibalism, but...
Zombie pornography	Modern reincarnation of necrophilia.

Individual patients and staff

Elisabeth Anderson Sierra	Diagnosed with hyperlactation syndrome, her generous donations of excess breast milk have earned her the title of "Milk Goddess".
Jaxon Buell	A child born with only 20% of a brain. He lived for 5 years despite doctors' expectations that he would only live for 1 year.
Jeanne Calment	A Frenchwoman with the longest verified human lifespan in recorded history. She was 122 at the time of her death.
Jo Cameron	A Scottish woman who feels no physical or psychological pain due to a rare genetic mutation.
Legrand G. Capers	The only person ever to witness a woman being impregnated by a bullet.
Stubbins Ffirth	An American trainee doctor who went to unusual lengths in his quest to prove that yellow fever is not contagious.
Phineas Gage	A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long (0.91 m) tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Genie	A feral child who was neglected by her father and was locked in a room for the first 13 years of her life.
James Harrison	An Australian man whose 1,173 blood donations have saved over 2.5 million babies.
Abby and Brittany Hensel	Conjoined twins with separate heads but joined bodies.
Paul Karason	An American man known for having blue skin.
"Benjaman Kyle"	Found naked and unconscious outside a Burger King dumpster (where he derived his new alias from), he doesn't remember 20 years of his life, or how he ended up in Georgia from Colorado.
Eugene Landy	A psychologist who developed a form of 24-hour therapy and later became business partners with one of his many celebrity patients, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Hans Langseth	A guy who had the longest beard recorded in history.
Robert Liston	A 19th-century Scottish surgeon who, among other things, performed what has been described as "the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality rate".
Barry Marshall	A doctor who, against the consensus of mainstream medicine, drank a vial of bacterial culture to prove that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria rather than stress, spicy foods, and too much acid as was believed at the time. He won the Nobel Prize for it, too.
Alexis St. Martin	A 19th-century French-Canadian fur trader who survived a gunshot wound and was left with a hole in his stomach, which allowed revolutionary experiments on digestion to be conducted.
Lina Medina	A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was five years old, becoming the youngest human mother on record.
Billy Milligan	A man with 24 personalities, popularized by the 1981 book The Minds of Billy Milligan.
Wenceslao Moguel	Accused of participating in the Mexican Revolution, he was sentenced to death, survived his execution, and lived for another 6 decades.
Blanche Monnier	A French woman who was locked in an attic for 25 years because her parents disapproved of her choice of suitor.
Mariam Nabatanzi	A Ugandan woman who had given birth to 44 children by the age of 36.
Hamilton Naki	A Black South African doctor who participated in the first heart transplant surgery and was later censored by the Apartheid regime.
Chandre Oram	A man in India with a 13-inch (33 cm) tail.
Adam Rainer	The only person known to be both a dwarf and a giant.
S.M. (patient)	A woman with the inability to feel fear due to damage to the amygdalae.
Tarrare	A Frenchman with an insatiable appetite, who made a show out of his ability to eat just about anything. Including, allegedly, a toddler.
Mary Toft	An English woman who hoaxed doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
Robert Wadlow	An American man who, at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m), was the tallest verified person in human history.

Nervous system and behaviour

Alice in Wonderland syndrome	Distortions of perception that may include one's surroundings appearing too large or too small, faint noises sounding loud, or time slowing to a trickle.
Anton syndrome	People who are blind but convinced they can see.
Bananadine	Exactly how psychedelic are those dried banana peels?
Bicameral mentality	Neuroscientific hypothesis that the human mind before the Bronze Age was split into two discrete components, a speaking mind and obeying mind.
Capgras delusion	When you're sure a friend or loved one is an impostor.
Cortical homunculus	A distorted representation of the human body based on areas of the brain dedicated to processing motor functions for different body parts.
Cotard delusion	Suffered by people, very much alive, who believe they're dead.
Conversion disorder	Blindness and similar disabilities caused by anxiety.
Cute aggression	The reason why people want to squeeze cute things without harm.
Dancing mania	Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity	For those allergic to Wi-Fi.
Encopresis	Voluntary or involuntary defecation in persons who are toilet trained (older than 4 years of age.)
Exploding head syndrome	Ever woken up after an hour or two of sleep thinking you've just heard a massive explosion?
Expressive aphasia	You know when you have a word on tip of your tongue but you just can't remember it? It's that, but with every word.
False memory	Forming of false memories; sometimes leads to thousands of people having the same false memory.
Fugue state	You black out and when you wake up years have passed, you're in a different city, you have a new name and have lived a different life while you were unconscious. Also known as dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue.
Foreign accent syndrome	A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion	The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Geophagia	Eat dirt, pal.
Homicidal sleepwalking	A real parasomnia that has been successfully used as a defence in court.
Impossible color	Supposed colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning.
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine	Like Tourette syndrome, but more Gallic.
Klüver–Bucy syndrome	One specific kind of brain damage causes hypersexuality and a desire to put random things in your mouth. Named after two doctors who gave psychotropic drugs to lobotomized monkeys.
Mariko Aoki phenomenon	A Japanese expression referring to an urge to defecate that is suddenly felt after entering bookstores.
Paris syndrome	Being clinically disappointed by Paris. Particularly common among Japanese tourists. Not to be confused with Jerusalem syndrome or Stockholm syndrome.
Rosenhan experiment	An experiment involving certifiably sane mental patients.
Somatoparaphrenia	A type of delusion in which a sufferer denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of the body.
Stendhal syndrome	A psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art or natural beauty.
Tanganyika laughter epidemic	What happens when contagious laughter becomes an actual epidemic.
Target fixation	To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Tip of the tongue	What was this article about again... Wait, I think I am just about to remember...
The Truman Show delusion	Those afflicted feel they are being watched all the time by a television audience, like Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Urophagia	The consumption of urine. Not always for survival reasons.
Visual release hallucinations	Millions of perfectly sane people are having freakish hallucinations – and just not admitting it.
Zero stroke	An alleged mental disorder that caused patients to write endless rows of zeroes.

Phobias

Cherophobia	Fear of happiness
Chromophobia	Fear of colors
Coprophobia	Fear of feces or even defecation, and possibly enjoying constipation
Dentophobia	Fear of dentists
Emetophobia	Fear of vomiting
Globophobia	Fear of balloons or balloons popping
Genuphobia	Fear of knees or the act of kneeling
Koumpounophobia	Fear of buttons
Mageiricophobia	Fear of cooking
Numerophobia	Fear of numbers
Osmophobia	Fear of odors and smells
Phallophobia	Fear of the erect penis
Philophobia	Fear of love
Phobophobia	Fear of having a phobia
Pogonophobia	Fear of beards
Submechanophobia	Fear of submerged man-made objects
Technophobia	Fear of computers and internet
Telephobia	Fear of making or answering telephone calls

Animals

Adactylidium	A mite with a very unusual life cycle.
Animals in space	An annotated list of the various animals used in space programs.
Animal attack	Not kidding: death by beavers, bunnies, squirrels, crocodiles, and other creatures you should not have as pets.
Anting (bird activity)	Not recommended for humans.
Apophallation	Are you a slug and can't extract your penis? Amputate and change your gender.
Bee removal	Removal of bees.
Blast fishing	Catch a lot of fish at once by blowing up a lake.
Boiling frog	Despite the metaphor, they won't really sit there and let themselves boil to death.
Candiru	Barbed fish allegedly attracted to, lodged in, and extracted from human penises.
Carcinisation	Crustaceans may evolve how they wish, but eventually, it all comes back to crab shape.
Common Surinam toad	The mother's back is where the eggs are embedded and where they develop.
Conservation-induced extinction	The extinction of highly endangered parasites at the hands of conservationists.
Depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states	A great ecological problem indeed complete with fourteen references in Russian.
Cat–dog relationship	For centuries the two most popular house pets have been fighting like, well, cats and dogs.
Cymothoa exigua	A parasitic crustacean that, when female (they are hermaphroditic), attaches to and then destroys a fish's tongue, hooks itself to the remaining stub and becomes the fish's new tongue.
Epomis	A deceptive beetle larva that entices its own predators by feigning prey-like movements in order to eat its predator.
Eunice aphroditois	"Armed with sharp teeth, it is known to attack with such speeds that its prey is sometimes sliced in half." As if being a three-metre (9 ft 10 in) worm were not impressive enough.
Fat-tailed sheep	BBL... BTL?
Goblin shark	Indeed, a monster from the deepest oceans.
Goldfish swallowing	A fad that started in American colleges in the 1930s.
Grey go-away-bird	An very unsociable species.
Hallucinogenic fish	No, the fish are not trippin'; they will cause hallucinations if ingested. It is not known if hallucinations will occur if one fish consumes another.
Hebrew character	Actually a species of moth.
Hotwheels sisyphus	A ground spider, sadly not known for rolling a toy car up a plastic ramp again and again to watch it go down.
Hurricane Shark	The meteorological equivalent of Bigfoot. (Except it's real. Kind of. Probably. At least once.)
Israel-related animal conspiracy theories	Has an animal looked suspicious? It was probably Israel.
Jenny Haniver	A grotesque-looking sea monster made from the corpse of a ray.
Lioconcha hieroglyphica	A type of clam with a shell covered in hieroglyph-like markings.
List of animals displaying homosexual behavior	Everything from salmon to seagulls to dragonflies.
List of animal sounds	Snail do "Munch, crunch", Squirrel do "squeak".
List of animals awarded human credentials	Mostly due to pranks pulled on diploma mills.
London Underground mosquito	A species of mosquito that lives in underground railways.
Love dart	Hermaphroditic snails play Cupid.
Lyall's wren	Made extinct by feral cats, possibly the offspring of one pregnant female.
Metoecus paradoxus	A beetle with - as prophet of our age Megan Thee Stallion put it - eyelashes "on fleek".
Nightingale excrement as facial	Droppings of a nightingale variety used in facials. Some claim that it helps with acne. Project Medicine states that the references are not MEDRS. (MEDical Reliable Source)
Orbiting Frog Otolith	A NASA frog experiment, sending two bullfrogs into space to test their sense of balance.
Paracerceis sculpta	A species of isopod that has some males that mimic females and others that mimic juveniles, allowing them to mate without the alpha males realising what is going on behind their backs.
Pasilalinic-sympathetic compass	Telepathic communication is not possible in snails no matter how far apart they may be. Nothing else has been ruled out.
Penis fencing	A ~~literal~~ figurative variety of cockfighting between some species of flatworm.
Polar bear jail	For polar bear criminals.
Prostitution among animals	Did you know that prostitution exists among animals?
Recreational drug use in animals	Alcohol in particular, but also substances extracted from other animals.
Rotating locomotion in living systems	Why don't animals have wheels?
Shortarse feelerfish	Bathymicrops brevianalis is a fish so named for its short anal fins – brevianalis meaning "short anus".
Supernumerary body part	Having an extra body part, be it as simple as an eleventh finger or as extreme as a second head!
Tasselled wobbegong	"With several records of apparently unprovoked attacks on people, the tasselled wobbegong has a reputation beyond other wobbegongs for aggressive behavior."
Thagomizer	A feature of Stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip.
Traumatic insemination	A form of mating in invertebrates in which the male stabs the female in the abdomen with his penis, and injects his sperm through the wound.
Trout tickling	Coochy coo!
Uraba lugens	It's called the mad hatterpillar for a reason...
Worm charming	No spade? No worries! There's a better way to get hold of earthworms.

Cats

Bonsai Kitten	The practice of growing small jar-shaped kittens caused controversy years after it was revealed to be a hoax.
Cat burning	A form of entertainment in the Middle Ages, sometimes participated in by royalty.
Cats That Look Like Hitler	Kitlers exist, live with it.
Demon Cat	A cat that supposedly haunts government buildings in Washington, D.C.
Odd-eyed cat	One of the national treasures of Turkey.
Pittsburgh refrigerator cat	A "breed" of cat that lived in refrigerators that people actually believed existed.
Popular cat names	Cat names, ranked by popularity.
Polydactyl cat	Cats with extraordinary numbers of toes.
Ray cat	A proposed genetically engineered breed that glows in presence of nuclear radiation.

Cattle

Cow tipping	This actually takes up to 14 people to make it happen.
Craven Heifer	The largest cow ever shown in England.
Hardware disease	A condition in bovines caused by ingesting stray bits of metal.

Chickens

Can *you* tell the boys and girls apart?

Cannibalism in poultry	See: tastes like chicken.
Chicken eyeglasses	Tiny spectacles for chicks, to stop them from seeing red.
Chicken Dance, Chicken (dance)	There is a huge difference.
Chicken gun	Valuable for the mitigation of damage from bird strikes. The chicken carcass must be thawed first, though.
Chicken hypnotism	Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not?
Chicken or the egg	Which came first?
Chicken sexer	A person whose job is to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings.
Chicken powered nuclear bomb	A British project to lay nuclear mines in West Germany during the Cold War that were planned to be kept warm by live chickens.
Empathy in chickens	Have some empathy when eating crunchy chicken nuggets.
Tastes like chicken	But baked, grilled, or fried?

Squirrels

Arctic ground squirrel	The squirrel that freezes itself solid.
Electrical disruptions caused by squirrels	Two squirrels on a wire...
Squirrel fishing	A sport of skill and patience.
Squirrels on college campuses	Squirrels are noted to be prominent fauna there.

Mammals

This goat has fainted.
It has ceased to stand.

Ambergris	Do you really want to know what your fancy perfume was made from?
Berserk llama syndrome	The result of being too friendly with llamas.
Danish Protest Pig	A pig bred to look like the flag of Denmark, to circumvent prohibition of the flag.
Deer penis	It is said to enhance sexual potency in men and was banned by the Chinese government from the 2008 Olympics.
Diving horse	A short-lived attraction during the 1880s.
The dog ate my homework	Instead of a pathetic excuse for an article, an article about a pathetic excuse.
Domesticated silver fox	Soviet Russia subsidizes the breeding of silver foxes.
Exploding whale	The next time a whale washes on shore in one Oregon county, the authorities will leave the dynamite at home.
Fainting goat	A breed of goat whose muscles freeze for about 10 seconds when it is startled.
Flying primate hypothesis	Hypothesis that megabats are primates like us.
Globster	Blobs of organic matter found washed up on beaches, which are frequently as mysterious as they are disgusting.
Guided rat	Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand".
House hippo	The world's biggest domestic pest. If you can believe that.
Human	An article that reads as if non-humans wrote it.
New Guinea singing dog	Not only that, but it climbs trees too!
Overtoun Bridge	A bridge from which dogs keep leaping to their death.
Panda pornography	Pornographic movies created to achieve sexual arousal for Giant pandas, which have been proven to be unaffected by the popular drug Viagra.
Quokka	An Australian animal which has developed a habit of posing for selfies with humans.
Revival of the woolly mammoth	Plans to clone the woolly mammoth and re-introduce them to Siberia.
Rhinogradentia	A fictitious order of mammal invented by a German zoologist with a sense of humour.
Skunks as pets	For pet owners who like a challenge.
Street dogs in Moscow	Some of them have figured out how to commute using the subway system.
Weasel war dance	The behavior of extremely excited ferrets who are enjoying themselves too much.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?	Life’s most important questions.
Whale fall	The ecological consequences associated with a dead whale sinking to the seafloor.

Individual animals

52-hertz whale	Dubbed the "world's loneliest whale", it vocalizes at a frequency used by no known whale species.
Anchorage White Raven	A bird from Alaska that used to eat tater tots and toast, fight over ice cream, and disassemble street lamps.
Adwaita	Possibly the oldest creature of modern times, this 255 year-old tortoise was the former pet of Robert Clive of the British East India Company.
Ken Allen	Orangutan nicknamed the "Hairy Houdini" for his many escapes.
Andy	A footless goose who wore sneakers as prosthesis and was tragically murdered.
Benson	A fish. A big fish. Called Benson.
Bubbles	Michael Jackson's chimpanzee, who used human toilet facilities, moonwalked, and (allegedly) attempted suicide.
Casper	A cat famed for traveling on a bus around Plymouth, England.
Clever Hans	A horse that allegedly knew arithmetic and could read in German.
Cocaine Bear	A bear found dead in the Tennessee wilderness, having gone through a drug smuggler's dropped bag of cocaine. Inspired a 2023 film (though in that one, the bear didn't just drop dead, as there'd be no plot that way).
Conan the Barbarian	Argentinian president's dog that was cloned after its death and who advised the guy on politics. The man also said that he and the dog "first met in a previous life more than 2,000 years ago as a gladiator and a lion in the Roman Colosseum"...
Domino Day 2005 sparrow	Unlucky sparrow who dropped some 23,000 dominos and got killed for that.
Dusty the Klepto Kitty	Redefining the term "cat burglar".
Enumclaw horse sex case	An unfortunate case of a horse riding a man, as opposed to a man riding a horse.
Fungie	Ireland's favourite dolphin.
Gef	A mongoose that talked (allegedly).
George	A lobster weighing 20 pounds (9.1 kg), estimated to be 140 years old.
Grape-kun	A Humboldt penguin who gained worldwide fame after apparently falling in love with a cutout of an anime character.
Grumpy Cat	Unfortunately, this cat couldn't turn that frown upside down.
Hachikō	A well-known story of a Japanese dog that will make you cry by the end of it.
Harambe	A gorilla killed to prevent it killing a child it was saving. Became a meme.
Henry the Hexapus	An octopus missing two arms due to an unfortunate birth defect.
Hoover the talking seal	Hoover. A seal. Which talked.
Jack	A Baboon who took over for his disabled owner as an employee of the Cape government railway.
Jackie	A dalmatian dog who was taught by his owner to do the Nazi salute, long before Count Dankula did.
Jeremy	A left-coiled snail who became famous after a campaign to find another left-coiled snail so he could mate.
Joe the Pigeon	Was put on death row for being American, but later acquitted and released. Named after the then President-elect.
Jonathan	Oldest known living terrestrial animal in the world (if it weren't Adwaita). He made the reverse of the 5p of Saint Helena. What have you done?
Khanzir	Possibly the world's loneliest pig. Even more lonely during the swine flu outbreak.
Lily Flagg	A Jersey cow that produced record amounts of butter and got a sizable neighborhood named for her.
Lion of Gripsholm Castle	What happens when you tell a taxidermist who doesn't know what a lion is to stuff and mount a lion.
Lonesome George	The last known individual of the species Pinta Island tortoise. He was known as the rarest creature in the world.
Long Boi	A "exceptionally tall" duck living on the University of York campus.
Mayor Max II	The world's cutest mayor-for-life creature: a Golden Retriever.
Mike the Headless Chicken	A rooster that lived for 18 months with his head cut off.
Ming	A ~500-year-old clam that was killed when scientists opened its shell to see how old it was.
Moo Deng	The internet's favorite baby hippo, who reached such a level of popularity that her zoo had to limit the amount of time visitors could see her enclosure.
Nim Chimpsky	A chimpanzee, subject of long-running studies into animal language acquisition, named punningly for linguist Noam Chomsky.
Major General Sir Nils Olav, Baron of the Bouvet Islands	A high-ranking military officer of Norway who happens to live in the penguin exhibit at Edinburgh Zoo.
Oscar the Cat	A hospice cat profiled in the New England Journal of Medicine for his purported ability to predict when terminally ill patients would die.
Owen and Mzee	Hippo and tortoise that befriended each other after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Paul	A now-deceased psychic octopus who could predict the winner of football games, notably during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Pep	A dog jokingly sentenced to a life sentence in prison to help improve prisoners' morale- though many publications took the sentence literally.
Potoooooooo	Actually, it's pronounced "potatoes".
Penelope (platypus)	A platypus who faked a pregnancy and escaped from the Bronx Zoo.
Raccoon of Kherson	A zoo animal becomes a prisoner of war after the liberation of Kherson.
Ravens of the Tower of London	Ravens used as soldiers in the Tower of London.
River Thames whale	In 2006, a Northern Bottlenose swam into London and on to the front pages of the British newspapers.
Scarlett's Magic	Given the Key to the City of Corona, California for being the world's tallest and longest cat.
Sergeant Reckless	A horse that held an official rank in the US military, fought in the Korean War and participated in an amphibious landing.
Stubbs	A cat who was the mayor of an Alaskan town for nearly 20 years.
Tamworth Two	Two pigs who, in 1998, escaped an abattoir in England and attracted media attraction. Thanks to a newspaper, they were never made into bacon, ham or sausages.
Tillamook Cheddar	The world's most successful and widely shown animal artist.
Timothy	A tortoise that was present during the bombardment of Sevastopol during the Crimean War in 1854 and survived until 2004.
Tombili	A cat famously pictured looking chill on the streets of Istanbul, who is now immortalised by a statue on the site.
Turra Coo	An insurance protest gone too far.
Ubre Blanca	Fidel Castro's favourite cow that produced 113 liters in one day, and was used as a symbol of superior agriculture under communism. When she died, a marble statue was erected in her memory.
Unsinkable Sam	A cat that has survived the sinking of three ships.
Vacanti mouse	A mouse with a human ear on its back.
Whitney Chewston	A dog that gained fame due to having the manner of a homophobic white woman.
William Windsor	A cashmere goat who served as a lance corporal in the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, an infantry battalion of the British Army.
Wojtek	A soldier of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps who also happened to be a Syrian Brown Bear. He enjoyed beer and cigarettes.

Individual elephants

Abul-Abbas	An Asian elephant given to Carolingian emperor Charlemagne by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.
Hanno	An Indian elephant that was a gift from the Portuguese king Manuel I to the pope in the 16th century.
Jumbo	An elephant with gigantism and legendary circus attraction, who gave his name to large things everywhere.
Lin Wang	A Taiwanese elephant made famous for his participation in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Mary	Makes the phrase "hung like an elephant" take on a whole new meaning.
Osama bin Laden	An elusive elephant who terrorized the jungle of Assam. He was eventually shot, but there are those who question the official story of his death. Much like his famous namesake.
Topsy	An elephant that was electrocuted, as the event was filmed by the Edison Manufacturing Company.

Names in biology

Aha ha	Alan Partridge's favorite wasp?
Anophthalmus hitleri	Rare blind beetle named after Adolf Hitler, poached by collectors of Hitler memorabilia.
Aptostichus barackobamai	A trapdoor spider named after former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Aptostichus stephencolberti	Another trapdoor spider, this time named after Stephen Colbert. Naturally, because he asked for it.
Bill Gates' flower fly	A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates.
Colon	Someone pulled this beetle name out of their butt. Including the glorious species Colon rectum.
Gamergate (ant)	"Actually, it's about ethics in ant breeding..."
GoldenPalace.com Monkey	A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com online casino.
Harryplax	A genus of crab named in part after the titular character of the Harry Potter franchise. The sole species of this genus is named after the coldly hostile, yet emotion-concealing character from the same franchise.
Kimjongilia	A flower named after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il by a Japanese botanist.
Kinda baboon	Is it a baboon? Well, kinda.
Mini	A genus of tiny Madagascar frogs containing 3 species: Mini ature, Mini mum, and Mini scule.
Mothers against decapentaplegic	Actually, it's a protein.
Mountain Chicken	Is it a frog or a chicken?
Neopalpa donaldtrumpi	A moth remarkable for its orange head and small genitalia.
Pachygnatha zappa	A spider whose abdominal markings resemble a very famous mustache
Pikachurin	An extracellular matrix-like retinal protein named after Pikachu.
Setaceous Hebrew character	A European moth with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Covered smut False loose smut Loose smut	You may snicker now, but if you had any of these, I guarantee you wouldn't be laughing much.
Sonic hedgehog	A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Spiralix heisenbergi	A freshwater snail named after Walter White's alter-ego, Heisenberg. It is thought to be in danger, but it is the danger.
Spongiforma squarepantsii	A type of mushroom named after SpongeBob SquarePants.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni	A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame.
Synalpheus pinkfloydi	A species of snapping shrimp named after the famous English rock band.
Thaumatodryinus tuukkaraski	A wasp named after NHL goaltender Tuukka Rask as both are acrobatic, and have a killer glove hand.
Zombie taxon	Paleontology of the undead.
Zoosphaerium darthvaderi	Named after Darth Vader, this pill millipede has an anal shield with a "pronounced bell shape"!
Zyzyxia lundellii and Zyzzyzus warreni	The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively.

See also

Plants

Bialbero di Casorzo	A cherry tree that grows upon a mulberry tree in Italy.
Chandelier Tree	A 300-foot-tall (91 m) redwood with a giant hole cut through the middle for cars to drive through.
Echinopsis lageniformis	A cactus the Germans call Frauenglück, or "Women's Joy", because, well...just look at it.
Eisenhower Tree	A tree on a golf course that became famous after the President of the United States tried and failed to have it taken down.
Golfballia ambusta	Can a burnt golf ball technically be considered a fungus?
Olympic oaks	Gifts from the Führer. Some are still alive.
Moon tree	Trees planted from seeds that were taken into space by Apollo 14.
Nepenthes lowii	A plant that lures animals to release their droppings into a pitcher.
Mimosa pudica	A plant that rapidly closes or folds its leaves after they are touched.
Old Man of the Lake	A 30-foot (9 m) tree stump that has been floating around Oregon's Crater Lake since at least 1896.
Pando	An 80,000 year old quaking aspen colony that is believed to be one of the oldest and heaviest organisms on the planet.
Plant arithmetic	Plants can do math!
Plant rights	If other living beings like humans and animals can have rights, then why not plants?
Pomato	It's both potato and tomato!
Radiotrophic fungus	A type of fungus that thrives in radioactive environments. Some species have even been discovered in Chernobyl!
Tendril perversion	A geometric phenomenon sometimes observed in helical structures like plant tendrils and telephone handset cords.
Tree of Knowledge (Australia)	Killed by ignorance.
Tree of Ténéré	A solitary acacia that was once the most isolated tree on Earth before being run over by a drunken Libyan truck driver.
Tree That Owns Itself	Its owner loved it so much that he granted it ownership of itself.

See also

List of individual trees

Technology, inventions and products

Long-lost remnant of a cricket game? Made by ancient intelligent life? A mysterious natural phenomenon?

Cower, you leeches, in the presence of the Tempest Prognosticator!

300-page iPhone bill	AT&T Mobility's billing policy for the first iPhone gave a real sense of how much money was being wasted... on paper and printer ink.
Abraham Lincoln's patent	For lifting boats over shoals. Lincoln is the only US president who held a patent.
Antikythera mechanism	An analog computer built in Ancient Greece.
Baby cage	The pre-War way to get your baby some fresh air if you live in a high-rise apartment. Used by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt.
Bild Lilli doll	A German doll that was the main inspiration for Barbie and is now considered its "grandmother".
Billy Possum	When Taft tried to get his own Teddy Bear.
Blåhaj	Stuffed shark, IKEA bestseller, transgender icon.
*Breakout*	How this simple 1976 Atari video game, started by Steve Jobs and finished by Steve Wozniak, helped spur the creation of the Apple II.
Brown note	The laxative infrasonic frequency that doesn't exist.
*Canard Digérateur*	Or "Digesting Duck", an automaton built to simulate a duck eating, digesting, and excreting.
Centennial Light	A light bulb that has been burning nonstop for 119 years.
Chindōgu	The practice of inventing solutions to everyday problems that just make the problem worse.
Clock of the Long Now	A clock that, once completed, should be able to keep time for 10,000 years.
Clocky	An alarm clock that hides from its owner.
Concealing objects in a book	Hopefully you weren't planning to read it before you hollowed it out.
Digital sundial	Unlike an analog sundial, a clock that indicates the current time with numerals formed by the sunlight striking it.
Dreamachine	A device made with a light bulb and a record turntable that reportedly induces lucid dreaming. (And you thought the makers of Die Another Day made it up. There's still no news about invisible Aston Martin V12 Vanquishes.)
Electronic voice phenomenon	Alleged spiritual voices heard in white noise and radio interference.
Friendly Floatees spill	Rubber ducks and their friends who went on a long, long journey.
Gun-powered mousetrap	Patented in 1882. According to its inventor, it can also be used as a booby trap to kill attempted home invaders.
Hitler teapot	Some people thought that this JCPenney teapot resembled the famous dictator.
Marvin Heemeyer	Why it's always a bad idea to put the guy next door out of business if he has a ten-ton armor-plated bulldozer in his garage.
History of perpetual motion machines	The concept has eluded and baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years – and will continue to elude anyone who tries to build one.
Hitachi Magic Wand	Its manufacturers continue to claim that it's just a massager for health purposes and not, you know, the world's best-known sex toy.
I-Doser	Like taking drugs through your ears.
Jibba Jabber	The hot new stress toy where you simulate shaking a baby to death.
Klerksdorp sphere	Spheres with three parallel grooves dated to be three billion years old... Evidence of ancient intelligent life? An unusual natural phenomenon? Who knows...
Zbigniew Libera	Creator of the Lego Concentration Camp.
List of inventors killed by their own invention	Perilous parachutes, lethal lighthouses and murderous motorcycles!
Love chair	Made to allow a fat king to have sex with two women at the same time.
Mengenlehreuhr	You'll have to read between the lights to see the time.
Moo box	Cow in a can.
Mosquito laser	A bug zapper with a difference.
Museum of Failure	A collection of sorts focusing on... well, failed things. Notably includes the Nokia N-Gage, Bic's woman-only pens, and Google Glass.
My Friend Cayla	THAT DOLL'S A BLOODEH- SENTRY- TF2 Demoman Schadenfreude
One red paperclip	A man's small piece of metal turns out to be worth more than expected.
Parking chair	Using household objects to reserve parking spaces.
Pigeon photography	Pigeons were used by the Germans for aerial surveillance in World War I, and apparently also in World War II. Not to forget the CIA's own pigeon camera.
Predictions of the end of Wikipedia	All good things must come to an end...... but not for now.
Project Cybersyn	Chilean robo-socialism control chamber invented by a Brit with a gigantic beard.
Pythagorean cup	When the cup is filled beyond a certain point, it will empty itself.
Quartz crisis	Not a comic book story arc, but the upheaval in watchmaking caused by the introduction of quartz watches.
Radio hat	A strange-looking (and strange-sounding) piece of headgear.
Royal Mail rubber band	One billion are used every year and often seen littering the streets of UK cities.
Russian floating nuclear power station	Self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants.
Sony timer	Rumours that Sony uses a particularly aggressive form of planned obsolescence continue to this day.
Splayd	33.3% spoon, 33.3% knife, 33.3% fork.
Tempest Prognosticator	Meteorology by frightened annelid.
Turboencabulator	A device whose sole function is to expose technological ignorance.
Uncanny valley	How to measure your emotional response to androids.
Useless machine	In most cases, toys for adults.
Vin Mariani	A drink made from cocaine and consumed by Thomas Edison, Pope Leo XIII, Ulysses S. Grant and French prime minister Jules Méline.
Violence and Lego	Fortunately, not actual violence, but rather an observed increase of weapon bricks within the toy brand.
Wrap rage	Ever been driven mad by packaging that just won't open?
Xianxingzhe	A Chinese robot, according to the Japanese, that will save its country from corporate capitalism with its crotch cannon.

Hygiene and sanitation

Toilets in Japan have some special features.

Committee to End Pay Toilets in America	A 1970s organization whose campaign was to end pay toilets in the U.S.; its newsletter was humorously titled the Free Toilet Paper.
"Darkie" toothpaste	Racist toothpaste from Taiwan.
Fatberg	A congealed lump of fat and non-biodegradable buildup in sewer systems. A 250-metre-long, 140 tonne specimen was discovered under London in September 2017.
Female urination device	Used by women when needing or wanting to pee standing up.
Groom of the Stool	The most intimate Royal office.
Hotel toilet-paper folding	Ever wondered why it was so?
Interactive Urinal Communicator	A talking urinal made for advertising purposes.
iLoo	Microsoft's attempt to bring you the interwebzzz inside the portable toilet.
Jack Black	Not the actor, but the 19th century rat catcher who bred unusually colored rats and sold them as pets.
Japanese toilets	The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights.
Lloyds Bank turd	Possibly the largest example of fossilised human feces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England.
Shit flow diagram	This is the technical term.
Stainless steel soap	Metallic soap that removes odours from the hands, allegedly.
Toilet-related injury	Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends.
Toilet papering	Art or vandalism?
Toilet paper orientation	On the pros and cons of letting toilet paper hang over or under the roll.
Whizzinator	A fake penis usually used to beat drug tests, complete with dried urine, a heater, and a syringe. Comes in white, tan, Latino, brown, and black.

Clothing and accessories

Aglet	That little plastic or metal thing at the end of your shoelace has a name.
The dress	The biggest question of 2015: Is it white and gold or black and blue?
Fatsuit	Yes, this makes you look fat.
Gorilla suit	What to wear when you don't want to look human.
Koteka	An unusual traditional garment of western New Guinea, also known as the "penis gourd".
Meat dress of Lady Gaga	A dress made of flank steak. Currently preserved as jerky in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Muffin top	A marketing mishap, many well-meaning young women, and vanity came together to form this demographic.
Shoe tossing	The practice of throwing footwear, whether for humorous or political purposes.
Sweater curse	Think your loved one will be pleased if you knit them a sweater? Think again.
Three Wolf Moon	A T-shirt with wolves howling at the moon that gained popularity after one person wrote a parodic review for it on Amazon.com.
Tin foil hat	Headgear which allegedly prevents a person from having their minds read or controlled, often worn by conspiracy theorists because they're worried about the so-called "5G death shockwaves".

Transport

Don't reach for that sick bag 'til you're back on the floor.

2001 Japan Airlines mid-air incident	Two Japan Airlines aircraft were roughly 135 m (443 ft) away from causing the deadliest aviation accident in history.
2003 Angola 727 disappearance	A Boeing 727 was stolen, with at least two people aboard, and never found.
2010 Filair Let L-410 crash	As Hollywood taught us, letting reptiles loose on a plane is never a good idea.
2018 Horizon Air Q400 incident	A ground service agent with no flight experience whatsoever managed to do insanely difficult aerial maneuvers in a stolen plane that was thought to be impossible to do those maneuvers in.
Aeroflot Flight 593	A plane that crashed because the pilot let his kids fly it.
Aeroflot Flight 6502	A plane that crashed after the pilot made a bet with the first officer that he could land it blind. Unfortunately for 70 people on board, he couldn't.
Aloha Airlines Flight 243	Landed safely and with only one casualty, despite the plane's ceiling flying off mid-flight.
Ampelmännchen	The East German "traffic-light little-man".
Amtrak paint schemes	Various colors of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation.
Animals taking public transportation	Nonhuman commuters.
AVE Mizar	This nightmare lovechild of a Cessna Skymaster and a Ford Pinto eventually killed its inventor.
Bayside Canadian Railway	A 220 foot (70 meter) long railway created solely to exploit a loophole in the Jones Act. U.S. Customs and Border Protection found out and promptly issued a $350 million fine.
Billups Neon Crossing Signal	A local inventor's extreme solution to railway crossing safety.
Boaty McBoatface	What happens when you allow the British public to name a ship in an online poll?
Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway	What do you do when there's water in the way of your train? Just build the rails underwater and make the train a moving pier on 23 foot high legs, complete with lifeboats and a requirement a ship captain be aboard at all times.
British Rail flying saucer	Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the 10:13 to Venus.
China National Highway 110 traffic jam	The world's longest-lasting traffic jam, in which some drivers were stuck for up to 5 days, moving only 1km (0.6 miles) per day.
Crash at Crush	A high-speed head-on collision between two locomotives, staged as a publicity stunt and attended by an estimated 40,000 people.
Daallo Airlines Flight 159	A terrorist detonated a bomb on a plane and ended up becoming the sole casualty of the incident.
Cycloped	The entrant into the Rainhill Trial that placed Horse Power against Steam Power.
Dagen H	September 3, 1967: The day that Sweden changed its traffic directionality.
Deli Mike	An Airbus A340 that does what she wants.
Dymaxion car	A 1933 concept car with 3 wheels. It was 20 feet (6.1 m) long, carried up to 11 passengers, could go at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour (190 km/h), and had a steering wheel that turned the car in the opposite direction. One of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion concepts.
Experiment	A boat with eight horse-powers. Literally.
Fastest Shed	Holder of the world land speed record for sheds.
Ferry Lina	The world's shortest regular ferry located in Sweden that takes 25-30 seconds (depending on how strong you are).
Gadgetbahn	Fun fun fun. And useless.
Ganz MFAV	An odd-looking train that is designed specifically to be used on the second-oldest underground metro line in the world.
Get Out and Push Railroad	Just what it sounds like.
Gimli Glider	A confusion over units leads to a Boeing 767 plane running out of fuel mid-flight and becoming a glider.
Horsey Horseless	How to stop cars scaring horses? Put a wooden horse's head on the front.
Human mail	Why buy an expensive ticket when you can go by mail?
Iron Dobbin	A mechanical horse made in 1933 for the Italian Fascist Youth Movement, later copied by the Germans.
Jesus nut	Not your local Bible-thumping preacher but the bolt on the top of a helicopter that connects it to the rotor blades.
Loose wheel nut indicator	Yes, those little red tags you see on truck wheels really do have a purpose.
Nut rage incident	Macadamia nuts: delicious, instigator of air rage. Helped coin a neologism to describe hierarchical social systems in South Korea.
M-497 Black Beetle	The New York Central Railroad decided to see what would happen when they strapped two jet engines on a railcar; this was the result. It currently holds the record for fastest train in the Americas at 183.68 mph (295.6 km/h).
Mehran Karimi Nasseri	An Iranian refugee who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 1988 until 2006 and again from September 2022 until his death in November that year.
Men's parking space	An antonym to women's parking spaces. The only known instances are two spaces in a garage in Germany.
Mile high club	Soaring members.
Miss Belvedere	A car buried in a time capsule in 1957 and unearthed in 2007, only to discover that it had suffered 50 years of water damage underground and wouldn't start.
MTT Turbine Superbike	The most powerful street-legal motorcycle is run by a turboshaft engine designed for aircraft and can hit 250 miles per hour (400 km/h).
No Pants Subway Ride	A celebration of going underground with only underwear down there.
Northwest Airlines Flight 253	Bombing a plane with an exploding underwear is never a good idea.
Parliamentary train	Have a useless railway station but can't afford to close it? Just run one train every few weeks there!
Passenger train toilets	Why passengers must be discouraged from flushing or using toilets while the train is at a station.
Paternoster lift	Strange European elevators without doors that travel in a loop. Considered by many to be very dangerous.
Peel P50	The world's smallest production car.
Pimpmobile	Drive like a blaxploitation movie protagonist.
Plastic bicycle	It seems that making bikes out of plastic is not a recipe for success.
Prawo Jazdy	Notorious traffic offender named "Driving Licence".
PZL M-15 Belphegor	A Soviet attempt at a turbofan-powered crop duster. It is the slowest jet aircraft to enter production as well as the only jet biplane or jet crop duster to exist.
Reliant Regal	A three-wheeled car formerly manufactured in England that could be driven with a motorcycle license.
Rocket mail	The delivery of mail by rocket or missile, attempted by various organisations in many different countries, with varying levels of success.
Rolligon tires	Probably the only way you can survive getting run over.
RP FLIP	A manned ship that was designed to be capsized at a 90° angle for weeks on end.
Schienenzeppelin	An unholy combination of a Zeppelin and a locomotive.
School bus yellow	A color specially formulated for use on school buses in the United States.
Screw-propelled vehicle	Get there by screwing.
Shipping container architecture	The concept and art of using intermodal containers to build stuff.
Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George"	An association formed to oppose the dehumanizing custom of addressing railway sleeping car porters as "George" regardless of their actual name.
South Pointing Chariot	An ancient Chinese mechanical compass which took a millennium to reproduce.
Tall bike	A bike which consists of two conventional bicycle frames connected one atop the other.
Train surfing	As respectable and practical as drying one's hair in most parts of the world.
Unused highway	Lost highways, unloved and unused.
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571	How do you survive on a freezing cold glacier with the impending threat of starvation? Answer: eat your friends.
USGlobal Airways	An active airline founded in 1989 that has never operated a single commercial flight.
ValuJet Airlines	Quite possibly the most unsafe airline in history. Think of it as being the air transport equivalent of Action Park.
Vomit Comet	Lack of gravity is not good for the stomach.
Vortech Meg-2XH Strap-On	A discontinued strap-on helicopter designed for amateur construction. Somehow no lawsuits are mentioned in the article.
Wallsend Metro station	All railroads lead to Rome. With "no smoking" signs, although tobacco was unknown to ancient Romans...
Westray to Papa Westray flight	The world's shortest passenger flight, lasting as little as 53 seconds. Just don't expect an in-flight meal.
The wrong type of snow	Possibly the most feeble excuse for why British trains are so awful.

Computing

.bv	A top-level domain that isn't being sold, made for an Antarctic island where no one lives.
.io	How is a top-level domain for a group of islands with a population of about 3000 military personnel and contractors where leisure tourism is banned so popular?
.kp	North Korea's top-level domain. Interestingly, some websites under this ccTLD can be accessed outside of the DPRK.
.nu	Niue's top-level domain, which is regulated by Sweden and almost exclusively used by European countries.
.su	How a piece of the Soviet Union's internet is not only still online but also still in use to this day.
.tv	Sales of websites under this top-level domain name make up 10% of Tuvalu's GDP.
999 phone charging myth	Some people in the UK seriously believe that calling their emergency phone number charges your phone.
Android XR	It took literally 18 months and a week for Google to establish competition against Apple's $3499 magnum opus.
Any key	Press any key to continue.
Blinkenlights	DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! transl. THIS COMPUTER IS NOT FOR FINGER POKING AND MEDDLING!
Bogosort	The world's worst sorting algorithm works like this: Randomise the list. Is it in order? If not, try again. Or maybe it is the best…
The Book of Mozilla	A well-known computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of browsers.
Brainfuck	An intentionally difficult to use programming language containing only eight commands.
Brian's Brain	He's so smart, he has his own cellular automaton.
Bush hid the facts	Revelations of a vast right-wing conspiracy, or just a glitch?
Chudnovsky brothers	A pair of mathematicians who built a supercomputer out of spare parts.
Creeper and Reaper	The world's very first computer virus and computer antivirus, respectively.
Conway's Game of Life	A simple game with only four rules that people have made beautifully complex machines with. It even has the ability to self-replicate! See also Brian's Brain above.
Electric unicycle	The ongoing academic effort to teach robots to ride unicycles.
Elvis operator	An operator in programming languages with an unusual name.
Emojli	A now-defunct emoji-only social network. Started as a parody of Yo (see below).
Enshittification	Richard Stallman warned you.
Esoteric programming language	Refers to programming languages designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as jokes, and not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming.
Evil bit	Indicates if a packet has been sent with malicious intent, so that it can be ignored.
Guru Meditation error	If you thought the blue screen of death was bad, this computer error would hamper your quest to reach Nirvana.
Heisenbug	A programming bug that disappears when you study it.
Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol	Protocol for controlling and monitoring coffee pots. Attempting to use a teapot while brewing coffee will yield you the "HTTP 418: I'm a teapot" error message.
I Am Rich	You must be if you could afford this US$999.99 iPhone application that only displayed a red gem and a (misspelled) mantra.
IDN homograph attack	Тһіѕ lіnk іѕ tоtаllу ѕаfе! Тruѕt mе!
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage	Internet Explorer users have lower than average IQ, according to this (nonexistent) study.
International Obfuscated C Code Contest	A competition to create code that no human can read.
IP over Avian Carriers	An Internet protocol for sending data packets using homing pigeons.
iSmell	A computer peripheral designed to emit smells for websites and emails, later named one of the "Worst Tech Products" by PC Magazine.
Lenna	How an image of a nude Playboy model became the industry-standard digital image compression test subject.
Loab	According to AI, the exact opposite of many prompts is the same picture of an old woman.
lp0 on fire	Want to panic a Unix user? Display an error that their printer is on fire.
Macquarium	Vintage Macintosh computers-turned-fishtanks.
Magic smoke	When a chip fails, it's because the smoke has gotten out.
The Million Dollar Homepage	A web page sold for advertising space at 1 dollar per pixel.
MONIAC	A water-based analogue computer used to model the United Kingdom economy, bringing a new meaning to the term liquidity.
Mystery meat navigation	The process of not telling you what you're about to click on.
Not a typewriter	Well, what is it, then?
On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science	A 1990 academic paper which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness.
Pentium F00F bug	An Intel Pentium bug with an unusual name.
Reality distortion field	Surely an obscure quantum-physics phenomenon? Nope!
Red Star OS	North Korea's official Linux distribution. In line with Kim Jong-un apparently being an Apple fanboy, Red Star OS's latest UI design mimics macOS.
Rubber duck debugging	Code debugging by explaining your code to a rubber duck. Quack!
RTFM	Four letters that solve most problems.
Rubber-hose cryptanalysis	Cryptography by other means.
Scunthorpe problem	Spam filtering based on text strings can cause problems. Just ask the residents of S****horpe.
Send Me To Heaven	A mobile game won by throwing your phone as close to heaven as you can without it getting there.
Tay (chatbot)	An artificial intelligence chatbot designed by Microsoft to learn the speech patterns of the Twitter users who interacted with it, Tay lasted 16 hours before becoming too racist to remain online.
TempleOS	A biblical-themed operating system designed by a single schizophrenic programmer over the course of 10 years after receiving instructions from God. Some assembly required.
Trojan Room coffee pot	The fascinating target of the world's first webcam: a coffee machine at the computer science department of Cambridge University.
Utah teapot	A 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community.
Yo	A messaging service whose only function was to send "Yo" to people.

Popular culture, entertainment and the arts

C'est Le Pétomane – who "performed" for royalty.

Action Park	"There's nothing in the world like"... hiring untrained teenagers, plying guests with alcohol, and letting the accidents stack right up. Most infamously poor ride idea: a water slide with a vertical loop, so dangerous it was barely ever open.
"The Aristocrats"	A joke considered to be both "the world's funniest" and "the world's worst". Also a 2005 documentary of the same name.
Balloonfest '86	One of Cleveland's most infamous celebrations.
Baseball metaphors for sex	Two of America's favorite pastimes.
Beezin'	A fad in which people apply Burt's Bees lip balm to their eyelids.
Bigipedia	A unique experiment in "broadwebcasting", Bigipedia is the website on your radio. In association with Chianto—"Officially recognised by the EU as a wine-type product or by-product".
"Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" controversy	T-shirt slogan aimed towards young women, rocks aimed towards young men.
George P. Burdell	A fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927, and, except for his "service" in World War II, has been continuously enrolled at the school ever since.
Buzzword bingo	A synergistic, forward-thinking game where you can leverage your strategy by avoiding... Bingo!
Caltech-MIT prank rivalry	They've been sabotaging each other since 2005.
Conan the Librarian	A perennial parody of Conan the Barbarian that has appeared in film, television, comics, and fan fiction.
Cop slide	A slide in the Boston City Hall Plaza playground that became famous after a viral video of a police officer emerging from the slide going upside-down at an abnormally high rate of speed.
Cornell University pumpkin prank	A Halloween prank in which a pumpkin was placed on the lightning rod of a university clocktower in 1997, lasting over five months before it was accidentally knocked down during a reherasal for its retrieval. The culprit is still unknown.
Croydon facelift	A hairstyle peculiar to parts of England.
Cultural depictions of Napoleon	Fictional characters believing they are Napoleon are often used to suggest mental ill health.
Cultural history of the buttocks	A cheeky article.
Chicago rat hole	A decades-old rat-shaped hole on a sidewalk in Chicago that garnered international fame in early 2024. Pilgrims made offerings of coins, flowers, toys, food and much more.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude	A pair of 20th century artists that became famous for their colossal side ecological works, such as 1972's Valley Curtain and 2012's The Floating Piers.
*Detroit Bridgerton* Themed Ball**	Ah yes, Bridgerton, the critically acclaimed Netflix series that includes pole dancers, Soulja Boy, and fake stuffed dogs.
Dick joke	Jokes about dicks.
Evil clown	A recent development in American popular culture in which the playful trope of the clown is rendered as disturbing through the use of dark humor and horror elements.
F.A.T.A.L.	The worst-reviewed tabletop role-playing game of all time, where you roll for your character's anal circumference and can listen to a theme song that "sounds like the Cookie Monster chasing a drum kit being pushed down a flight of stairs".
Flash mob	Wherein a group of people quickly meet up, engage in a random action such as a pillow fight, then disappear just as quickly.
Frozen Peas	Orson Welles: brilliant director, notorious pitchman.
Fuck for Forest	Do your bit to save the rainforest—have an orgy!
Ashrita Furman	Holds the Guinness World Record for holding the most Guinness World Records.
Garden hermit	In case you are in need of some backyard friends.
Ghost riding	A trend popularized by hyphy culture.
Gongoozler	A person who likes to watch British canals.
Great Stork Derby	What could possibly be in the will of a notorious practical joker?
Gurn	A Western term for creating odd appearances of the face.
Hacks at MIT	Large-scale pranks and practical jokes, mostly involving Harvard.
He lücht	Like a German Jungle Cruise, Hamburg port tour guides tell such tall tales that "He's lying" has become a name for them.
Human rainbow	A huge gathering of colours.
Hundeprutterutchebane	A rollercoaster themed around dog farts.
Issei Sagawa	Writer, commentator, minor celebrity, murderer, and cannibal.
K Foundation Burn a Million Quid	Why did the K Foundation burn a million pounds in cash?
Kayfabe	In professional wrestling, the portrayal of events within the industry as real.
Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly	Claimed to have survived five shipwrecks, three car crashes and two plane crashes, and still found time to create a craze for sitting on a flagpole for hours at a time.
Killer toy	When children's toys attack!
Kuchisake-onna	A Japanese urban legend (probably). Also known as "the slit-mouthed woman", Kuchisake-onna is asking you if you think she's pretty. No matter what you answer, you're doomed. Except if you say "pomade" three times.
Land diving	The original bungee jumpers are from Vanuatu.
Lawnchair Larry flight	Successfully piloted a lawn chair to 16,000 feet (4,900 m) over Los Angeles.
Le Pétomane	A French entertainer famous in Victorian times for being able to break wind at will. Practitioners of this... art are called flatulists.
Lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend	An old classic for those who like a laugh at the expense of the US Navy.
List of defunct amusement parks	I thought Marine World was open! Darn it...
List of games with concealed rules	Games with clear, obvious rules can be so boring.
List of incidents at Walt Disney World	Did you think that Mickey's home would only be a place of sunshine and fun times? Think again.
List of stories set in a future now in the past	Some aged well, some not really.
Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend	Turns out, they have a bit of similarities with each other (not really).
Love lock	Padlock your love to a fence, and throw away the key. That is if it doesn't get removed first.
MacGuffin	An object whose value lies in its ability to kick-start a plot.
Masturbate-a-thon	It's okay – it's for charity!
Metafiction	Fiction about fiction.
Miss Bumbum	An annual beauty pageant to find Brazil's best buttocks.
Mooning the Cog	Bad weather isn't the only reason to avoid the summit of Mount Washington.
Nazi chic	The approving use of Nazi-era style, imagery, and paraphernalia in clothing and popular culture.
No soap radio	A prank joke intended to fool one of its listeners into believing that it is a joke.
Robert Opel	The life and eventual murder of the streaker of the 46th Academy Awards.
Pass by catastrophe	Has your college just burnt down? Congrats, you now have a bachelor's degree! Sadly, that isn't really the case in reality.
Ping pong show	You've heard of baseball metaphors for sex, now get ready for...
Pen spinning	An activity in which assorted tricks are used to manipulate a pen in aesthetically pleasing ways.
Purple Aki	Do not let this man touch your muscles.
Radio Yerevan	The "radio station" with the widest reach in the Soviet Union, despite having no transmitters.
Aron Ralston	One tough guy who, to escape from death, cut off his own arm with a dull knife after a boulder fell on it. Inspired the movie 127 Hours.
Real-life superhero	All you need is a cape and a dream.
Sardarji joke	Popular jokes in India, based on stereotypes of Sikhs.
Self-referential humor	A joke that refers to itself as the joke.
Sewer alligator	A legend that became a pop culture sensation.
Stunting	The things radio stations and TV networks will do for attention.
Treacle mining	The fictitious mining of treacle (molasses) in a raw form similar to coal.
Tube Bar prank calls	A series of prank calls to a bar in Jersey City, New Jersey during the 1970s, where two pranksters would call for double-entendre names, such as 'Al Coholic' and 'Phil Mypockets'. A recording of it inspired a running gag in a very well-known sitcom.
Umarell	Old people who watch construction sites.
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement	A group of people trying to get everyone to stop reproducing.
When a white horse is not a horse	A Chinese philosophy about a white horse either being a horse or not being a horse.
Willy's Chocolate Experience	A world of pure imagination... if you can only imagine empty warehouses staffed by underpaid actors, where the main attraction is lemonade.
Works based on dreams	Sometimes you should follow your dreams; after all, it might lead you to create the most-covered song in the world, write Frankenstein, or discover the structure of the atom.
World Famous Bushman	A street entertainer in San Francisco who makes a living by pretending to be a bush.
You kids get off my lawn!	I'm gonna call your parents, you kids!

Art

*747*	A performance art piece in which the artist fired shots at a Boeing 747 flying overhead, leading him to be questioned by the FBI.
America	A fully-functioning solid gold toilet, formerly on display (and available for use) in one of New York's finest art museums.
Artist's Shit	A quite literal and humorous meta-art.
Australia's big things	Giant folk art as tourist traps.
Augsburg Book of Miracles	A book dated from the 16th century full of weird religious drawings. Featuring a human–donkey–demon hybrid as one of its highlights.
Babylonokia	A clay Nokia phone with cuneiform keys. Was once misrepresented as an actual artifact.
Bliss (photograph)	The most viewed photograph in all of human history is... the default wallpaper for Windows XP.
Bog Standard Gallery	It's a museum... inside a portable toilet.
Boll Weevil Monument	The only known monument built to honor an agricultural pest.
Joachim-Raphaël Boronali	The world's most artistically-tailed donkey.
Bottle Rack	A modern art piece created by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp. His sister, who mistook it for trash, threw it out.
Pierre Brassau	"That's not art; a chimp could have painted that!"
Cabazon Dinosaurs	Comprises of "Dinny the Dinosaur," a larger-than-life, 150 ton sculpture of a brontosaurus in the desert of Southern California west of Palm Springs. Dinny's companion is "Mr. Rex," a 150 ton sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Made by people that think dinosaurs never existed.
Cerne Abbas Giant	A very interesting hill figure in the English countryside.
Chamber of Art and Curiosities, Ambras Castle	A cabinet of curiosities created by Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria in the 16th century.
Cool S	A symbol of uncertain origins often used in graffiti.
Degenerate Art exhibition	When the Nazis exhibited examples of art that they didn't consider "purely German" enough, so people could hate it in person. It ended up drawing visitor numbers that regular art galleries in the country could only dream of.
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife	An 1814 Hokusai woodcut of a woman getting intimate with a pair of octopuses, sometimes described as the originator of tentacle erotica.
Droste effect	The effect of a picture appearing within itself.
Disumbrationism	A novelist who's never picked up a paintbrush before creates a false art school and submits amateurish paintings as part of it... and is successful for a while.
Earring Magic Ken	How Barbie's boyfriend, in an attempt to look cooler, became a gay icon.
Ecce Homo	An otherwise-unremarkable fresco of Jesus that was "restored" by an untrained amateur and now looks like a monkey.
Equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, Glasgow	Has been regularly topped off with a traffic cone since the 1980s.
Fire photography	The act of taking photographs of firefighting operations.
Fourth plinth, Trafalgar Square	The horse is missing.
Fremont Troll	An 18 foot, 13,000 pound concrete sculpture of a troll clutching a Volkswagen Beetle.
Fuckart & Pimp	Going all the way to own your own art.
Gävle goat	A giant straw Yuletide goat that is the target of frequent arson attacks and vandalism.
Geostationary Banana Over Texas	An Argentinian artist's plan(?) to launch a banana-shaped airship over Texas.
Hahn/Cock	A giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square.
Headington Shark	An Oxford man has had a 25-foot (7.6 m) long sculpture of a shark embedded headfirst into the roof of his unassuming house since 1986.
He-gassen	It really puts the "art" in "fart".
Hellmouth	The entrance to Hell envisaged as the gaping mouth of a huge monster, an image which first appears in Anglo-Saxon art.
Hobby tunneling	Some people just love to dig.
Howard Hallis	An artist who attempted to draw the "Picture of Everything", a massive painting containing drawings of thousands of people and items, both real and imaginary.
Megumi Igarashi	Perhaps the world's most prominent in the field of drawing and sculpting the vulva.
Jazz	An iconic 1990s disposable cup design.
Katrina refrigerator	Loot this! Free meal inside!
Knitta Please	NYC hip hop graffiti knitters.
Kryptos	A sculpture on the grounds of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency containing four encrypted messages, only three of which have been solved.
Latte art	The best art is caffeinated.
Latrinalia	The sage and insightful scribblings on your local public bathroom wall.
List of largest photographs	Includes information on print and digital photos that are reputedly the world's largest.
Musca depicta	For some reason, a lot of artists wanted you to think a fly had landed on their paintings.
Museum of Bad Art	A Museum "dedicated to the collection, preservation, and exhibition of really awful artwork".
Emil Nolde	The curious case of an artist who was an avid supporter of Nazism, yet was later featured in the country's "degenerate art" gallery.
Paintings by Adolf Hitler	The Nazi dictator and perpetrator of one of the worst genocides in history was also a painter.
Pantone 448 C	"Drab dark brown", the least attractive colour, according to research. Used for plain tobacco packaging.
Phallic architecture	Does the Washington Monument, Ypsilanti Water Tower or Peoples Daily building remind you of something?
Pink Lady	In 1966, a woman secretly painted a 60-foot (18 m) tall portrait of a nude woman over a tunnel and sued when the county tried to take it down.
Piss Christ	A photograph of a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine.
Portland International Airport carpet	A carpet design so famous that it gained a cult following.
Pricasso	A man who paints with his genitalia.
La Princesse	A 15-metre (50 ft) mechanical spider which stomped about Liverpool in 2008.
Project Graham	A work of art "symboliz[ing] the vulnerability of human bodies in [car] crashes".
Abel Ramírez Águilar	A Mexican sculptor who made a name for himself in ice and snow sculpture after winning gold at the 1992 Winter Olympics.
*Le Rêve*	A Picasso painting that purportedly would have sold for a record price had its owner, Steve Wynn, not accidentally poked a hole in it, and which eventually did sell for a different record price.
Roundabout dog	Seen any dog on the loose while out driving lately? Chances are it's a roundabout dog.
Sacred Cod	There's also a "Holy Mackerel", Batman.
Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism	Mine is better than yours.
Seedfeeder	An illustrator who contributed around 48 free-use drawings to Wikipedia, each being sexually-graphic drawings for articles on each (in)appropriate act. Lives up to their name, don't they?
Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel	A spin-off of the famous medieval book Pantagruel, about the adventures of a gluttonous gigantic being; in the illustrated book, we can have a clue of what that wonderful fella dreams at night. Spoiler alert: it's all hellish creatures.
Superlambanana	A statue in Liverpool that's half-lamb, half-banana.
Tennis Girl	Photo of a girl with no underwear that became so popular politicians began to cosplay it.
Thomasson	Finding the art in things that are still maintained despite being useless.
Tillie	An odd painting of a grinning face, that used to be on the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park, New Jersey before it was demolished.
Tipu's Tiger	A very... curious mechanical toy created for Indian ruler Tipu Sultan that represented his feelings for the expansionist East India Company on the Indian sub-continent.
Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise	A surreal Buddha-ified statue of Donald Trump, promoted on Taobao with the slogan "make your company great again".
Turnip Prize	The prize that satirises modern art by giving awards to low-effort collections of junk. Bonus points for titling it with a bad pun.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space	At least sixteen casts of this "unique" sculpture exist. Not to mention that the sculptor already made a few similar designs.
William Utermohlen	An artist who drew self-portraits after being diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease in 1995, and would continue these portraits for six years, until 2001.
les UX	A French artistic movement that expresses itself in underground places.

Comics and animation

101 Uses for a Dead Cat	A collection of illustrations all about exactly that - its first edition sold over 2 million copies.
Aachi & Ssipak	A South Korean animated film about a dystopian future where poop is used as a power source.
Acme Corporation	Their products have been used and endorsed by all the best cartoon characters.
Afghanis-tan	Central Asian history has never been cuter. (Osama bin Laden makes an appearance as a turban-wearing stray cat.)
Archie Meets the Punisher	The team-up you thought would never happen.
Archie vs. Predator	Teenagers somehow become worthy game.
Arm-Fall-Off-Boy	The first applicant to be rejected from the Legion of Super-Heroes. His superpower was the ability to temporarily detach either arm and use it as a club with the other.
Behind Closed Doors (book)	An unreleased book of pornographic SpongeBob SquarePants drawings by some of the storyboard artists, partially leaked in July 2023.
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo	Name of a Japanese manga whose subject matter is as surreal as its title.
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown	A slasher-themed parody of the Peanuts TV series with a mass-murdering Charlie Brown, whose director went on to work for Disney.
Cartoon physics	In animation, humour takes precedence over the ordinary laws of physics.
Censored Eleven	A group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons pulled from syndication due to their racist depictions of black people.
Cheat Slayer	An isekai manga axed after just one chapter when it was noticed that the villains were thinly-veiled clones of other isekai heroes.
Corona-chan	A fictional personification of the coronavirus which caused racial controversies.
"Cow tools"	A cartoon from the comic strip The Far Side that was so confusing thousands of people called the author trying to understand its meaning.
Comic book death	Comic book characters have a tendency to rarely, if ever, stay dead.
Dennis the Menace	Two comic strips, in the United Kingdom and the United States, that debuted on the exact same day, with the exact same name.
"Dennō Senshi Porygon"	An episode of the "harmless" Pokémon cartoon that caused seizures in almost 700 Japanese children, ultimately leading to it being banned right after airing and the anime going under a 4-month hiatus.
Der Fuehrer's Face	Donald Duck won an Oscar as a Hitler-saluting Nazi.
Ebola-chan	Fictional personification of the Ebola virus promoted with racist intentions.
Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure	A short pornographic cartoon from the 1920s about a man with an oversized, sentient detachable penis.
Foreskin Man	Introducing Foreskin man, the superhero who wants to end the practice of circumcision.
Gorillas in comics	A curious abundance of gorillas in comic book plots during the Silver Age of Comics.
Homosexuality in the Batman franchise	Do Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson do more together than fighting crime?
ISIS-chan	Created by Japanese internet users to purposely offset search results for... the actual thing it was referencing.
Jenny Everywhere	An open-source webcomic character.
Kuso Miso Technique	A homoerotic, scatological manga that ended up becoming an online meme.
Manga Bible	And the Lord said unto John, "Omae wa mō shinde iru".
The Metric Marvels	As part of the 1970's campaign to encourage use of the metric system in the U.S, the creators of Schoolhouse Rock! produced these shorts to teach children about liters, meters, and most things in between.
Moe anthropomorphism	Even a washing machine can be the girl of your dreams.
Mr. Immortal	A Marvel Comics superhero with no special powers except immortality, who has been killed in ways including crushing, burning, self-impalement on giant novelty scissors, bear trap, cannon, chainsaw, piranhas, ferrets, spear, python, and alcohol poisoning (three times). Prone to fits of rage upon returning to life.
NFL SuperPro	A comic book series about a super American football player, perhaps taking Super Bowl too far.
Pinky & Pepper Forever	A short furry graphic novel dealing with themes such as Catholicism, lesbianism, relationship struggles, BDSM, suicide, and the afterlife, expressed through characters from a short-lived line of fashion dolls.
Pokémon episodes removed from rotation	Episodes of the Pokémon TV show that, for one reason or another, were never re-ran, skipped over in international dubs, or just never aired at all.
Popetown	Due to complaints by Catholics, this animated series' original broadcaster BBC Three never showed it at all.
Squirrel and Hedgehog	The height of the North Korean animation industry. A tale of talking animals as an allegory for the North Korean version of history, featuring Americans depicted as laser-eyed wolves.
Syaoran Li *Syaoran (Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, clone)* *Syaoran (Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, original)*	What happens on Wikipedia when a group of manga artists take a character from one of their earlier works and perform several cross-references and plot twists.
Tentacle erotica	Human-cephalopod sexual relations, popular in hentai.
The Leader (web series)	Chinese propaganda anime based on the life of Karl Marx.
Tiger Mask donation phenomenon	The other time manga's most famous pro wrestler entered the real world.
Truck-kun	The character responsible for sending more protagonists to other worlds than any other.

Literature

"Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī... help!!

*******	The story of a man who creates *s out of raws. It is never explained what "*" nor "raw" means.
1601	A quite risqué squib telling a conversation between Queen Elizabeth I and various famous 16th century writers fully on scatological topics, described as "the most famous piece of pornography in American literature". Notably written by Mark Twain.
112 Gripes About the French	A handbook produced to help American soldiers understand the French.
A True Story	An Ancient Greek parody of tall tales that were told as true in ancient sources, that contains the first literary references to space travel and fighting wars against aliens. The story ends with "the biggest lie of all" - a promise of future sequels.
A Void	An entire novel written without using the letter e. See also Gadsby below.
Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos	Published in 1825 as a Victorian children's book and described as "a round game for merry parties", the object of the game was to quickly recite alphabetical tongue-twisting mock-Latin gibberish.
Alien space bats	An implausible divergence from the real world, used as a plot device in alternate history.
Anthropodermic bibliopegy	The practice of binding books in human skin.
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication	Your helpful NASA guide on talking to aliens.
Atlanta Nights	A group of science fiction authors get together and deliberately write an absolutely horrible novel to fool and embarrass a "vanity publisher".
Bad Sex in Fiction Award	Created to draw attention to the worst-of-the-worst in describing sex.
The Beginning Was the End	A piece of racist pseudoscience written by a self-proclaimed psychic, that posits man devolved from a species of intelligent cannibalistic apes. Would be completely obscure if not for Devo.
Betteridge's law of headlines	Why, when a newspaper asks a yes-no question, the answer is usually "no".
Big Dumb Object	Objects in science fiction literature and media that are specifically created to be interesting. Too bad they'll probably be overlooked with a name like this...
The Book of Heroic Failures	A book which glorifies failure. Started off by The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. The book was a success and thus declared a "failure as a failure".
Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year	Who can forget such classics as Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, How to Avoid Huge Ships or Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the Other 90% of Your Mind to Increase the Size of Your Breasts?
La Bougie du Sapeur	A French newspaper published every February 29th.
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest	A contest to find the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
Cain's Jawbone	A murder mystery puzzle book that only three people have solved since it was published in 1934.
Catullus 16	An explicit ancient Roman poem whose opening line has been described as "one of the filthiest expressions ever written in Latin".
The Anarchist Cookbook	Have you ever been in need of an easy-to-follow bomb manual? Well, now you have it.
Codex Seraphinianus	An illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world, written in an imaginary language.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater	This highly popular autobiographical account about the effects of laudanum led several English authors to opium use.
Henry Darger	Writer of a 15,000-page manuscript along with several thousand watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story, who rarely left his small room. His word was worth millions a few years after his death.
Dinosaur erotica	Have you ever been Taken by a T-Rex or Ravished by a Triceratops?
Death poem	The urge to have famous last words, taken to its logical, carefully rewritten extreme.
Empty book	A literal example of why you should not judge a book by its cover.
English as She Is Spoke	A 19th-century Portuguese–English conversational guide and phrase book that is regarded as a classic of unintentional humour since it was apparently the product of translating a Portuguese–French phrase book by non-English-speaking Portuguese with the help of a French–English phrase book.
English-language editions of The Hobbit	Now collectors' items because of their printing differences.
Evil laughter	"Mua-ha-haha-ha-haaa" and the like.
The Eye of Argon	An infamously bad heroic fantasy novella, written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then.
Fallout: Equestria	A five volume, 620,000-word long crossover fanfiction of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the post-apocalyptic Fallout video game franchise.
Fart Proudly	An essay written by Benjamin Franklin about flatulence.
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women	A 1558 diatribe by John Knox against Mary, Queen of Scots and Mary Tudor.
Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley	A non-existent book by a non-existent author, created for a Yellow Pages UK ad, and made real eight years later.
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn"	Supposedly the shortest story possible in the English language, though Ernest Hemingway had nothing to do with it.
Future Library project	Project that collects an original work by a popular writer every year from 2014 to 2114. The works will remain unread and unpublished until 2114; one thousand trees were specially planted for the project; the 100 manuscripts will be printed using paper made from the trees.
Gadsby	A 50,110-word long book famous for not using the letter "e".
Grammarians' War	At the start of the 16th century, British schoolmasters were insulting one another. In Latin, of course.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality	Textbook on rationality disguised as a Harry Potter fanfiction.
Hawking Index	Are you one of the 1.9% to have read Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices from cover-to-cover?
Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed	The perfect picture book for your little conservative.
Hitler Diaries	A sensational discovery in 1983, which turned out to be an elaborate hoax.
Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles	An evangelical Christian version of the Harry Potter series, featuring creationism, anti-Catholicism, and Biblical references that assume you have a Bible handy. Maybe written by a traditionalist wife and mother for her children, maybe a hoax - who knows?
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming	No, this isn't about the murder of a Disney character. This is the memoir of the man responsible for declassifying Pluto.
Hundred Thousand Billion Poems	Raymond Queneau's 1961 book consisting of ten sonnets printed on card with each line on a separate strip. As all ten sonnets have not just the same rhyme scheme but the same rhyme sounds, any lines from a sonnet can be combined with any from the nine others, allowing for 10¹⁴ (= 100,000,000,000,000) different poems.
I Am a Cat	A novel written from the perspective of a cat.
I Am God	A novel in which God is made to keep a diary to chronicle his love for an atheist.
I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter	A pro-transgender story, written by a transgender woman, that's named after a transphobic meme.
I, Libertine	A non-existent novel that was the subject of a hoax intended to criticize the manner in which best-seller lists are determined.
If Israel Lost the War	A very soft alternate history romance.
The Iraq War: A Historiography of Wikipedia Changelogs	A 2010 book, divided into 10 editions, entirely about Wikipedia changes made on page about the Iraq War (2003-2011) when the US was still involved in the confrontation.
Jennifer Mills News	A weekly newspaper written by, and about, herself since 2002.
The Jungle	A 1906 book that secretly exposed the dark side of meat factories from that time, eventually resulting in the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and later, by extension, the FDA.
Lajja	How this 1993 novel was the primary reason for the exile of its author overseas.
Lecherous Limericks	Dirty limericks by Isaac Asimov.
Lesbian vampire	They don't bite...necks.
"Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den"	A poem written by a Chinese poet in Classical Chinese. It can be read and understood by all who understand the language, even though it consists entirely of the word "shi" repeated 92 times in different tones.
Lobby Lud	"You are ____ and I claim my five pounds".
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon	A fictional dish with a quite long name.
Magical Negro	An outdated stock character who helps out white protagonists.
William McGonagall	A writer widely held to be the worst poet in the English language.
Men in Aida	A homoerotic homophonic translation of Homer: "Men in Aida, they appeal, eh? A day, O Achilles."
The Meaning of Hitler	Sir Max Hastings called it 'among the best' studies of Hitler.
Yukio Mishima	A nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature who is perhaps more notorious for attempting an ultranationalist coup d'etat against the Japanese government, despite only being supported by four other people. After this inevitably failed, he committed seppuku, and speculation as to his true psychological motives has raged ever since.
Mock Turtle	The weirdest, and least recorded, character in Alice in Wonderland.
Monostich	Poetry doesn't need rhyme, or meter, or in this case, even more than one line.
*My Immortal*	A legendarily terrible piece of Harry Potter fan fiction that awkwardly inserted vampires, time travel, and emo/"goff" subcultures into J.K. Rowling's wizarding world. Someone who may have been the author of the piece almost got a major publishing deal for her memoirs.
My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy	Not literally; this autobiography about one of the Simpsons's voice actors was once performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2004, by the author herself.
Naked Came the Stranger	Journalists prove a point when their intentionally awful sex novel becomes a bestseller. Later the basis of a porn film starring Darby Lloyd Rains.
Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928–1960	A hoax biography written about a fictional artist, written as part of an elaborate prank pulled on art critics.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats	Cat poems by T. S. Eliot.
Omegaverse	What if humans had alphas, too? This is the question asked by a generation of fanfic writers.
On Bullshit	A very serious essay by Harry Frankfurt sketching a philosophical theory of, well, bullshit.
Order of the Occult Hand	"It was as if an occult hand had edited this Wikipedia article."
Ossian	"The greatest poet that has ever existed", according to Jefferson. But he didn't.
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever	"M" is for... mnemonic? "B" is for bdellium? What?
Philip M. Parker	Writer of The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India and thousands of other works... by means of a computer program.
A Pickle for the Knowing Ones	Without questions one of finnest Pieces of wrriten text in the English language.
Pinocchio paradox	What if Pinocchio said his nose will grow?
Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	Understanding the political context of the mid-to-late 1890s in the United States will give you a different understanding of the gold, silver and emerald symbolism, among other things.
Print Wikipedia	Yes, it does exist.
Project Mars: A Technical Tale	A sci-fi book about Mars exploration and the Martians led by "the Elon", written by NASA's chief rocketer Wernher von Braun in 1949.
Rangila Rasul	How this religious satire made a massive controversy between India's Muslim and Hindu communities, and helped change the nation's legal system.
Rejecting Jane	Turns out publishers really don't know anything about literature.
Rolling Stone (Uganda)	The Ugandan version isn't a music magazine, but instead tries to out gay men and get them killed.
Amanda McKittrick Ros	The McGonagall of prose. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis competed as to who could read her longest without laughing.
Saddam Hussein's novels	Crimes against literature?
The Satanic Verses	An infamous fictional play that to this day endangers the life of the author and the translators due to religious fanatics.
Shakespeare apocrypha	Anti-Stratfordians (see "Shakespeare authorship question" below) can take heart that there really are works attributed to Shakespeare that weren't written by him!
Shakespeare authorship question	The conspiracy theory that "William Shakespeare" was not the true author of his classic plays. The Earl of Oxford and Christopher Marlowe are popular candidates, despite being dead when some of the plays were written.
Society of Science, Letters and Art	19th century bogus literary society which duped learned (and would-be learned) people into purchasing the right to the society's academic dress and letters after their name.
Peter Sotos	A writer and musician who explores serial killer and pedophile lore, while simultaneously praising them in his work. For one of his magazine covers, he used an image taken from real child pornography, which he plead guilty to possessing.
Striking and Picturesque Delineations of the Grand, Beautiful, Wonderful, and Interesting Scenery Around Loch-Earn	Angus McDiarmad, a native Scots-Gaelic speaker, writes a book on a Scottish Highland area with the help of an English dictionary to great comic effect and is termed "the world's worst author".
The Tale of Two Lovers	A 15th century erotic novel written by a future pope.
There once was a man from Nantucket...	A gratifying theme for limericks; some of them obscene.
Time travel in The Lord of the Rings	Turns out time travel is embedded into The Lord of the Rings in several different ways.
Chuck Tingle	A monster erotica writer whose stories feature sexual encounters with almost anything you can imagine, ranging from a sentient jet plane to the concept of time. Also a master of taekwondo (allegedly) and is always seen wearing a pink sack on his head.
Le Train de Nulle Part	A French novel, 233 pages long, written without verbs.
The Unfortunates	A book whose chapters you can read in pretty much any order.
"Whitey on the Moon"	Not everybody was happy to see the first man on the Moon.
Winnie ille Pu	Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin that became a bestseller.
Wonders of the East	An Old English text from a millennium ago, all about the various creatures that can supposedly be found in Asia. These apparently include dragons, giant ants, hens which burn people, human-donkey hybrids and humans with fan-like ears that cover their entire bodies.

Music

27 Club	A number of prominent musicians have died at this age, though statisticians attribute the "club" to apophenia – seeing patterns in random data. See also the related white lighter myth.
Animutation	The practice of taking lyrics of foreign songs, "mishearing" them into English, and producing a Flash video to go along with it.
Avril Lavigne replacement conspiracy theory	The "Paul is dead" (see below) of the millennial generation, with Melissa Vandella playing the role of Billy Shears.
Bouncing ball	That thing in music videos that helps you sing along to the lyrics. It dates back to 1924.
"Brian Wilson is a genius"	A music journalist's meme from the 1960s that arguably destroyed the career of the Beach Boys' main songwriter and producer. (Within three years, Wilson was working as a grocery store cashier.)
Characters in Devo music videos	Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Wikipedia!
"Clapton is God"	Graffiti that's famous for a photo of a dog urinating on it.
Clear Channel memorandum	America banning "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters from radio airplay after 9/11 is an odd choice. Though "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong brings to mind more questions.
Curse of the ninth	The superstition that any composer of symphonies, from Beethoven onwards, will die soon after writing their own Ninth Symphony.
The Dark Side of the Rainbow	What happens when you mix Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz?
Dave Matthews Band bus incident	The band's tour bus dumped 800 pounds of sewage on a passenger boat. Funnily enough, the opener of that night's concert was "Don't Drink the Water"...
Earworm	It's got a hook in you.
Elvis impersonator	People pretend to be Elvis Presley and only him.
Elvis sightings	There are many who still believe.
Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc.	That time John Fogerty was sued for sounding like himself.
Freeze 'Em All	An Antarctic concert that made Metallica the first band to perform on all seven continents.
Fyre Festival	The organizers spent so much money promoting the event that they ran out of money to spend on the actual event. They were later faced with eight lawsuits.
Industrial musical	Musicals about a business, intended to be seen by the business' employees to improve loyalty and motivation.
Jazz ambassadors	Subliminal American values delivered through smooth jams.
Lebenslaute	Open air classical music performances as a form of political protest.
List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response	Concerts which didn't work out quite as well as hoped.
Literal music video	What happens when you replace the lyrics in a music video with lyrics that describe what's actually happening in the music video? Hilarity ensues.
Loudness war	Why recorded music is getting "louder" over time.
Manualism	The little-known art of playing music by squeezing air through the hands.
Marilyn Manson–Columbine High School massacre controversy	News media falsely accused Marilyn Manson and his band of the same name for influencing two mass shooters who actually hated his music.
Metal Open Air	Intended as Brazil's version of Wacken Open Air, it instead became their version of Fyre Festival.
Millennial whoop	Put on a "best of the 2010s" playlist, and hear the same repeated two notes everywhere.
"More Cowbell"	I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!
"More popular than Jesus"	A remark that later proved deadly for John Lennon.
Mozart and scatology	Mozart was fond of toilet humour, his letters to friends and family often contained scatological passages. He even wrote music dedicated to scatology, which was shared among a closed group of most likely inebriated friends, the most infamous of which is Leck mich im Arsch (literally "Lick me in the arse").
Musikalisches Würfelspiel	A system written by Mozart in which the musical piece is decided randomly by playing dice.
"My Way" killings	You can get killed for singing Frank Sinatra's signature tune in the Philippines.
Operation Nifty Package	How do you get a dictator out of an embassy? With music, of course!
P-Funk mythology	The whimsical universe surrounding the P Funk all stars.
"Paul is dead"	Was Paul McCartney replaced by a lookalike in the 1960s?
Pink Floyd pigs	The band's recurring props and references.
PopMart Tour	Take an unfinished studio album, hold a press conference at Kmart, and put on a show in countries around the world, complete with a spinning mirrorball lemon, a giant martini olive, a large golden arch, and the largest video screen ever toured. That would be U2's 1997–98 tour in a nutshell.
Publius Enigma	A mystery wrapped in an enigma related to Pink Floyd, which has remained unsolved since it appeared on Usenet in 1994.
Rockism and poptimism	What happens when pop music fans take themselves way too seriously? Actually, nothing fun.
Roxanne Wars	One hip hop B-side became the most answered-to song in history.
Unusual types of gramophone records	From changing speeds, to endlessly-looping locked grooves, to... Bhutanese postage stamps?
"Up to eleven"	This article is one louder.
Uruguayan Invasion	Just as British bands were crossing the pond, Uruguayan bands were crossing the Uruguay River to Argentina.
Vestal Masturbation T-shirt	A shirt released by the British heavy metal band Cradle of Filth depicting a masturbating nun on the front and calls Jesus Christ a cunt on the back. Multiple people have been arrested for wearing it out in public.
Whamageddon	A festive music challenge where you have to avoid listening to a certain Christmas song throughout the Christmas period. Perfect if you're not a fan of George Michael.

Instruments

Blackbird	A playable violin made out of black stone.
Cat organ	A keyboard instrument in which the keys cause cats to meow.
Electroencephalophone	A musical instrument controlled by brainwaves.
Escopetarra	The guitAR-15 of Colombia.
Great Stalacpipe Organ	Made in a cave using stalactites and a lot of patience and ingenuity.
Musical saw	The least favourite instrument of Ronnie Wood, the Hollies and the Screaming Trees.
Piganino	Like a harpsichord, but instead of plucking strings, you're poking pigs. May not have existed, but inspired some good music anyway.
Ugly stick	An instrument in Newfoundland, an insult everywhere else.
Viola jokes	You can tell if a viola player is playing out of tune if you can see the bow moving.

Genres

Biomusic	Music made by non-humans.
Chap hop	Rap music about being English in the 19th-century.
Chillwave	The term was invented to make fun of music journalists and bloggers who hype "the next big thing". Ironically, they then wrote about chillwave as "the next big thing".
Christian ska	Apparently, not even God himself can resist the raw power of ska.
Crabcore	A half-serious metalcore genre where the musician stretches themselves like the aforementioned crustacean.
Danger music	The name is very much literal, music that tries to harm the listener or performer.
Early Norwegian black metal scene	More church arsons per capita than any other known music scene!
Gothabilly	What if Buddy Holly was goth?
Grunge speak	That time a receptionist convinced The New York Times that "wack slacks" was slang for ripped jeans and "lamestain" meant an uncool person.
Jihadism and hip hop	Straight outta ISIS.
Kawaii metal	The cutest metal subgenre.
Lowercase	A genre of ultra-minimalist music that is known for deliberately utilizing silence to contrast with mundane field recordings which have been amplified in volume.
Pirate metal	Heavy metal music combined with pirate mythology and jargon.
Proibidão	As part of a crackdown on drug cartels in Rio de Janeiro, this uniquely Brazilian form of gangsta rap cannot legally be performed or broadcast on the radio.
Unblack metal	Black metal, but Christian.
Yu-Mex	Mexican music... from Yugoslavia.

Composers, musicians, and performers

AKB48 Group	Girl group or franchise? Same with her "official" rival group and "spin-off" group as well!
ArnoCorps Austrian Death Machine	A pair of bands who perform songs solely based on Arnold Schwarzenegger films.
Y. Bhekhirst	A mysterious man with an implaceable accent hands over copies of his self-recorded cassette to random New York record stores in the 80s/90s, which contain a selection of strange, barely comprehensible songs set against sparse, repetitive instrumentation, later spawning a cult following among outsider music enthusiasts and a decades-long mystery.
Bis Kaidan	What happens when noise music meets J-pop?
Boston Typewriter Orchestra	Ah, the beautiful sound of... typewriters.
Rosemary Brown	A spiritualist who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her.
Buckethead	A virtuoso electric guitarist known for always wearing a white mask and a KFC bucket on his head while performing and releasing over 300 albums over the course of over 30 years.
Bull of Heaven	A group that is known for their extremely long albums. Most known for 210: Like a Wall in Which An Insect Lives and Gnaws at a runtime of 5.7 years; their longest album is 310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)pkkk* at 3.343 quindecillion years long.
GG Allin	A punk-rocker who would attack people attending his concerts, consisting of hoarse, disheveled vocals. He would also take an excessive amount of drugs, strip naked, and defecate on stage.
CD Rev	Because nothing says gangsta like being funded by a corrupt communist government.
Death in June	Not many other anti-fascist music groups can claim to be so blanketed with fascist imagery, even down to the name.
Eva Braun	A rock band from Serbia.
Damião Experiença	An eccentric Brazilian singer-songwriter, known for being a reclusive hoarder and singing in his own made-up dialect of Portuguese (which he claimed was spoken on his "home planet"), often about self-contradictory and pro-authoritarian political themes and popular culture.
Matt Farley	A songwriter who has released thousands of songs under at least seventy pseudonyms such as "Papa Razzi and the Photogs", "The Hungry Food Band", and "The Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee".
The Gerogerigegege	A very special music project that released the sound of a man defecating and a record commemorating the deceased Japanese emperor with the sound of people having sex to the national anthem, and had a member who just masturbated on stage.
Half Man Half Biscuit	Have you ever listened to "Man of Constant Sorrow (With a Garage in Constant Use)" from the album No-One Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fuckin' Hedge Cut?
Hanatarash	The Japanese noise band that drove a bulldozer into their concert venue.
Hatebeak	The thing that should not beak.
Hatari	A band that entered the 2019 Söngvakeppnin (Iceland's Eurovision Song Contest selection competition) as a joke, only to win first place. The band then finished third in Eurovision's semi-finals, advancing to the Grand Final and finishing 10th place there.
Joyce Hatto	A pianist who had many doctored recordings falsely attributed to her long after she stopped performing in public.
Bobby Jameson	A hippie singer-songwriter outcast who never received financial compensation for his songs and records. Thought to be dead after the 1960s, but then resurfaced with a blog in 2007 aiming to set the record straight about his life story.
Jandek	A prolific and pseudonymous singer/songwriter active since 1978 who only grants the occasional interview and has never provided any biographical information.
Florence Foster Jenkins	An American soprano famous for her singing ability or lack thereof.
Kevin MacLeod	Perhaps the most heard musician on the whole internet.
Klaus Nomi	Countertenor with an unusually wide vocal range, whose style of dress was commonly referred to as "alien-like" and enjoyed recording new wave covers of 1950s pop.
The KLF	An electronic band that became mainstream chart-toppers while undertaking confrontational Situationist-influenced performance stunts, culminating in them performing at the nationally-televised 1992 BRIT Awards with a grindcore band while firing machine gun blanks into the audience, dumping a dead sheep at the afterparty, and then disbanding.
Kunt and the Gang	If you think his name is a bit rude, you should hear his songs such as "Use My Arsehole as a Cunt", "I'm Wanking over a Pornographic Polaroid of an Ex-Girlfriend Who Died" and "Jesus Died of a Stranglewank". Then there was the one about his paperboy... See also: "Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt".
LadBaby	A British YouTuber who had five Christmas number ones in the UK in a row between 2018 and 2022, all of them being sausage roll-themed parodies of well-known songs. Strongly disliked by Kunt and the Gang (see above).
Laibach	A Slovenian industrial band known for combining totalitarian aesthetics with pop culture, including martial covers of the Beatles and Queen. Also known as the first Western band to perform in North Korea.
Merzbow	A Japanese experimental music project whose most popular album has been affectionately described as "What a bug hears when it's being flushed down the toilet" and "Directly looking at the sun with your ears".
Moondog	A blind composer, theoretician, poet, and inventor of musical instruments who dressed like a viking and lived as a street musician in New York between the 1940s and 1970s.
MP4	Rock music and Members of Parliament do mix.
Okilly Dokilly	A band that performs metalcore songs about the character Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, while dressed as the character as well.
One Pound Fish Man	A man who works at a market who saw his sales patter go viral and challenge the X Factor for the Christmas number one single in 2012.
Panchiko	A group of British teenagers form a band and record a demo CD-R which is quickly forgotten about. Around fifteen years later, someone discovers a corrupted copy in a charity shop, and it becomes an online phenomenon.
Eilert Pilarm	The Elvis impersonator who looks and sounds nothing like Elvis, according to Alfo Media.
Charles Manson discography	Wait, whose discography??
R. Stevie Moore	A one-man band who has self-released over 400 albums through his home-based mailing service since 1982. Later noted as a pioneer of DIY music and indie rock.
Portsmouth Sinfonia	An orchestra made up entirely of people with no experience in playing their respective assigned instruments.
Les Rallizes Dénudés	A pioneering Japanese experimental rock band, known for releasing virtually no studio material despite being active for around 30 years, their reclusive founder refusing nearly all interviews and media coverage, while nevertheless going on to be highly influential among Japan's avant-garde underground. This may or may not have been due to the fact the original bassist was involved in hijacking a domestic air flight, redirecting it towards North Korea.
The Residents	A long-running avant-garde music collective that perform wearing eyeball helmets and disguises, successfully maintaining their anonymity for around 50 years. One early rumor was that they were actually the Beatles.
Rockbitch	An all-female pagan rock band who were notorious for performing live sex acts on stage.
Mamoru Samuragochi	A "deaf composer" who wasn't deaf and didn't compose anything.
The Shaggs	None of this band's members really wanted to form a band, nor did they really have any musical talent, but hey, a fortune teller predicted success, so off they went...
Thai Elephant Orchestra	An orchestra of elephants playing specially-designed instruments.
TISM	An (extremely) Australian rock band whose members are anonymous, perform wearing balaclavas and use pseudonyms like "Eugene de la Hot Croix Bun" and "Ron Hitler-Barassi". Known for their confrontational dark comedy, their song titles include "Defecate on My Face", "I Might Be A Cunt, But I'm Not A Fucking Cunt", "Martin Scorsese Is Really Quite A Jovial Fellow", "What Nationality Is Les Murray?", "Whatareya? (You're a Yob or You're a Wanker)" and "Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me".
Tonetta	A reclusive divorced man who gained a cult following in his sixties after posting videos to YouTube of his own lo-fi, independently made songs, often with sexually explicit lyrics coupled with footage of himself cross-dressing.
Tout-à-Coup Jazz	A Burkinabé jazz band from the 1970s whose membership included two future leaders of the country: coincidentally, both the victim and perpetrator of the same coup d'état.
The Vegetable Orchestra	An Austrian orchestra whose musical instruments are made solely from vegetables.
Viper	Has released over 1,927 albums, though a majority contain recycled material. Titles of his work include You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack and Kill Urself My Man. Arrested in 2024 for allegedly holding a woman captive in his garage in Houston for five years.
The Wealdstone Raider	A supporter of English non-league football team Wealdstone whose retorts towards rival supporters went viral and saw him challenging for the Christmas number one spot in 2014.
Wesley Willis	A musician and visual artist who recorded songs about topics such as his home town of Chicago, his schizophrenia, violent confrontations with cartoon superheroes, and bestiality, was fond of headbutting fans, and often ended his songs with "Rock over London, rock on, Chicago" followed by a product slogan.
Gary Wilson	An experimental musician who sings about stalking girls and plays with duct tape, fake blood, powder, and mannequins when on stage.
Wild Man Fischer	A schizophrenic Los Angeles street entertainer whose big break was recording an album with Frank Zappa. Their collaborations ended when Fischer, in a violent rage, threw a bottle that nearly hit Zappa's daughter Moon.
Ya Ho Wha 13	A cult psych rock band... literally.
The Zimmers	A rock band made up of elderly musicians. As of 2017^[update], the oldest member had lived to 101.
The Zombeatles	Paul is undead.

Musical works

A Musical Joke	A composition that Mozart allegedly made to mock bad composers.
As Slow as Possible	A piece of music by John Cage to be performed until 2640.
"Carnival of Light"	The Holy Grail for Beatles fans: an 11-minute recording of the Fab Four aimlessly bashing their instruments and shouting gibberish.
Cat fugue	A piece for harpsichord allegedly inspired by the sounds the composer's cat produced by walking along the instruments keyboard.
Duetto buffo di due gatti	A duet in which two sopranos repeatedly meow at each other.
Grosse Fuge	A composition written by Ludwig van Beethoven which was universally put down at the time as being "incomprehensible", now accepted as one of his greatest works.
Helikopter-Streichquartett	A string quartet composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen that must be played in four circling helicopters, the sound remixed, chopper sounds and all, for an audience on the ground.
*Homage to Hans Keller*	A piece for four tubas by Anthony Burgess written immediately after Keller reviewed the operetta Blooms of Dublin as a "pathetic pastiche". It was described as "a kind of lavatorial blast" in a review.
I Am Sitting in a Room	A piece in which the composer recites and records a brief explanation of the work, plays back and records the echo of the recording, then records the echo of the echo of the recording, and so on until it is transformed into a completely unrecognizable sound.
"Leck mich im Arsch" "Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber" "Difficile lectu"	Three canons by Mozart about... "licking him in the arse".
List of musical works in unusual time signatures	What's the most absurd time signature you can imagine? 1/12? ⅔/2? How about 32⁄2/4?
List of silent musical compositions	Not to be confused with "The Sound of Silence", these tunes don't have really much to hear. Among them is one of the most famous classical compositions of the 20th century.
List of music considered the worst	We built this city on not being very good.
Marinka (operetta)	An operetta in which a group of American teenagers watch a film about and then discuss the Mayerling incident, the murder-suicide pact that indirectly led to World War I. However, this version of the story has a happy ending.
Rage Over a Lost Penny	An audience favorite from Beethoven's oeuvre. It's gleefully angry, but the maestro left it unfinished.

Songs

"The Anacreontic Song"	An 18th-century drinking song whose melody was later adopted for "The Star-Spangled Banner".
"All Summer Long"	A song where two karaoke cover versions became one-hit wonders in 2008 on the Billboard Hot 100 because the original song was not released on iTunes, only to radio. One of the covers even charted a few places higher than the original.
"Boris Johnson Is a Fucking Cunt"	A foul-mouthed comedy punk song about the British Prime Minister that attempted to be the UK Christmas number one in 2020. Despite getting no air time, it got to No. 5. The following year, it spawned a sequel, which also got to No. 5 in the Christmas chart. From the same band that brought you "Prince Andrew Is a Sweaty Nonce" and "Fuck the Tories". See also: Kunt and the Gang.
"Camouflage"	A vinyl single from 1983 that contained a computer programme for the song's own music video for the ZX81. Created by a man who later found fame wearing a papier-mâché head.
"Chocolate Salty Balls"	A 1998 song from South Park, which got to the top 10 in several countries' charts, including number one in the UK, but it isn't actually about food.
"Do the Bartman"	A novelty dance one-hit wonder rap song from the Simpsons in 1990, whose backing vocals were done by none other than Michael Jackson.
"Eat Your Salad"	The Latvian entry of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. The lyrics speak of "eating veggies and p*ssy", along with numerous other sexual innuendos. Somehow, the song still has a serious message.
"E depois do adeus"	The Portuguese Entry of the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 was used as a signal to launch a successful national coup d'état.
"Euro-Vision"	The Belgian entry of the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 whose lyrics spoke precisely of the event in which they took part, and deliberately attempted to be last-place.
"Five Per Cent for Nothing"	A very short instrumental by a band noted for very long songs that was retitled as a parting shot at their former manager, who sued them afterwards.
"Flappie"	A Dutch Christmas song about cannibalism.
"Flatline"	Who knew the guy who made "Nothin' on You" and "Airplanes" would veer into the most redundant conspiracy theories?
"The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)"	A 2013 song "created to fail" by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis that instead ended up becoming a global smash hit.
"Give That Wolf a Banana"	A song that combines Little Red Riding Hood and two crazy 4.5 billion year old yellow wolves called Keith and Jim. The meaning of the song is debated, but one common theory is of all things, vaccines. It's also a Eurovision song, to boot.
"Gloomy Sunday"	A Hungarian dirge from the 1930s that the press of the time claimed was linked to over 100 suicides, earning it the moniker of the "Hungarian Suicide Song".
"Hitler Has Only Got One Ball"	Was der Führer only half a man? See also Possible monorchism of Adolf Hitler.
"How to Rob"	If you made a diss track, how many people would you target?
"Jeg har set en rigtig negermand"	A Danish #1 single from 1970, extolling the virtues of racial equality while calling a "negro man" "black as a bucket of tar".
"Jiggle Jiggle"	That time when an autotuned interview with Louis Theroux became so popular they convinced him to do a song.
"Justice for All"	A surreal choral/spoken-word... thing recorded by Donald Trump and 20 men in prison for attacking the Capitol on January 6.
"Lemon Incest"	Fun for the whole family!.....NOT!
"Lift Yourself"	Poopy-di scoop. Scoop-diddy-whoop. Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop.
Lostwave	Unknown songs, lost to time.
"The Most Unwanted Song"	Featuring operatic rapping, a children's choir urging listeners to go to Walmart, bagpipes, cowboy music, and political slogans shouted through a bullhorn.
"Never Learn Not to Love"	The Beach Boys' collaboration with Charles Manson. (Yes, that Charles Manson.)
"Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah"	If you can see someone's underwear, here's the tune to tell them by.
"Planet of the Bass"	The 2023 affectionate parody of 1990s Europop that became a hit in its own right.
"Poison: Iitai Koto mo Ienai Konna Yo no Naka wa"	A random Japanese rock song that gained popularity due to its ability to calm crying babies.
"Prisencolinensinainciusol"	The song where the lyrics are deliberately unintelligible gibberish intended to sound to its Italian audience as if it is sung in English spoken with an American accent.
"Ram Ranch"	A spoken-word heavy metal song about a gay cowboy orgy that became an internet meme and a counter-protest song against the Canadian convoy protest.
"Ready 'n' Steady"	A song mentioned in a top songs list of a notable magazine, that was long-believed by some to be non-existent because collectors were unable to find a recording or further information on it until 33 years after it was written.
"Rocket Queen"	If you want to hear the sound of a woman having sex with Axl Rose set to music, now's your chance!
"Shukusei!! Loli Kami Requiem"	Touch her, you'll be arrested.
"Subways of Your Mind"	A lostwave song taped off a radio station in 1984 by a German teenager for a mixtape, resulting in a 40-year hunt for the song that was resolved in November 2024.
"Supermarioland"	Rapping set to the theme of Super Mario Land. After hearing the song, Nintendo not only cleared the sample but also requested they make an album of Super Mario material.
"Suzukake no Ki no Michi de 'Kimi no Hohoemi o Yume ni Miru' to Itte Shimattara Bokutachi no Kankei wa Dō Kawatte Shimau no ka, Bokunari ni Nannichi ka Kangaeta Ue de no Yaya Kihazukashii Ketsuron no Yō na Mono"	Apparently AKB48's producers couldn't come up with a snappier title.
"Teletubbies say "Eh-oh!""	A novelty nursery-rhyme remix of the Teletubbies theme tune that got to number one in the United Kingdom, and was narrowly beaten for Christmas number one in 1997. This did not stop Bob the Builder from getting Christmas number one three years later, although.
"Tetris"	A Eurodance version of the Tetris theme co-produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was in the British charts at the same time as "Supermarioland" mentioned above.
"Timothy"	A top 40 hit in 1970, written by Rupert Holmes of "The Piña Colada Song" fame, that gained success despite (or due to) the fact it was about cannibalism during a mining disaster.
"To Be or Not to Be (The Hitler Rap)"	A comic rap performed by Mel Brooks, sung as Adolf Hitler. "Don't be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi Party".
"To Me, To You (Bruv)"	An unexpected collaboration between rapper Tinchy Stryder and British comedy duo the Chuckle Brothers.
"Ulterior Motives"	A lostwave song which mysteriously surfaced on the Internet in 2021 on a little-known song finding website, which went viral in 2023 when a group of Redditors tried to find the origin of it; it was later found in an obscure porn film from 1986 the year after.
"United Breaks Guitars"	A protest song against United Airlines which caused their stock price to fall by 10% and cost shareholders $180 million.
"We Didn't Start the Fire"	A song covering the major events of 40 years. Check Events mentioned for explanations of each.
"Wear Sunscreen"	A newspaper column of a hypothetical commencement speech, which prominently mentions the benefits of sunscreen, which Baz Luhrmann mashed up a recording of it with a dance track, creating the successful song 'Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen)'.
"You Suffer"	At a full 1.316 seconds in length, the shortest song with a physical single release of all time.
"You're Pitiful"	The true story of how a Weird Al Yankovic parody caused the article for Atlantic Records to be regularly vandalized.

Albums

( )	An album by Icelandic band Sigur Rós featuring songs in an entirely made-up language.
21½ Minutes in Berlin/23 Minutes in Brussels	A pair of live recordings by the band Suicide, with the B-side showing an audience grow increasingly agitated at Elvis Costello not performing, before devolving into a riot.
A Rubber Band Christmas	An album of Christmas music created using office supplies.
Altered States of America	This grindcore album by Agoraphobic Nosebleed has 100 tracks, including many under 15 seconds in length. It even has a track 0!
Amore	A Japan-exclusive city pop album from the granddaughter of former Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.
All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling	An early album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which had such a tiny release it was considered lost until a 2022 release.
The Boy Bands Have Won	Actually, this album's full title is "The Boy Bands Have Won" followed by a further 151 words. As of August 2009, it holds the record for the longest album title.
Christmas in the Stars	Jon Bon Jovi's recorded music debut was for a Star Wars-themed holiday album.
Cigarettes and Valentines	An entire record by Green Day whose master tracks were stolen. This led to the creation of American Idiot.
Dark Night of the Soul	Due to a legal dispute, this album was released with a blank CD-R.
Dr. Octagonecologyst	Who knew someone would rap about a homicidal extraterrestrial time-traveling gynaecologist?
Elvis' Greatest Shit	Not the one he was trying to pass the night he allegedly died.
Embrace (American band Embrace album) Embrace (English band Embrace album)	What happens to Wikipedia article titles when two different bands with the exact same name both release self-titled albums.
Eurobeat Disney	A Japan-exclusive album of eurobeat remixes to Disney songs. Made by some of the biggest names in eurobeat
Everywhere at the End of Time	A 61⁄2 hour concept album series portraying the stages of mental deterioration caused by Alzheimer's disease. Sounds obscure? It became popular in the most unexpected of places.
Everyday Chemistry	A supposed album by the Beatles, from an alternate dimension where they never broke up.
The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks	The title of this album led to obscenity charges.
Having Fun with Elvis on Stage	An official Elvis Presley live album that has no music, instead consisting of random on-stage banter and comments from between songs stripped of any coherence or context.
Helter Stupid	Negativland fabricated a moral panic claiming that their music had inspired a teenager to murder his family, and then created a sound collage album based on samples of media reporting on the story to make fun of them for falling for it.
In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy	A cover album of metal and hard rock songs in a jazzy mood by Pat Boone.
In Search of The	A box set isn't particularly unusual. A box set of 13 full albums that have never been released before, handmade by the artist, is pretty unusual.
The Lillywhite Sessions	Never officially released, and yet fans and critics can argue that it's the best "album" by the Dave Matthews Band.
Meow the Jewels	Mew mrrp meow purr mrrp.
Metal Machine Music	A 1975 album by Lou Reed that consists of 64 minutes of audio feedback, widely believed to have either been an elaborate joke, or an attempt by Reed to escape from a record label contract.
The Monty Python Matching Tie and Handkerchief	A three-sided LP.
Mouth Sounds	In which Modest Mouse, Alanis Morrisette, and Huey Lewis and the News are mixed with "All Star". ASMR lovers avoid, Shrek lovers welcome.
Musique pour Supermarché	This album by Jean-Michel Jarre had only a single copy produced, which was then auctioned off like a painting. The master tapes were subsequently destroyed, making the copy unique.
No Love Deep Web	To protest the album being delayed without their consent, the band leaked it online early while using a photo of the drummer's penis as cover art.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin	A Wu-Tang Clan album that only had one copy produced, being bought by Martin Shkreli for two million dollars, making it the most expensive work of music ever sold.
Orgasm	How a bunch of tripped-out hippies in 1969 decided to invite random people from the streets of New York to contribute to their experimental album, and in the process ended up inventing industrial music, noise rock and perhaps even black metal decades ahead of schedule.
The Road to Freedom	A "spectacular hit album" of... Scientology songs?
Sleep	An 81⁄2 hour concept album about sleep. Also available in a one-hour version if you're in a hurry.
Sleepify	Silence is golden, especially when you're trying to fund a world tour.
Smile	An unfinished Beach Boys album that is one of the most written-about and speculated-upon works in popular music history.
Sweet Insanity	A rejected Brian Wilson album that was written and recorded with his ex-psychologist. Includes a rap song that opens with the line, "My name is Brian and I'm the man, I write hit songs with the wave of my hand!" Wilson's fans threatened to murder a critic for publishing a positive review.
Trout Mask Replica	A chaotic 1969 pop album by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band containing bizarre and disjointed musical compositions.
Wake Up!	A rock album officially sanctioned by the Pope.
Yesterday and Today	A North American release from the Beatles that is most notorious for its album art, which features the Fab Four posing with decapitated baby dolls and chunks of raw meat.

Film

3 Dev Adam	A Turkish movie featuring (unlicensed) Captain America and El Santo battling evil Spider-Man. Quite successful in Turkey, resulting in other unlicensed films such as the infamous Turkish Star Wars.
100 Years	A movie that your grandchildren and great-grandchildren might be able to enjoy!
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn	A movie about a director who makes a bad movie, but can't remove his name from the credits because his real name is Alan Smithee. In reality, the movie about the movie was so bad that director Arthur Hiller was credited as Alan Smithee to disguise himself from the production.
Amazing Grace (2018 film)	A film that got assembled 40 years after the director forgot to use clapperboards, and the star didn't want you to see.
Ambiancé	An experimental film that was scheduled to have a thirty day-long running time, with the only copy being destroyed after its premiere, only for it to be unexpectedly cancelled by the director after its release date passed without a showing.
Atuk	A comedy screenplay, never filmed as its intended lead actors just kept dying.
Barbenheimer	The biggest movie phenomenon of 2023, where Malibu meets the Manhattan Project.
Big Dumb Object	A mysterious object (usually of extraterrestrial origin) in a film that is there simply to cause a sense of wonder.
Black and white hat symbolism in film	The hat, sir, whatever could it mean?
Cat Soup	An anime shortfilm about cute cats? Wrong! Actually a surrealist short film about concepts such as nihilism, Child Death, The Afterlife or lack thereof, etc.
William Castle	Horror director who loved a promotional gimmick. One film offered a $1000 insurance policy if you died of fright, and another offered audiences a full refund if they were too scared to see the ending.
Cocksucker Blues	A Rolling Stones documentary which was banned from being shown unless the director was physically present.
The Conqueror	John Wayne IS Genghis Khan! The filming location IS radioactive!
The Cure for Insomnia	A movie that runs for 85 hours. Not the longest movie ever screened though (see below).
The Day the Clown Cried	A notorious unreleased film about the Holocaust by Jerry Lewis – hey, it's a comedy!
Deafula	A vampire movie shot entirely in American Sign Language.
Death of a President	A mockumentary film created about the hypothetical future assassination of George W. Bush, released while he was still in office.
Dump months	The opposite of the summer movie season.
Empire	A film by Andy Warhol consisting entirely of eight hours of still footage of the Empire State Building.
Empires of the Deep	A $140 million unreleased US-Chinese aqua-fantasy film that sunk to the depths of the sea...
Fidos Award	For the world's best acting dogs.
First on the Moon	Proof that the Soviets got there, thirty years before Armstrong and Aldrin didn't.
Fritz the Cat	"We're not rated X for nothin', baby!"
Him	One of the most sought-after lost films is a 1974 gay porno about Jesus.
I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney	"I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me." —Ben Affleck, Academy Award winner
In the Aftermath	A B-movie studio gets the rights to a surrealist anime and re-edits it into a post-apocalyptic thriller.
Italian Spiderman	An Australian production made with the goal of being a tribute to old Italian action films.
Lee Kin-yan	A Hong Kong actor repeatedly cast in Stephen Chow films as a nose-picking, bearded transvestite.
List of films featuring giant monsters	You are never safe in Tokyo.
List of films featuring time loops	Study this to know what to do if you're trapped in a time loop.
List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck"	Golly!
Logistics	The world's longest movie ever made, it follows the entire five-week process of making and selling a pedometer in reverse chronological order.
The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World	A movie that runs for 48 hours. Despite its title, it isn't the world's longest movie, but the jury's still out on whether it's the most meaningless....
Maidstone	A film notable for a real, bloody fight between its director and its star actor that was kept in the final edit.
Manic Pixie Dream Girl	A female stock character in (usually) movies who is extremely eccentric and girlish, and serves mainly to motivate and/or provide character development for the male protagonist.
Manos: The Hands of Fate	A low-budget film created by a fertilizer salesman from Texas, which is often considered to be the worst film of all time.
The Many Faces of Jesus Gay Jesus film hoax	A very controversial abandoned film which would have depicted a bisexual Jesus engaged in robbery and drunkenness, personally condemned by Pope Paul VI. Its screenwriter was personally banned from entering the United Kingdom following its announcement. Since the 1980s, a widespread hoax has came up claiming that a similar film will feature Jesus as a swinger.
Mockbuster	Not the movie you want, but the bargain-bin equivalent.
Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki)	The second longest film ever shot: ten whole days of one decaying building Life After People-style and first screened in front of itself. The directors have a point.
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish	A 1910s silent film about an ace detective who takes loads of cocaine.
Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead	Part 2 has the longest film title in the English language.
Norodom Sihanouk filmography	The prolific, decades-long filmmaking career of the former king and prime minister of Cambodia.
Oscar bait	There are certain rules one follows when making an Oscar film. Including mental illness, the Holocaust and Meryl Streep in your film also helps.
On the Art of the Cinema	North Korean cinema is best Korean cinema.
The Overcoat	A Russian animated film that the director has been struggling to complete for forty years.
Paint Drying	Created to test the patience of the British Board of Film Classification.
Palm Dog Award	An award given out every year at the Cannes Film Festival to celebrate outstanding performances by dogs in movies.
Passage de Vénus	A six second long "film" made in 1876, consisting of plates capturing the 1874 transit of Venus. Currently rated a 6.8 on IMDb.
Patterson–Gimlin film	Bigfoot's most famous appearance.
Pink Flamingos	A cult 1972 film following "the filthiest person alive", notorious for its deliberately disgusting content and culminating in to protagonist eating dog feces.
Plan 9 from Outer Space	The epitome of so-bad-it's-good cinema.
Pulgasari	An anti-feudal Godzilla-esque cult film, supposedly an allegory for unchecked capitalism. It was directed by Shin Sang-ok, a South Korean filmmaker who Kim Jong Il had ordered to be kidnapped along with his wife so that they could make films for the North.
Rampart	A 2013 Woody Harrelson flick now infamous for its horrible marketing, including possibly the worst AMA of all time.
Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa	An all-star cast appear in this badly written, badly animated picture. The producer apparently gave the animators $500,000 and didn't check their work until he saw it on television.
Raza	A drama about a family's roles in the Spanish Civil War that was written and supposingly ghost-directed by Francisco Franco himself. Takes "history is written by the victors" to a new level.
Reefer Madness	A 1930s anti-marijuana propaganda film which failed at its task so badly it became a cult classic within the marijuana subculture.
Return of the Ewok	One of the rare cases of lost media within the Star Wars franchise.
Roar	Back in the 1970s, a family of African wildlife activists gathered together to make a movie with over 150 untrained big cats, leading to seventy members of the cast and crew getting injured. Its genre? A comedy, of course!
The Room Tommy Wiseau	Perhaps the worst film ever created, filled with bad acting, poor dialogue, scenes that go nowhere, crazy behind-the-scenes, and more. And, of course, the man behind it all.
Roundhay Garden Scene	The first ever moving picture, which lasted for an epic two seconds.
Saving Christmas	A Christmas movie directed, co-written, co-produced, and co-starring a guy who mainly did music videos for blink-182. Along with former teen star, Kirk Cameron, who's in the lead role. The film depicts among other things, messages on why being greedy and materialistic is good actually, War on Christmas conspiracies, Saint Nicholas violently assaulting Arius for his infamous heresy, and a hip hop dance number set to Angels we have heard on high. Unsurprisingly, it was received poorly, but if you ask Kirk why that is, he'll say it was because redditors (particularly ones from r/atheism) and pagans review-bombed the film.
Self-Portrait	An experimental film by Yoko Ono, featuring a 42-minute shot of John Lennon's half-erect penis. A later Lennon/Ono collaboration called Erection is surprisingly unrelated.
Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk	Was the world's first video mashup British WW2 propaganda?
Shaken, not stirred	Why 007 prefers his martini shaken.
Sharknado	Exactly what it implies: Sharks + Tornado = the best damn disaster movie on earth. You better know it's got an ungodly amount of sequels and a cult following too!
Smell-O-Vision	A system designed to enhance films with odors. Used once for the 1960 film Scent of Mystery and never again.
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man	"I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us!"
Stinking badges	Something nobody needs. Possibly the most frequently quoted and misquoted line from a movie ever.
Taylor Mead's Ass	An Andy Warhol film consisting of a single prolonged shot of exactly what the title says.
Titanic (1943)	The Nazi propaganda version. Oddly enough, popular in the Soviet Union for its message that British/U.S. capitalism sank the ship.
Twin films	When two studios make the same idea at the same time.
The Uranus Experiment	An unusually high-concept porn film that contains a real scene of sex in zero-gravity and was nominated for a Nebula science fiction award as an act of protest by a group of disgruntled authors.
United Passions	A $30 million film sponsored by FIFA about how great they are. Came out right after the 2015 FIFA corruption case came to light. One of the lowest grossing sports movies of all time.
Unsimulated sex	When two actors really have sex for a scene, rather than a simulation.
Who Killed Captain Alex?	A 2010 Ugandan action-comedy film produced on a budget of $85.
Wilhelm scream	A stock sound effect first recorded in 1951 and used in dozens of films (including seven Star Wars films, two Lord of the Rings films and Kill Bill).
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey	Horror movie about Winnie-the-Pooh, from the director who probably hated that bear as a kid. The film went onto "win" five Razzies.
Zyzzyx Road	Budget: $1.2 million. Box office: 30 bucks. It makes sense in context.

Television

2010 Georgian news report hoax	If you're going to broadcast fake news about the collapse of government and a Russian invasion, maybe don't do it in the country where that's most believable.
Al Murray's Compete for the Meat	A British game show where the top prize is a frozen chicken and the second prize is some sausages.
Alternative 3	An April Fools joke by an ITV science show leads many to believe that scientists were being kidnapped to prepare for the colonization of Mars.
Amaan Ramazan	A Pakistani reality show where one of the prizes was orphaned babies.
Anti-Barney humor	An article for all Barney & Friends haters.
Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos	Forget Turn-On – this never even made it to the end of its only episode. An American attempt fared little better.
BBC Green Book	Comedy show broadcasting standards, circa 1949. Avoid the vulgar use of "basket", don't joke about stammering, and whatever you do don't mention the McGillycuddy of the Reeks!
Bernd das Brot	The mascot of a German children's television network: a chronically depressed loaf of bread who laments his life and enjoys very boring activities.
The Canadian Conspiracy	A mockumentary released in 1985 that asserts that Canada is subverting the United States by taking over its media.
Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion	On a clear night in April 1986, a frustrated electrical engineer jams HBO's signal to protest against its rates for satellite dish owners in what has been dubbed an act of "video terrorism".
"The City on the Edge of Forever"	How an internal fight between the screenwriter and the series creator resulted in one of the most celebrated episodes of the original Star Trek series.
Conspiracy 58	A mockumentary that claimed that the 1958 World Cup was never actually held. Despite being revealed as a hoax at the end, people still believed it.
Dinner for One	A classic British comedy sketch, virtually unknown in its homeland, that has become the most-repeated television programme in German history.
Don't Scare the Hare	A British television game show involving a large robotic hare and an underground forest. It was not popular and lasted only one season.
Flanderization	When a TV character becomes a literal caricature of their initial form.
Flemish Secession hoax	Our regular programming is now interrupted to declare independence from Belgium.
The Force is with Cristal Beer	Imagine waking up to watch Star Wars only to be served beer advertisements.
Friday night death slot	Where TV shows go to die.
Graggle Simpson	What do you mean, "who"? You know him! He's your favorite Simpsons character!
Greg Packer	A man on the street, no matter which street you're talking about.
De Grote Donorshow	An apparently terminally ill woman offers her kidney to one of three lucky patients live on TV. Controversy erupts before broadcast, in which it is then revealed that the whole show is a hoax meant to draw attention to the lack of available organ donors in the Netherlands.
Guy Goma BBC interview	A man who went to the BBC for a job interview is instead interviewed on its news channel about the Apple Corps v. Apple Computer lawsuit.
Heil Honey I'm Home!	Hitler has his own sitcom, with his Jewish neighbors.
History of Pop	How a TV program guide became an actual channel.
*"Hold on Tight!" (Inside No. 9)*	An entirely fake episode of the dark comedy anthology series Inside No. 9, featuring mocked-up photos and clips for a trailer, designed to trick the show's viewers.
"How to Eat with Your Butt"	The plot and the title of this South Park episode are pretty strange, even by the show's standards.
*Hypothetical*	The only quiz containing only hypothetical questions, such as: "You must steal Russell Crowe's shower gel. How do you do it?", "How much money do you have to be paid to eat a packet of crisps every time you have a conversation with someone for a year?", and the stone-cold original: "Big hat or small hat?"
I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant	A documentary series on TLC. You can probably guess the plot.
It's So Funny	A North Korean comedy show which is anything but funny.
I Wanna Marry "Harry"	An American reality show to find "Prince Harry" (really an actor they tried to pass off as him) a wife. Meghan Markle was not a contestant.
John Dillermand	A Danish children's series featuring a man gets into all sorts of (family friendly) trouble with his elongated penis.
Judaism in Rugrats	A Maccababy's gotta do what a Maccababy's gotta do.
Jumping the shark	Metaphor, based on something that Fonzie actually did on an episode of Happy Days, for the moments when popular TV series lose all credibility and have undeniably entered their twilight years.
Michael Larson	Through countless VCR recordings and pattern memorization, this man became Press Your Luck's biggest winner ever.
*List of Saturday Night Live* incidents**	From Ashlee Simpson's lip-sync fail to Adrien Brody's possibly racist introduction to Sean Paul.
Max Headroom signal hijacking	TV signals in Chicago are twice overpowered on 22 November 1987 by broadcasts featuring a person (possibly a male) disguised as the 1980s virtual TV character Max Headroom. The source of the broadcasts and the people involved remain unknown.
Mikhail Gorbachev Pizza Hut commercial	The real former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev starred in a Pizza Hut commercial. What more can I say?
My Husband's Not Gay	Putting the bi in Bible, this reality TV special features Mormons who love men but still marry women. It'll make you want to say "Hasa diga eebowai" by the end.
Nasubi Susunu! Denpa Shōnen	A man who became famous after appearing in a reality show in which he was locked in an apartment for 11 months until he won ¥1 million from mail-in sweepstakes. Said show also featured, among other things, two men who had to hitchhike their way from the Cape of Good Hope to Norway, a challenge to shave the beard of Fidel Castro, and a segment in which baseball fans would only be allowed to eat if their supported team won a game.
Odagiri effect	Turns out that women find sexy men on TV shows quite appealing.
Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon	Proof that the isekai genre either is or isn't out of ideas, depending on whom you ask.
Reception of The Simpsons	An in-depth analysis of whether, when and why people stopped finding The Simpsons funny.
Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell	What's wrong Shaun? Why must you be mad as hell?
Will Smith–Chris Rock slapping incident	What happens when a G.I. Jane joke goes horribly wrong. At an awards ceremony. On worldwide television.
Soap opera rapid aging syndrome	A tragic condition suffered by some young characters on soap operas.
Southern Television broadcast interruption	A news program in England interrupted by an interstellar message from Vrillon, representative of the mighty Ashtar Galactic Command.
Space Cadets	Four lucky average Joes got tricked into thinking that they were shot into space. The entire show was, in fact, so planned out that people thought the contestants were actors - basically making the show a prank in itself.
Spaghetti-tree hoax	Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
Star Wars Holiday Special	What do you get when you combine Star Wars and Christmas? One of the worst films of all time.
Superstar USA	A music competition looking for the worst singers America has to offer.
Tomorrow's Pioneers	A Hamas-produced children's show co-hosted by various costumed characters, including a Mickey Mouse ripoff, who are mostly killed by Jews in some violent manner.
Turn-On	An ABC comedy series that was cancelled even before the first episode had finished.
"Turner Doomsday Video"	When he founded CNN, Ted Turner made sure they would be ready for the end of the world.
TV pickup	Britons regularly cause massive power surges by simultaneously making tea during program breaks.
Uh Oh!	90's Canadian children's game show, with an energetic wacky host, fun trivia questions, and a leather daddy dumping slime on kids! What could go wrong!
Very special episode	A genre of television episodes with controversial life lessons interweaved into the storyline, popularized by Blossom.
Wank Week	A Channel 4 project for all those who think there aren't enough jerks on TV.
Tommy Westphall	How an autistic child and Detective Munch may be responsible for more than 200 TV series.
Who's Your Daddy?	To win $100,000, adoptees have to pick their biological father out of 25 men.
Zuiikin' English	Combines gymnastic exercises with the teaching of "useful" English language phrases, such as "Spare me my life!", "I am allergic to penicillin", "I have a bad case of diarrhea" and "Lovely golf weather today!"

Video games

Action 52	Inspired by Taiwanese NES multicarts, one businessman sets to create an all-American version with original games... but leaves the devs only 3 months to create 52 of them, resulting in disaster. Also, a tie-in comic book for a franchise that never got started, and a contest where the game is so bugged you can't even enter it.
The Adventures of Ninja Nanny & Sherrloch Sheltie	An "educational" PC game from 1993 that became notorious decades later for being built upon random public domain media strewn together in a wildly nonsensical fashion, complete with animation, audio clips, hyperlinked text, and some sort of plot.
Atari video game burial	Are your video games not selling? Why not do what Atari did and bury them in a New Mexico landfill?
Bad Rats	A physics-based puzzle game about rats killing cats. It was so bad it became a viral gag gift and got a sequel.
Bartle taxonomy of player types	What type of gamer are you?
Battle of B-R5RB	A player-versus-player battle in Eve Online which involved over 7,500 players, lasted 21 hours, and cost over $300,000 worth of in-game currency.
Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em	An early "erotic" game for the Atari 2600. Control a pair of nude women trying to catch and eat falling semen.
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing	A racing game considered one of the worst of all time with Metacritic's worst-ever score of 8/100. It has opponents that don't move, the ability to drive through buildings and accelerate infinitely in reverse, and a notorious "YOU'RE WINNER !" [sic] message after each race.
BMX XXX	A controversial 2002 video game mixing strippers with BMX cycling.
Bob's Game	An unreleased homebrew game of a game, in a game, within a game. The developer went on a protest against the evil corporation known as "Gantendo".
Boong-Ga Boong-Ga	The first arcade game about shoving a giant finger up someone's anus.
Boss key	A special key or key combination used in computer games to quickly hide the game from superiors or coworkers.
Breast physics	Follow the bouncing boobs!
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm	A sequel in name only to a classic beat 'em up, based on an unrelated comic book that predates the first game, and programmed by none other than Elon Musk.
Calculator	The best video game ever: A $10 software calculator.
Cat hair mustache puzzle	Considered among the worst puzzles of any video game.
Catechumen	Hallelujah! Shoot possessed Roman soldiers with a magical sword until they turn Christian and start to pray.
Chex Quest	Doom for ages 6 and up, made as a promotion for Chex cereal.
Cho Aniki	A long-running series of games from Japan, known for their absurdist humor and homoeroticism, about the quest of sweaty bodybuilders for protein supplements.
Communist Mutants from Space	A Cold War Space Invaders clone in which you do battle with the Mother Creature, driven mad by radioactive vodka.
Concord	What happens when you try to make people spend $40 plus microtransactions for a genre known for free-to-play fare; a game that spent over 8 years in development, but lasted only a fortnight (14 days, or 2 weeks) from its August 2024 release. For perspective: The average lifespan of a housefly (Musca domestica) is around twice the period this game was available (28 days). Still didn't stop them from making an adaptation, though.
Corrupted Blood incident	An unintentional virtual epidemic in World of Warcraft, which became an important medical case study.
Cow level	A secret level in Diablo II which originated as a player inside joke.
Crab Champions	From the guy who brought you "Crab Rave". Be a crab. Have a gun. Shoot up a beach. 🦀.
Cubic Ninja	A game that ended up being resold for over $500 due to its unintentional ability to let a 3DS run homebrew.
Dance Dance Immolation	It's exactly like Dance Dance Revolution, just with flamethrowers pointed at you.
Dark Room Sex Game	Contains explicit sex. Contains no graphics.
Development of Duke Nukem Forever	A chronicle of fourteen years of development hell, complete with four changes of engines, lawsuits, and profane responses to company executives. The end result was judged by critics to have been very much not worth the wait.
Don't Buy This	A rare example of truth in advertising.
Edge Games	A company that decided that the "Edge" in their name was so important that it started to sue everything video game-related using that word. Until Electronic Arts got involved.
Eggplant run	A challenge playthrough of Spelunky in which you carry an eggplant and toss it into the final boss's face.
Ethnic Cleansing	Perhaps the most racist video game ever made. See also Special Force.
Fortnite Holocaust Museum	A virtual museum about the victims of the Holocaust, created in Fortnite.
Freedom Town, USA	A Fortnite map that was meant to promote Kamala Harris' presidential campaign in 2024. Guess who ended up winning the election.
The Goat Puzzle	Goats' contributions to gaming aren't all positive.
Goat Simulator	What do you mean, you've never fantasised about being a goat? Enough people have to warrant the oddly named sequel Goat Simulator 3.
Goodboy Galaxy	A video game made for the Game Boy Advance ...made in 2023 (for its 20th anniversary).
The Great Giana Sisters	A game that was withdrawn from the shelves virtually as soon as it went on them.
Grezzo 2	Doom mod that spoofs modern Italian culture, featuring blasphemous references to the Catholic Church, including the main character killing Jesus. Twice.
Hatoful Boyfriend	A dating sim where your romantic partners are all sapient birds.
Hong Kong 97	A video game where you play as Bruce Lee's superpowered, heroin-addicted cousin, who has been assigned to kill the entire population of China. The giant head of Deng Xiaoping has been revived as a weapon of mass destruction and the death screen displays an actual dead body from the Yugoslav Wars.
"Hot Coffee"	All you had to do was do yo' damn girlfriend, CJ!
"Hunt Down the Freeman"	A crappy Half-Life fan game that has unpaid developers and youtubers as voice actors. The plot involves you hunting down the titular Freeman (Who isn't even the Freeman)
I Am Bread	You play as bread.
"I am Error"	A line line said by a character in Zelda II,
I Love Bees	A very creative marketing strategy for Halo 2.
I Love You, Colonel Sanders!	A dating sim where you romance KFC founder Colonel Sanders. The best part: It's official.
Incidente em Varginha	Brazil's first ever first-person shooter is based on a UFO sighting. Also used to train Army division soldiers.
Incredible Crisis	Just an ordinary day in the life of a family...
Islamic Fun	All the classic Muslim-themed educational games you could want. Help build a mosque! Race some rabbits! Defend Lebanon against Israel's 1978 invasion! Wait, what?
JFK Reloaded	A first-person shooter where the player gets to kill President John F. Kennedy and is rewarded for accurately recreating his assassination.
Kanye Quest 3030	Just an innocent game about Kanye West. There definitely aren't any secret cults lying around!
Kanye Zone	He's definitely in his zone...
Killer7	Play an assassin inhabited by the personas of seven dead hitmen and use their abilities to fight a terrorist group of virus-infected humans while uncovering conspiracies about Japan's interference in US politics and being haunted by your former victims.
Laden VS USA	In the early 2000s, a shady Chinese LCD game manufacturer decided that 9/11 was the hottest new cash-grab.
Lethal Company	Who would win? A multibillion dollar franchise with 2 decades of experience under it's belt or a singular furry who used to make roblox games.
*List of Doom* ports**	Slay demons on your PC, your console, your phone, your... thermostat?
List of video games notable for negative reception	And we were so sure No Man's Sky would be a hit!
LSD: Dream Emulator	The trippiest game in existence.
Mighty No. 9	A video game notable for having the longest closing credits of any media, at just under 3 hours and 48 minutes long, in part thanks to the game's sluggish and somewhat mismanaged development and the developers' decision to credit all 71,494 of the game's Kickstarter backers.
MissingNo.	A Pokémon species that only appears as the result of a glitch and has since been the subject of many sociological studies.
Mister Mosquito	Be a mosquito.
Moonbase Alpha	A simulation video game officially published by NASA themselves that is most well known for its built-in text-to-speech function.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog	As an April Fools' joke, Sega released a free visual novel where you have to investigate the murder of Sonic. It's sweeter than it sounds.
Ninja Golf	Hole in your enemies!
Nuclear Gandhi	According to an urban legend, a bug in Civilization makes Mahatma Gandhi prone to start a nuclear war. More recent games in the series made it a feature.
Overwatch and pornography	Yes, many people would like to "Nerf This!"
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors	A compendium of games to trick your friends, including Desert Bus, a painstakingly realistic eight-hour bus journey from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas.
Pepsiman	Save people from thirst! But not from tooth decay.
PETA satirical browser games	Bored of playing your usual video games? Try PETA's Super Chick Sisters and Super Tofu Boy, they will definitely get you to work.
Phalanx	Who knew that putting an old man playing a banjo on the box of an unrelated game would make for effective marketing?
Piglet's Big Game	From before Blood and Honey, here's Piglet in a survival horror game that was rediscovered after 21 years and compared to Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Good luck finding a copy though, because they're selling for hundreds on ebay.
Playing History 2 - Slave Trade	An educational game that featured a minigame where you would fit slaves into a slave ship like Tetris pieces.
Pokémon and pornography	Hey guys, did you know that in terms of male human and female Pokémon breeding, Vaporeon is the most compatible Pokémon for humans?
Pokémon Uranium	A fangame set in a region of the Pokémon universe that was victim to a nuclear disaster.
Polybius	An arcade game that supposedly causes its players to go insane.
Pyongyang Racer	The height of North Korea's gaming industry tries to lull you into travelling there.
Quest for Bush	A first-person shooter, released by al-Qaeda's propaganda arm, with George W. Bush as its final boss.
Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon	A game for the Super Nintendo that aims to educate kids about the harmful effects of smoking. The game's publisher, Raya, also published a few other health-themed games, such as Captain Novolin about diabetes and Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus about asthma.
Seaman	A game where you take care of a fish with a human head while being guided by Leonard Nimoy.
Sex with Hitler	Want to get frisky with the Führer?
Sex with Stalin	Seize the means of (re)production!
Simlish	The language spoken by characters in The Sims.
Soda Drinker Pro	The gamified menial task of drinking soda that contains a hidden surrealist minigame compilation.
Sonic Dreams Collection	This surreal fangame, said to be unfinished Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Dreamcast, pulls no punches to the notorious Sonic fandom.
Spanish for Everyone!	"Let's make our educational game end in a drug cartel murder, nobody will play it anyway" -the developers, probably.
Special Force	Hezbollah recreated its battles against Israel as a first-person shooter... twice. See also Ethnic Cleansing.
Stalin vs. Martians	The Man of Steel takes on an alien menace.
The Story of Kamikuishiki Village	A strategy game created by the same people responsible for Hong Kong 97 where you play as Shoko Asahara and the end goal is to carry out the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Often mistakenly believed to have been created by Asahara's cult themselves as propaganda.
Super Columbine Massacre RPG!	A gamified(?) recreation of the Columbine massacre, featuring a Hell sequence where the perpetrators fight South Park-style Satan. Allegedly the Dawson College shooter's favorite game.
Syobon Action	A platformer known for its levels designed to cause extreme frustration.
Takeshi no Chōsenjō	A deliberately unfair and confusing video game made by Takeshi Kitano, noted video game hater.
Tetris effect	A psychological effect where Tetris players start arranging blocks in the real world.
Thatcher's Techbase	A mod of Doom II where the main goal is to kill an undead Margaret Thatcher.
The Thompson Twins Adventure	One of the only video games to ever be released via vinyl record.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion	A young turnip goes on a quest to evade taxes; see also its sequel Turnip Boy Robs a Bank.
Untitled Goose Game	A game where you can bother the inhabitants of an English village. As a goose.
Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!	A game parodying advertisements for mobile games.
You Have to Burn the Rope	...and doing the titular task takes about half as long as listening to the credits song.

Internet memes and online culture

2 Hours Doing Nothing	An Indonesian kid who gained fame by staring into his camera for two hours.
A group where we all pretend to be boomers	A group of Facebook friends who decided to pretend to be elderly.
All your base are belong to us	A phrase that originated in the 1989 video game Zero Wing and sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002.
Babiniku	The phenomenon of men on the Internet depicting themselves as anime women, often without using voice changers.
The Backrooms	A very strange online urban legend originating from the concept of liminal spaces. And it all came from an image taken from someone renovating a furniture store into a hobby shop.
Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash	A Facebook group dedicated to memes about American politician Bernie Sanders.
Bogdanoff twins	A pair of French twin brothers known for their extravagant looks and (pseudo)scientific claims; which made them the subject of a long-lasting internet meme involving aliens, secret knowledge and bear markets.
Boobquake	Female users of social networking websites agree to determine whether their scandalous clothing can cause earthquakes.
Bowsette	The Internet was once titillated over this Bowser-Peach fusion.
British scientists	Not a list of some scientific pioneers from Europe, but a Russian internet meme.
The Bus Uncle	A Hong Kong resident gets into an uncomfortably tense argument with a fellow passenger—all caught on video.
Bronies	You thought My Little Pony could never be loved by grown men. Wrong. Very wrong.
Carstuckgirls.com	An erotic(?) website devoted to women trying to free their cars from various obstacles.
Chad	From the incel forums comes this whole new slang.
Cinnamon challenge	Unless you enjoy lung damage, please do not try this at home. Actually, better yet, don't try it at all.
Consumption of Tide Pods	Ever thought a Tide pod looked kind of like candy? Apparently you're not alone.
Countryballs	A comic genre with balls and other bits for different countries doing what real countries do.
Crush on Obama	That's great.
Cursed image	Low quality images with a mysterious aura, sometimes with a comedic effect.
Cute cat theory of digital activism	"Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers. Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats." — Ethan Zuckerman
Dancing baby	One of the very first internet memes: a weird 3D baby dancing in 1996.
DashCon	A Tumblr convention where the organisers unexpectedly announced that the hotel needed $17,000 extra - and that was just the first day. Anyone fancy an extra hour in the ball pit?
Dave rule	"Dave-to-girl ratio" as gender balance criterion.
Doge	very readers, such article, much wiki
Depths of Wikipedia	A social media account that's basically this Project page (most of the time). we know who you are annie.
Elsagate	Here kids, watch these YouTube videos with Elsa and Spider-Man, I'm sure nothing inappropriate will be on them...
Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten	If that's not a good enough reason why you shouldn't, I don't know what is.
Extremely online	A state that everybody reading this can probably relate to.
Florida Man	Superhero native to the state of Florida best known for his frequent run-ins with law enforcement and intoxicating substances.
Getting to Philosophy	All links lead to Philosophy.
Godwin's law	Every long, protracted online discussion always ends with comparisons of others to Hitler. Really...
Goncharov	The 1973 Martin Scorsese classic... that was entirely made up by the Internet 49 years later.
Googling	Google created a verb that is really in the dictionary.
Half-Life: Full Life Consequences	The worst Half-Life fan fiction ever written, later adapted to video.
Hampster Dance	A web page featuring dancing hamsters set to music.
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point"	A 2018 ClickHole article about a truly devastating moment, complete with a stock image of a random Spanish man.
Homunculus loxodontus	A bizarre blob-like creature known in Russia as "The One Who Waits".
Sam Hyde	A transgressive American comedian blamed for numerous terrorist attacks and killings.
Instagram egg	An image of any old egg...is what this egg would be if it didn't take over Instagram and become the most-liked post on the internet until December 2022.
It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers	A viral online essay celebrating the joys of Autumn.
The Jerma985 Dollhouse	Streamer sets about making an interactive version of The Truman Show with himself as the main character.
*Joe Biden (The Onion)*	What if Joe Biden was actually pretty rad?
Josh fight	The face-off of the century to determine who could keep the name Josh.
Eduard Khil	Our eternal Mr. Trololo.
Lasagna Cat	Live-action reenactments of Garfield strips followed by absurd concluding pieces, including a mouse performing oral sex on Garfield, Odie committing suicide, and John Blyth Barrymore musing over a single strip for a whole hour. Don't even get me started on the ending to "Sex Survey Results"...
Lenin was a mushroom	A hoax that Vladimir Lenin consumed large quantities of psychedelic mushrooms and eventually became a mushroom himself.
Markovian parallax denigrate	Three random words that caused over 25 years of mystery.
Meow Wars	A flame war on Usenet that lasted for over 2 years.
Microsoft acquisition of the Roman Catholic Church	Sadly for those who were hoping for an online Eucharist, this was an early Internet hoax.
Miguxês	A brief guide to Portuguese Internet slang.
NAFO (group)	An internet meme and social media movement which fights Russian internet propaganda through shitposting and trolling.
Neuro-sama	Who said a VTuber even needs a human behind it? To that idea, Neuro says "(Filtered)".
No Nut November	...and its antithesis, Destroy Dick December.
Nukemap	New York got blown up by the Tsar Bomba! Well, at least you can do that in this.
Numa Numa	Or how a fat kid dancing to the O-Zone song "Dragostea din tei" in front of his computer became very popular.
Oddly satisfying videos	Have you ever wondered why slime gets such a pull on people?
Omission of New Zealand from maps	New Zealand is forgotten from maps so often it has become a meme.
Omission of Tasmania from maps of Australia	And Tasmania is not any luckier...
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog	Little-known fact: all articles on this page were written by a team of Golden Retrievers. And thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, you didn't know until now.
OS-tan	A small Internet phenomenon where certain types of software (including various Microsoft and Linux operating systems) are depicted as young anime women.
Peak beard	The rise and fall of human beards.
PewDiePie vs T-Series	A competition between two YouTube channels to be the most subscribed channel.
Philosophical zombie	I am dead, therefore I eat brains.
Planet X637Z-43	A planet covered in cannabis! Well, that's what they want you to think.
Press F to pay respects	Have you ever wondered why you might see the letter "F" being spammed on pages about someone's death?
Rickrolling	Careful: that link you're about to click on might take you to a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".
Rule 34	"If it exists, there is Internet porn of it."
Mark V. Shaney	A fake Usenet user whose computer-generated postings were created using Markov chain techniques.
Shitposting	🗿
Shock site	Don't look! (No, really.)
Shrek fandom	Maybe "fandom" isn't the correct word?
Sitting and Smiling	A YouTube series in which a man sits and smiles for four hours, documenting his descent into inevitable madness.
Skibidi Toilet	One of the most popular web series among the children of today is a series of animated YouTube Shorts about the battle for world domination between a race of toilets with human heads and a race of humans with cameras for heads.
Storm Area 51	An Internet meme which, as all great things, began on Facebook and spiralled a bit of out control, and of course Wikipedians couldn't be stopped in making it its own article.
Suntukan sa Ace Hardware	Fight Club taking place at a hardware store of all places.
Techno Viking	When the protagonist of a meme sues its creator.
Ted Cruz–Zodiac Killer meme	A mock conspiracy theory gone wild.
Time Cube	The personal website of a schizophrenic old man who claimed that time is "cubic" in nature and that all of modern science is a lie.
John Titor	The name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001.
This Man	The dreamiest man you'll ever meet.
Tourist guy	The picture of a Hungarian man on 9/11.
Twitter suspensions	Tweeting's not a right, it's a privilege.
Unusual eBay listings	Those strange things people sell on the Internet...
uwu	notices ur Wikipedia article owo what's this? uwu
Very erotic very violent	See also very good very mighty.
Wiki rabbit hole	Starting from an article about video cameras, after a few clicks you start reading about science fiction, then you start reading about conspiracy theories, then you start reading about politics, then about modern history, then about languages, then about ancient history, then about modern history again, then about urban legends, etc etc... eventually you land on a Wikipedia project page and go insane.
wikiFeet	The world's largest image sharing website devoted to foot fetishism.
WTFPL	A public domain software license whose abbreviation stands for "Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License".
*Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness* debate**	Is it "into" or "Into"? Listed at Wikipedia's lamest edit wars.

Festivals

Kanamara Matsuri	A phallus festival in Kawasaki, Japan.
Mexico City Alebrije Parade	Parade and contest of giant alebrijes ("colorful monsters").
Testicle festival	"Would you like to supersize those?"

Stage shows

All in a Row	A play about a child on the autism spectrum... portrayed as an inhuman-looking puppet who makes his family's lives miserable.
The Book of Mormon (musical)	A Tony Award winning musical about Mormon missionaries in Uganda. Doesn't sound that odd right? That is until you hear about the parts involving a song about Ugandan villagers repeating a phrase that basically translates to a phrase cursing out god, a running gag about a man having maggots in his scrotum, a song partially about Conversion Therapy, one of the missionaries talking about Joseph Smith having sex with frogs in order to cure his AIDS, a musical number basically equating Breaking rule 72 (leaving a missionary companion behind) and stealing a Doughnut with a maple glaze to starting World War II and The Holocaust, conquering most of the known world, killing people and committing necrophilia, and letting O.J. Simpson free, A musical number involving a group of villagers reciting wildly inacurate Mormon History (Which features parts such as Brigham Young's nose being turned into a clitoris as a punishment after cutting off his daughter's, Joseph Smith dying of dysentary, and ending with a giant orgy in "Sal Tlay Ka Siti"), and a new church being created that mixes Mormonism with pop culture. Unsurprisingly, the minds behind South Park were directly involved within the making of the musical.
Cherry Sisters	The first truly "so bad it's good" act, whose vaudeville performances drew packed houses of audiences who just wanted to hurl abuse at them. Sued newspapers for printing a negative review of them, and lost.
The Elvis Dead	Evil Dead II retold in the style of Elvis Presley, later released on VHS in 2020. "I gonna build a groovy chainsaw arm".
In My Life	Brain cancer, OCD, a child killed by a drunk driver... all subjects made light of in this surreal musical by the guy who wrote "You Light Up My Life".
Jahrhundertring	The centenary production of the Ring cycle was transported to the Industrial Revolution, with the gods as capitalist fat cats and the Rhinemaidens as prostitutes. Near-riots ensued.
Jerry Springer: The Opera	This musical has got it all, from God and Satan to the KKK.
Moose Murders	A bizarre play that became a byword for the worst of Broadway. Signature moment: an apparently-unplanned scene where a paraplegic man wrapped in bandages gets up to kick a man in a moose costume in the crotch.
Mortal Kombat: Live Tour	A family friendly adapation of a violent video game. To make things even better, there was audience participation.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark	At $75 million, the most expensive Broadway musical, which is infamous for its troubled production history and cast member accidents. Also holds the record for the largest number of preview showings (182) before the official opening.

See also

Food

Think this Chinese character is threatening? You'll need to write it twice to describe your favorite Shaanxi noodles.

Engastration – here in the form of turducken.

Alcohol-infused whipped cream	Do you like to squirt whipped cream right into your mouth from the bottle? This should spice that right up.
Ant egg soup	A nostalgic soup with a "distinctive, sour pop".
Ayds	Ayds was a great way to lose weight, until the mid-1980s...
Bacon Explosion	Not as dangerous as it sounds. Unless you're a Vegan of course.
Bacon ice cream	They said we were mad... they said we could never combine the world's two greatest foods. They were wrong!
Banana production in Iceland	Weirder than fermented shark?
Biangbiang noodles	A type of Chinese noodle whose name is written with an incredibly complex Chinese character.
Boneless Fish	A frozen fish scaled, gutted and deboned, then glued to its original shape using a food-grade enzyme.
British Rail sandwich	A culinary match to the quality of the train service.
Carmine	A common food dye manufactured from insects.
Casu martzu	Italian "maggot cheese" – cheese designed to be eaten while it is infested with cheese fly larvae.
Century egg	A Chinese dish which involves preserving a duck, chicken or quail egg for several weeks to several months before eating.
Chả rươi	Vietnamese dish made from the polychaete worm.
Chocolate-coated marshmallow treats	Notable for the huge variety of racist names given to them all over the world.
Chubby bunny	A common (but sometimes lethal) game played with marshmallows.
Cockle bread	Bread made by English women in the seventeenth century that involved kneading and pressing against the woman's buttocks.
Competitive eating	In which the main goal is the quick and vast consumption of food.
Cookie cake	Schrödinger's dessert.
Deep-fried Mars bar	A Scottish delicacy, often touted as an example of their diet's unhealthiness. See also deep fried Twinkies, deep fried pizza, and deep fried Oreos.
Dilberito	A vegan burrito promoted by Dilbert. "Because of the veggie and legume content, three bites of the Dilberito made you fart so hard your intestines formed a tail." - Dilbert creator Scott Adams
Dishwasher salmon	Salmon cooked using the heat from a dishwasher.
Charles Domery	A Polish soldier noted for his unusually large appetite. While imprisoned in England, he remained ravenous despite being put on ten times the rations of other inmates, eating the prison cat, at least twenty rats and, on a regular basis, the prison candles.
Doug	Its record as "world's biggest potato" was denied due to mistaken identity.
Durian	King of fruits. King of smells?
Edible underwear	Yes, this exists.
Engastration	Dishes consisting of animals stuffed into each other. Turducken and whole stuffed camel are prominent examples.
Eyes (cheese)	There are eyes in the cheese, but no cheese in the eyes.
Flies' graveyard	A delicacy in the United Kingdom.
Fool's Gold Loaf	A sandwich consisting of a single warmed, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with the contents of one jar of creamy peanut butter, one jar of grape jelly, and a pound of bacon. Reportedly a favorite of Elvis.
Freedom fries	"I know what'll teach France for not wanting to invade Iraq... we'll rename our food!" -Bob Ney, 2003
Fried spider	Exactly as it sounds – and a regional delicacy in Cambodia.
Ray's Pizza	Which Ray's Pizza was the first? No one knows!
Fruit ketchup	Plum ketchup, anyone?
Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism	Hitler believed that a vegetarian diet could both alleviate his personal health problems and spiritually renew the Aryan race.
Hedgehog Flavour Crisps	If you think that usual crisps are boring, try this.
Hitler bacon	Can it possibly be kosher?
Hottest chili pepper	Gettin' silly with chili.
Hufu	For all you vegetarian cannibals out there, the tofu product designed to look and taste like human flesh.
Human placentophagy	The consumption of a newborn's placenta is common among mammals; humans do it too.
Kit Kats in Japan	There have been more than 300 limited-edition seasonal and regional flavors of Kit Kats produced in Japan since 2000.
Ketchup as a vegetable	Makes junk food seem healthier.
Kosher locust	Can Jews eat grasshoppers?
Kuai Kuai culture	In Taiwan, it is considered fortuitous to place a particular brand of snack next to machines.
Latke–Hamantash Debate	The debate of the century that began in 1946 and has never been resolved. About Jewish food.
Luther Burger	Described as a "cardiologist's worst nightmare".
Lychee and Dog Meat Festival	Vegans are the only group who can oppose this festival without any fear of hypocrisy.
McWords	McDonald's has their own McLanguage now.
Michel Lotito	Ate 45 door hinges, 18 bicycles, 15 shopping carts, a Cessna 150 light aircraft, and much more.
Milbenkäse	A type of German cheese containing live mites, which are eaten along with the cheese.
Monkey brains	A supposed delicacy that has been made famous through films.
None pizza with left beef	An infamous online pizza order.
Nutellagate	In which Columbia University students stole Nutella at a rapid rate.
Old Dry Keith	English man makes driest sandwich ever, becomes Chinese sensation.
Alferd Packer	Before Dahmer there was Packer...
Pieing	A slapstick stunt, or a kind of political protest. And there's even a list of victims.
Products produced from The Simpsons	Fictional trademarks gone real.
Rhubarb Triangle	A recipe or a dangerous area to fly through?
Roadkill cuisine	Yes, Skunk a la Michelin sounds tasty to some people.
Salmon chaos	The turmoil of salmon.
Šakotis	Rotisserie ~~chicken~~ cake, anyone?
San-nakji	Small octopuses eaten alive with sesame oil.
Sealed crustless sandwich	A patented peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Snake bite chicken	A delicacy in some parts of South China.
Spotted dick	Actually a type of pudding.
Square watermelon	Rather expensive and very much inedible.
Stargazy pie	A Cornish fish pie that looks back at you.
Star Spangled Ice Cream	Patriotic ice cream to own the liberals. Choose from "Smaller Governmint", "I hate the French Vanilla", or "Bill Clinton Im-peach".
Stinky tofu	Fermented soybean curd is apparently a delicacy for some people. One external link describes its scent as "a used tampon baking in the desert."
Superman (ice cream flavor)	It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... ice cream?
Surströmming	A Swedish dish consisting of fermented herring, said to have the worst smell in the world.
Takeru Kobayashi	A slightly built Japanese competitive eater. He has consumed 63 Nathan's Famous hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes and holds a host of eating records for other foods.
Testicles as food	Available fresh during castration season.
Toast sandwich	An English dish with an "extravagance of blandness". Add salt and pepper to taste.
La Tomatina	A gigantic food fight with a ham-topped greased pole as the start.
Sonya Thomas	What weighs 105 pounds (48 kg) and eats more hot dogs in 12 minutes than most people do all summer?
United States military chocolate	Originally designed to taste "little better than a boiled potato." Not much has changed.
Unusually shaped vegetable	"While some examples are just oddly shaped, others are heralded for their amusing appearance, often representing a body part such as the buttocks."
Vantage loaf	The bread that makes a baker's dozen.
Virgin boy egg	Eggs cooked with the help of young boys' urine.
Volkswagen currywurst	Volkswagen's best-selling product isn't cars, but sausages.
"Who Ate All the Pies?"	A chant sung by football fans in England and Scotland, aimed at supposedly overweight footballers, officials or opposing supporters.

Beverages

1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal	That Simpsons episode about antifreeze in the wine was based on a true story.
Beer can pyramid	Or beeramid, if you prefer.
Carmona Wine Urn	They say a fine wine gets better with age, but this is ridiculous. The 2000-year-old world record holder, and its merely 1700-year-old predecessor.
Speyer wine bottle
Civet coffee	Not coffee made from civets, but rather from ordinary coffee beans the civet has, well, excreted.
Cock ale	A type of ale that has a bag stuffed with a parboiled, skinned and gutted chicken later added.
Cola wars	A marketing battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Diet Coke and Mentos eruption	Diet Coke + Mentos = geyser.
Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone	Apparently a very exciting wine. Though, according to some, it's not worth the hype...
Fucking Hell	A German beer named after the Austrian village of Fucking. (It was renamed Fugging in 2021, so there goes the fun...)
Ganesha drinking milk miracle	Hindu statues drinking milk.
Grapefruit juice–drug interactions	Be careful – that delicious food item could be dangerous to prescription-drug users.
Gustav III of Sweden's coffee experiment	When a king of Sweden tried (and failed) to prove that coffee could kill.
H₂NO	Why drink tap water, when you can pay to have a cool, refreshing glass of Coca-Cola or freshly chilled bottled tap water?
If-by-whiskey	A famous speech successfully both attacking and defending booze.
ISO 3103	The ISO standard cup of tea.
OpenCola	The world's first open-source beverage.
Pepsi Number Fever	Large-scale riots in the Philippines in 1992 that led to the deaths of five people. The cause? A failed PepsiCo promotional event.
Pussy	The drink's pure, it's your mind that's the problem.
Snake wine	A type of Vietnamese wine that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle.
Vaskning	Allegedly, showing off wealth in a Swedish nightclub by pouring champagne down the kitchen sink.
Vodka eyeballing	Here's looking at you, kid.

Restaurants

Claudia Sanders Dinner House	A restaurant founded by Colonel Sanders and his wife Claudia after he became unhappy with changes at KFC, which was in turn sued by KFC.
Conflict Kitchen	A Pittsburgh take-out restaurant that exclusively served ethnic foods from countries in which the United States was in conflict.
Cross Cafe	A Hitler-themed Indian restaurant, formerly known as "Hitlers' Cross" [sic].
Dinner in the Sky	Enjoy a delicious meal—suspended 150 feet (46 m) in the air.
Fortezza Medicea restaurant	Elegant, fine dining in a high-security prison.
Hamburger University	Where McDonald's employees learn their stuff.
Heart Attack Grill	Noted for its 8,000-calorie "Quadruple Bypass Burger". It also lives up to its name.
Heladería Coromoto	Want a scoop of macaroni and cheese ice cream? How about beef? Chili? Cheese? Crab? Mushrooms in wine? British Airways? Viagra Hope?
Ithaa	The world's first underwater restaurant.
Jewish-American patronage of Chinese restaurants	For lack of dairy products, proximity in inner cities, and open hours during Christian holidays.
Kayabukiya Tavern	A Japanese restaurant where guests are served by employed monkeys.
Loving Hut	A vegan restaurant run by a cult. Get to watch "Supreme Master TV" in nearly all of their locations!
MaDonal	A McDonald's knock-off in Iraq.
McDonald's ice cream machine	Always broken.
McDonald's urban legends	Is that worm meat in your Big Mac?
Modern Toilet Restaurant	A restaurant chain whose furniture and decor is based on – yes – toilets.
Mom's Spaghetti	A restaurant opened by Eminem in Detroit, named after a lyric from one of his own songs.
Original Spanish Kitchen	A Los Angeles restaurant that suddenly and unexpectedly closed in 1961, giving rise to an urban legend about the fate of its proprietors. The restaurant's contents – even as far as the place settings – remained untouched for decades.
Pizza Pacaya	A restaurant in Guatemala that makes its pizza using an active volcano as its oven.
Pyongyang	A restaurant chain whose sole proprietor is the Government of North Korea.
Seriously McDonalds	Not seriously, in fact, because this new policy that black customers would pay more at McDonald's was an obvious (but believed) hoax.
The Shed at Dulwich	TripAdvisor's #1 fake restaurant.
Wiener King	It's all in the name.

Sports

You take my knight?
I'll punch your face!

A briefs history of Olympic Flame running.

24 Hours of Lemons	An endurance race for terrible cars, with a $500 spending limit, infractions determined by a random wheel, and the grand prize going to the worst car that managed to finish the thing. Holds the world record for most participants in a single race.
1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech American football game	The most lopsided game in American football history (featuring the godfather of American football himself, John Heisman).
1956 Olympic flame hoax	Why the Olympic Flame is pants.
1967 NFL Championship Game	Often called "The Ice Bowl", a game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers played in absolutely frigid conditions, at a temperature of −15 °F (−26 °C) (and that's before the wind chill.)
1969 Talladega 500	"Them dang unions trying to bust my race that I paid millions for because of tire failures! What am I ever going to do now?" - Probably NASCAR CEO Bill France Sr.
1978 CONCACAF Champions' Cup	The only time in the history of association football in which an official championship ended up being championed ex aequo by more than one team; in this case there were three.
1992 Troy State vs. DeVry men's basketball game	The highest scoring NCAA basketball game ever.
2005 United States Grand Prix	A race in which 14 out of 20 drivers retired before the start of the race.
2012 Daytona 500	The 54th running of the Daytona 500 (which was supposed to start on Sunday afternoon) did not finish until early Tuesday morning because of rain and a freak jet dryer accident.
2014 Hiram vs. Mount St. Joseph women's basketball game	How a dying teenager's wish became one of the year's biggest stories in American sports.
2021 Belgian Grand Prix	The shortest race in Formula One history, notable for its lack of any actual "racing", but instead three laps of caution in the rain.
Announcerless game	The first NFL game to be played in complete silence.
Artistic roller skating	All the grace and charm of figure skating...but with roller skates.
AS Adema 149–0 SO l'Emyrne	Taking own goals to the extreme.
Athletics at the 1904 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon	The worst-run Olympic event in history. No water in the blazing Missouri heat, a winner who'd been poisoned by his trainers, the "winner" being disqualified for "illegal use of cars", a postman joining at the last minute and a tribesman being chased by aggressive dogs. Among other things.
Australia 31–0 American Samoa	The most lopsided "fair" match in association football history since World War I.
Australian Football International Cup	The "World Cup" of Australian rules football...in which Australia does not participate.
Barbados 4–2 Grenada	A strange rule change in this soccer match saw one team defending both goals for several minutes, then winning 4–2 despite only scoring three goals.
Bat and trap	An English bat-and-ball pub game.
Battle of Bramall Lane	An English professional association football match that was ended at the 83rd minute because the home team lost too many of their players due to injuries and red cards.
Battle of Surfaces	Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal went head-to-head to determine which court was more victorious: grass or clay?
Bladderball	Yale University's contribution to the world of team sports.
British baseball	An intermediate species between cricket and baseball played in the hinterlands of Wales and Western England.
Bog snorkelling	The noble art of competitive snorkelling through cold, noxious bog water.
Bottle-kicking	A ruleless drunken rugby-like sport played every Easter Monday since the 1700s in Hallaton, Leicestershire.
Butt Fumble	Be careful where you run with that ball, Mark.
Chess boxing	A sport that alternates rounds of speed chess and boxing.
Collision in Korea	A WCW pay per view event in 1995 wasn't so unusual. A professional wrestling match in North Korea, however, is a once in a lifetime event.
Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake	Don't let it get away!
Coventry City 2-2 Bristol City West Germany 1-0 Austria	Match fixing with benefits.
David Arquette in World Championship Wrestling	"When you're out of ideas, make an outsider actor your World Champion", said no one ever.
Disco Demolition Night	What could go wrong with encouraging people to bring unwanted disco albums to a baseball doubleheader and blowing up the records between games?
Dot-com commercials during Super Bowl XXXIV	"We haven't made any revenue this quarter? Let's spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl commercial! There's no way we can lose!"
A drive into deep left field by Castellanos	When professionalism meets apologising – as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that will make it a 4–0 ballgame – and smashes into tiny pieces.
Dwarf-tossing	A sporting competition where padded dwarfs are thrown by competitors.
Dwile flonking	A sport that gives a new meaning to the term "drinking game".
Elephant polo	Variant of polo that is played while riding elephants, mostly played by royals in Rajasthan.
Enhanced Games	The Olympics, just without drug testing requirements. They hope an athlete can beat Usain Bolt's 100m dash record soon.
Eton wall game	A sport played annually on St. Andrew's Day on a 5-by-110-metre (16 ft × 361 ft) field. The last goal was scored in 1909.
Extreme ironing	A sport whereby participants take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing.
Fair catch kick	A little-known way to score points in American football left over from rugby. Even Bill Belichick wouldn't call one in Super Bowl LI.
Fan Controlled Football	The world's first professional sports league completely owned by its fans.
Fierljeppen	A Frisian sport where the objective is to jump over a trench.
Football tennis	Wimbledon meets Wembley... in Czechoslovakia.
Gillidanda	In this Indian game, instead of hitting a ball with a stick, players use a stick (danda) to hit another stick (gilli).
Heidi Game	The last-minute comeback in this American football game wasn't seen by television viewers, as the network cut off the game to show the children's film Heidi.
Henley-on-Todd Regatta	An Australian boat race that is cancelled when there is water in the river.
International Rutabaga Curling Championship	Rutabaga curling originated in the frosty December climes of Ithaca, New York.
Isner–Mahut match at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships	A record-breaking 11-hour, 5-minute tennis match at the Wimbledon 2010.
Laser Space Cannon	A purple beam shooting out of the roof of the Sacramento Kings' arena, lit after every Kings home win, that became a symbol of the team that broke the NBA's longest-ever playoff drought.
Lawn mower racing	Leaves the lawn in a very poor condition.
Lingerie Football League	"Uniforms consist of helmets, shoulder pads, elbow pads, knee pads, garter belts, bras, and panties." Renamed the Legends Football League in 2013 and Extreme Football League in 2020, with the garters, bras, and panties replaced by slightly more modest performance sportswear.
Mall walking	Usually done with larger groups of senior citizens.
Mass Transit incident	What happens when you combine a professional wrestler prone to violence with a 17 year old that had lied about his age and experience?
Mormons vs. Mullets	December 2, 2020: An unbeaten college football team finds itself with an unexpected open date... and another unbeaten team is looking for a game. December 3: Game on. December 5: Kickoff.
Mythical national championship	When is a champion not exactly a champion?
Naha Tug-of-war	Requires thousands of participants and a 40-metric-ton, 1.5-metre diameter rope.
New Testament athletic metaphors	Blessed are the healthy in heart...
One-armed versus one-legged cricket	According to Charles Dickens: "The one-legged men were pretty well with the bat, but they were rather beaten when it came to fielding."
Pelota purépecha	You've heard of ice hockey, but how about fire hockey?
Pillow Fight League	The first rule of Pillow Fight League is that you do not discuss Pillow Fight League.
Plainfield Teachers College	Their American football team was unbeaten ...and non-existent.
The Play	Before going onto the field for your postgame musical performance, make sure the game is over.
Public image of Roman Reigns	Pushed to the top of the wrestling world, he was rejected by fans, but WWE kept trying, and trying, and trying for years on end. By 2019, Reigns was the most hated man in wrestling, despite being (allegedly) the good guy.
Quidditch (real-life sport)	An international real-life sport, without magic objects.
RoboCup	The goal of this robotics project: to create a robot soccer team that can beat the most recent FIFA World Cup winners.
Rocket Racing League	A racing league intending to use rocket-powered aircraft to race a closed-circuit air racetrack.
Scorigami	A scoring combination that has never happened in a league's history.
Ski ballet	Skiers doing flips and spins on a slope. A smooth slope. Wearing skis.
Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bid	During the 2002 Winter Olympics, the two Australian comedians who gave the world Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat (see "Animals in sports" below) launched a bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in New South Wales, Australia.
SpoGomi	A sport where teams have to collect as much litter as possible.
Sports-related curses	A variety of excuses for bad performance.
Stoolball	An ancestor of cricket (a game it resembles), baseball, and rounders.
Swimming at the 1896 Summer Olympics – Men's sailors 100 metre freestyle	Not just any old sailor - this most niche of events was only open to those serving in the Greek Navy.
Ten Cent Beer Night	A Major League Baseball game that tried to attract fans with a beer promotion got progressively worse, until an all-out riot broke out at Cleveland Stadium.
Traditions and anecdotes associated with the Stanley Cup	An ice hockey trophy with a long history of abuse, superstition, and tests of buoyancy.
Ultimate Tazer Ball	A sport in which players must compete to get a large ball into the goal of the opposing team. Oh, and everybody is armed with a stun gun.
Ultimate Typing Championship	Created in order to promote typing and find the fastest typists in the United States of America.
Underarm bowling incident of 1981	An infamous end to an international cricket match that was arguably not cricket at all.
Volata	Football for fascists.
Wellie wanging	Competitors are required to hurl a Wellington boot as far as possible.
Wife-carrying	One need not carry one's own wife to take part, although you may want to run away as fast as possible afterwards.
Wooden spoon	A Cambridge University tradition adopted by rugby league and rugby union, the Wooden Spoon is awarded to the last-placed team in a competition.
World Black Pudding Throwing Championships	A super championship for a super food.
Wrestling at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's Greco-Roman light heavyweight	Possibly the longest final in any Summer Olympic event. Also possibly the only one where no gold medal was awarded (ignoring those Olympics where gold medals had yet to be introduced).
Yukigassen	Competitive snowball fighting.

Animals in sports

Buzkashi	Something like rugby, played on horseback, with a dead goat.
Conger cuddling	The "most fun a person could have with a dead fish".
Egg tapping	One holds a hard-boiled egg and taps the egg of another participant with one's own egg intending to break the other's, without breaking one's own.
Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat	Sydney's other Olympic mascot.
Ferret-legging	A stunt in which a live ferret is put down one's trousers.
Fox tossing	A popular sport in 17th and 18th century Europe that involved tossing foxes and other live animals as high as possible into the air.
Goose pulling	Hang a live goose from a rope, gallop under it on a horse and pull its head off. What could be simpler?
Hamster racing	A uniquely British response to foot and mouth disease.
Kudu dung-spitting	Games for conservationists.
Kyz kuu	Involving a man and a woman racing horses. Described as a kissing game, but the woman wins by whipping the man.
Legend of the Octopus	If you're going to an ice hockey game in Detroit, be sure to bring your octopus.
Octopus wrestling	A sport which once attracted crowds of thousands to watch free divers wrestle North Pacific Giant Octopus from the waters of the Puget Sound.
Pig Olympics	An international contest between pigs.
Rabbit show jumping	Watership up, Watership Down. Watership up, Watership Down. Watership...
Robot jockey	Robots designed to ride dromedary camels.
Snail racing	Ready, steady, slow!
Teddy bear toss	A Christmas tradition in minor league ice hockey.
Turkey bowling	So much for "don't play with your food".
Vinkensport	Finch-singing in Belgium. More competitive than you might think.
Yak racing	A spectator sport held at traditional festivals in Tibet and Mongolia, among other places.

Athletes

Margaret Abbott	Possibly the only Olympic champion who was never made aware of their achievement.
Sebastián Abreu	Prolific Uruguayan striker, most known for switching through clubs like his underwear.
Nasra Ali Abukar	Possibly the record holder for the slowest ever competitive 100-meter dash, after she got into the University Games by being related to the chair of the Somali Athletics Committee.
Anthony Ammirati	A French pole vaulter who went viral for appearing to knock over the bar with his, um, other pole in the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Arrhichion	A multi-time Olympic champion of the ancient Greek predecessor of MMA, who didn't let being dead stop him from retaining his title.
David Ayres	A 42-year-old arena building operator, who briefly played as an emergency goalie in the National Hockey League.
Barefoot running	Why is there an entire article devoted to running without shoes?
Paula Barila Bolopa	A swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, who – much like Eric Moussambani below – competed in the Sydney Olympics. Her time in the 50m freestyle is apparently the longest in Olympic history.
Steve Bartman incident	Similar to, yet also the polar opposite of, the Jeffery Maier incident (see below), a fan is blamed for causing the Cubs to lose that year's NLCS and continue the Curse of the Billy Goat.
Philip Boit	How many other Kenyan skiers can you name?
Steven Bradbury	Australia's first Winter Olympics gold medalist, who won speed skating gold after everyone in front of him crashed.
Spreen	An Argentine YouTuber who in 2024 signed a contract with the Deportivo Riestra club to be a professional soccer player......although in his professional debut he only played 59 seconds before being substituted.
Rogério Ceni	It's not often you see a goalscoring goalkeeper in soccer, much less one with over 100 recorded goals.
Oksana Chusovitina	Most gymnasts plan retirement in their 20s – she's 40 and still going!
Cup of coffee	A minor-league player who makes it to the majors just long enough to have a...
JamesOn Curry	In perhaps the most extreme example of the above, his NBA career lasted a grand total of 3.9 seconds.
Curse of Billy Penn	How a skyscraper in Philadelphia kept the city's sports teams from winning championships for over 20 years.
Curse of the Colonel	Colonel Harland Sanders wreaks revenge from beyond the grave on a Japanese baseball team.
Rajai Davis	"Quick, Jason, ride me to Citi Field, I've been called up!"
Ali Dia	A guy who tricked his way into English soccer team Southampton by claiming he had won 12 caps for Senegal, was related to George Weah and had played for Paris Saint-Germain. In 2007, The Times branded him the worst-ever player in top-flight soccer.
Mariya Dmitriyenko	A Kazakh Olympic sports shooter. When she won the Amir of Kuwait International Shooting Grand Prix, the parody national anthem from Borat was accidentally played instead of the Kazakh national anthem.
Daniel Dye	A man who got arrested for quite literally busting a nut.
Dock Ellis	Baseball pitcher who, among other things, threw a no-hitter while under influence of LSD, and once tried to hit every batter in the Cincinnati Reds lineup.
Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards	A British sportsman famous for coming last in the 1988 Winter Olympics ski-jump competition.
Sidd Finch	A fictitious baseball player who learned yoga in Tibet and could pitch a fastball at 168 miles per hour, among other things.
Eddie Gaedel	A 65-pound (29 kg) baseball player, 3 ft 7 in (1.09 m) tall. Career on‑base percentage: 1.000.
Sajjad Ganjzadeh	Getting your head kicked isn't always bad – it won this Iranian an Olympic gold medal.
Dolly Gray impostor	Possibly the least known NFL player in history.
Rachael Gunn	An Australian breakdancer whose less-than-smooth moves took the Olympics by storm.
Ferdinand Habsburg	One of the greatest racing drivers Austria has to offer. He's also the heir to the throne of one of Europe's most powerful royal families, but nevermind that.
Hannes Þór Halldórsson	An Icelandic filmmaker who also served as the national team's goalkeeper during their most successful period in history and saved a Lionel Messi penalty kick in the World Cup.
John Hilton	A man who won the men's singles at the European Table Tennis Championships despite being only the fourth-ranked player at his local YMCA.
Prince Hubertus of Hohenlohe-Langenburg	A blue blooded Alpine skier, from the frozen wastes of Mexico City.
Carlos Kaiser	A footballer who managed a decade-long career despite lacking pro-level ability and never playing a regulation game.
Shizo Kanakuri	An Olympic marathon runner who took a 54-year detour.
Oliver Kirk	It's not unusual for a boxer to win two (or more) Olympic gold medals. But it is unusual for them to be won in the same edition.
Evel Knievel	A biker known for his numerous stunts, and accidents during said stunts.
Kyle Larson	A NASCAR driver who is most known for three things: crashing and taking down the catchfence at Daytona, saying a racial slur during a virtual race during a pandemic, and winning the NASCAR Cup Series championship. Among other things.
Bob Lemon	A below-average MLB hitter suddenly gets put on pitching duty after other players said he was good at it when they fought in World War II together. Now he's in the Hall of Fame.
Jeffrey Maier	The twelve-year-old who helped the Yankees win the pennant.
Mendoza Line	Baseball's standard for underperformance.
Eric Moussambani	A swimmer from Equatorial Guinea in the 2000 Summer Olympics whose time in the 100m freestyle was seven seconds behind the winner - of the 200m freestyle.
José Offerman	Former baseball player who is most remembered for charging the mound with a bat in one game and attempting to punch an umpire in another.
Phantom ballplayer	A baseball player who spent time on an MLB roster without actually playing, or occasionally one who never existed.
Fuahea Semi	As though being a luger from Tonga wasn't unusual enough, he tricked the world's media and the International Luge Federation for more than two years into believing that he bore the same name as a German lingerie firm.
Sturla Snær Snorrason	An Icelandic alpine skier who (as of October 2018) has competed in 1 Olympic Games and 2 World Championships, but has yet to finish a single race.
Elizabeth Swaney	A Hungarian-American freestyle skier who competed at the halfpipe event at the 2018 Winter Olympics, despite being incapable of performing basic tricks.
Manti Te'o	Played in eight NFL seasons, but is perhaps more known for being the victim of one of the most famous catfishing schemes ever.
Taro Tsujimoto	An imaginary ice hockey player, drafted because a manager was reportedly "fed up with the slow drafting process via the telephone".
Kazuo Uzuki	The greatest baseball prospect who never played.
L. W. Wright	Racing driver and confidence trickster who is often referred to as the "D. B. Cooper of NASCAR". Competed in one career race, attempted to qualify for the next race, and then disappeared for a full 40 years.

Sport teams and associations

Atlanta Black Crackers	A Negro League baseball team named like many others after a local white baseball team, but in this case the Atlanta Crackers were named after a racial nickname.
Baltimore Colts relocation to Indianapolis	How an entire NFL team relocated to another city overnight.
East Africa rugby union team	Did this rugby team really select a future dictator to play for them?
FC Cuntum	A club based in the Cuntum Madina district of Bissau.
FC Slutsk	How a group of Australians brought worldwide fame to this modest Belarusian football club.
Jamaican bobsled team	The real life inspiration for the film Cool Runnings.
London Rippers	A Canadian independent league baseball team that modeled its logo and mascot after Jack the Ripper. Local feminists were not amused, but Rush Limbaugh came to the team's defense.
Mongolia national baseball team	They've only scored 3 runs at the Asian Games. Without ever finishing a game, because of the mercy rule.
New Zealand national team nomenclature based on the "All Blacks" Badminton New Zealand	When your national rugby team is successful, what do you do? Follow New Zealand's example and rebrand all of your other sports teams as something similar to them. Including a badminton team that tried to rename itself "Black Cocks".
Oorang Indians	An all-Native American National Football League team put together as a marketing gimmick to sell Airedale Terriers and known more for its halftime dog shows than for its football play.
Sark national football team	Also known as The Bad Lions, the only national team that failed to ever score a goal.
Sealand national football team	The football team of a micronation with a permanent population of 2.
Somalia national bandy team	The only African national bandy team is seated in Sweden.
Steagles Card-Pitt	Sports teams get relocated all the time (especially in the NFL), but what if they had mergers? Wartime conscription during World War II forced the Pittsburgh Steelers to do exactly that. Twice.
Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics	More than just Jamaican bobsledders.
Wichita Monrovians	A Negro League baseball team that played a game against the KKK... and won!
Windsor Swastikas	A Canadian ice hockey team with a well-known logo.
Vatican City national football team	The squad makes up more than 2 percent of the national population.

Games and strategy contests

Atomic chess Beirut chess Stratomic	Three different variations on the same idea: combining chess with explosions.
Blood-vomiting game	"Go" is serious business.
Bongcloud Attack	An explanation of why 2. Ke2 is the height of modern chess theory.
Buzzword bingo	A synergistic, forward-thinking game where you can leverage your strategy by avoiding... Bingo!
The Campaign for North Africa	The peak of wargaming, this frighteningly complex beast is estimated to take over a real-time decade to complete (you know, if you want to do things like eat and sleep as well).
Carlsen–Niemann controversy	Chess doesn't always produce drama, but when it does, it's glorious. A tale of cheating, lawsuits, and vibrating butt plugs.
Chess on a really big board	Self-explanatory.
Fairy chess pieces	Looking to spice up a game of chess? Throw one of these into the mix.
The Game	A mind game in which players try not to think about The Game – which means that, by reading this, you just lost The Game.
Ghettopoly	An unauthorized version of Monopoly that played on black and other stereotypes. The NAACP was not amused.
Human chess	Enacted by costumed "pieces" on a scaled-up chessboard.
Kanchō	Popular among East Asian children, this "game" is played by going up to someone and sneakily poking them in the ass.
Kasparov versus the World	"The greatest game in the history of chess", per Kasparov. His opponent suffered from flame wars, poor chess software and accusations of ballot stuffing.
List of games that Buddha would not play	What would Buddha do? Well, he wouldn't play any of these.
Mornington Crescent	A deceptively tricky game of navigating the London Underground—don't be caught in Nidd!
Poole versus HAL 9000	"I'm sorry, Frank, I think you missed it..."
Potato race	On foot, a tame activity for children. On horseback, a chaotic no-holds-barred blood sport where anything goes–except biting.
Taikyoku shogi	Japanese 'ultimate chess', with over 400 pieces per side.
The Turk	An 18th century chess computer, which turned out to be a hoax.
USA Rock Paper Scissors League	Organised finger sport.
War on Terror, the Board Game	A boardgame satire of the real War on Terror that has proved so popular, it has ended up in national museums, in a TV sitcom, as part of a military training simulation and as a teaching aid in higher education institutions.

Folklore

1593 transported soldier legend	Folk legend of a soldier who fell asleep in Manila and woke up in Mexico City.
Baltic Sea anomaly	Looks like someone left their Millennium Falcon underwater.
Behind the sofa	Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults.
Bigfoot trap	Believed to be the world's only Bigfoot trap.
Brites de Almeida	A legendary 12-fingered Portuguese baker who baked a group of Castilian soldiers in her oven as part of the fight for Portuguese independence.
Cottingley Fairies	A successful photographic hoax in 1910s England which fooled Arthur Conan Doyle.
Count of St. Germain	The original Tommy Wiseau, an eighteenth century polymath who made a number of contradictory claims about his origins, including that he was 500 years old. People have also claimed he is an important theosophical figure who many have claimed to have met years after his supposed death in 1784.
Easter Bilby	How do you have an Easter Bunny in a country that has had a bad experience with rabbits? With an Easter Bilby of course!
Faxlore	Forms of folklore circulated via fax machine.
Flying ointment	A hallucinogenic ointment said to be used by witches in the Early Modern period.
Green children of Woolpit	A tale of two purportedly green children who ate nothing but beans and claimed to be from a place where the sun never shone called Saint Martin's Land.
Headless men	The most unknown, yet bizarre and intriguing, humanoid monsters in European mythology. Possibly more famous nowadays for having a cameo in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
Headless Mule	They've got fire in place of their heads. Because regular mules are for weak people.
Heraclitus the Paradoxographer	Before there were 14-year-old Internet atheists, this guy was saying "um, ACKSYUALLY" about Greek myth.
Icelandic Elf School	Possibly the only school granting elf-spotting degrees. (Though certificates are also available from John Oliver.)
Josiah S. Carberry	An expert on cracked pots, and one of only three fictional people to have won the Ig Nobel Prize.
Kaspar Hauser	A German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, and was once thought to be linked to the princely House of Baden.
Liver-Eating Johnson	A 19th-century mountain man with a penchant for revenge and the consumption of livers.
Machine elf	An entity that people claim they become aware of after having taken tryptamine based psychedelic drugs such as DMT.
Man-eating tree	Hoaxes and unsubstantiated reports in Madagascar and elsewhere.
Mapinguari	A cyclops in the Amazon rainforest.
Mari Lwyd	It's all fun and games until the horse skull comes knocking on your door.
Monkey-man of New Delhi	Reports in 2001 of a strange monkey-like creature appearing in New Delhi at night and attacking people.
Nightmarchers	One of the coolest creatures in Hawaiian folklore, a group of ghost warriors from the past that walk throughout the island, armed with oceanic weapons.
Panotti	And you thought you had atypically large ears.
Père Fouettard	An Alsatian/Lorrainian christmas time charcacter. He punishes naughty children not unlike a certain alpine demon by whipping them. His orgin is equally bizarre.
Phantom social workers	Mysterious claims of "social workers" seeking to abduct infants and children.
Proverbs commonly attributed to be Chinese	...although they're probably not.
Pseudo-mythology	The, very curious, cases of "invented mythology" in a few nations from europe.
Rods	Photographic anomalies which some think are undiscovered flying creatures or miniature UFOs.
Russian reversal	In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia edits YOU!
Spring Heeled Jack	A mysterious character said to have existed in England during the Victorian age.
Telling the bees	An alternative explanation for the declining bee population.
Tió de Nadal	A log that defecates sweets for Catalan children on Christmas eve.
Titivillus	The patron demon of scribes, responsible for many errors.
Tsukumogami	According to Japanese folklore, if you keep a household item for 100 years, it becomes alive with a spirit, and may grow a face and teeth.
Vagina dentata	The tooth, and nothing but the hole tooth.
Vampire pumpkins and watermelons	In Balkan legend, an explanation for the blood-red streaks across these fruits: that they'd been left out on a full moon night, and thus turned by vampires.
Vril	A book by the "dark and stormy night" guy that spawned rumours about German secret societies, a real master race living underground, and Nazi UFOs.
Well to Hell	A 9-mile (14 km) borehole drilled by Soviet scientists uncovers the sounds of millions of damned souls. Hot stuff.
Witch window	A superstitious practice in the State of Vermont to prevent witches from flying through open windows at night.
Yonaguni monument	Between Japan and Taiwan lies the last remnant of the sunken continent of Mu (or rather, a natural rock formation that looks interesting enough to pass as it).

Mystery animals and animal folklore

Pieter Dirkx's imagining of the Mongolian death worm.

Bake-danuki	Uses its testicles as a weapon.
Beast of Gévaudan	A mammal(s) that went on a killing spree in southern France in the 1700s, causing significant and expensive Royal intervention.
Bird people	The widely recurring motif in legends and fiction of birds who are people, or people who are birds.
Bonnacon	A mythical ox which flings burning dung at its enemies from its rear and horn.
Cattle mutilation	The alleged killing and subsequent mutilation of cattle, sheep or horses by unknown perpetrators. Some say they may be aliens.
Chupacabra	A legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, generally reported in Latin America, that preys on livestock.
Cynocephaly	A kind of human-wolf hybrid where only the head is dog-like.
Dog spinning	Do Bulgarians really twizzle their domestic canines to foretell prosperity? The British Green Party thinks so, and they're not happy about it.
Drop bear	A fictitious Australian marsupial supposedly related to the koala.
Fearsome critters	North American lumberjack folklore, with Axhandle hounds and jackalopes.
Flying pig	The classic impossibility has been officially proved possible by the Internet Engineering Task Force: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine."
Gef the talking mongoose	A poltergeist-like creature which claimed to have been an 80-year-old Indian mongoose, alleged to have haunted a Manx cottage during the 1930s.
Humanzee	A hypothetical(?) human/chimpanzee hybrid.
Jersey Devil	A mythological creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Liver bird	A legendary cormorant or eagle that is the symbol of a major English city.
Living entombed animal	Tales of toads and other creatures supposedly remaining alive encased in stone.
Lluvia de Peces	It's raining fish in Honduras.
Mamlambo	One of the most interesting beasts in Zulu folklore.
Mongolian death worm	A large, bright red worm that kills using acid and electrical discharges – allegedly.
Montauk Monster	Actually a decaying raccoon... or is it?
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus	An endangered creature, whose major predator is the sasquatch. Apparently.
Phantom kangaroos	They're not just found in Australia.
Popobawa	A bat-winged monster from Zanzibar said to sodomize people during election campaigns.
Pig-faced women	A lesson never to compare a person's children to pigs when pregnant, lest you be cursed.
Rat king	Not the rodent monarch familiar from The Nutcracker, but a rare (some say nonexistent) phenomenon in which a group of rats grow up with their tails tangled in a knot.
Reptilian humanoid	A recurring theme in fiction, especially science fiction, pseudoscientific theories and conspiracy theories.
Rhinogradentia	A fictitious mammal order documented by an equally fictitious German naturalist.
Sea monk	An aquatic hallelujah.
Sidehill gouger	Fictional creatures said to inhabit the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and the southwestern sandhills of Saskatchewan.
Spherical cow	"Consider a spherical cow in a vacuum..."
Squonk	A Pennsylvania-based creature that cries constantly because it's so ugly. The most relatable mythical animal.
Tarasque	One of the strangest mythical beasts in France.
Vegetable Lamb of Tartary	Money might not grow on trees, but maybe sheep do.
Widow's man	A strange myth that fishmen and seamen have been telling for centuries now.

Society, economy and law

Comrade! Your hair is not trimmed in accordance with the socialist lifestyle!

Absurdistan	The place where silly bureaucracy rules. Has been located in places as diverse as Czechoslovakia and Iraq.
Bagism	A social ideology created by the Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono which involves wearing a bag over one's entire body to promote peace and equality.
Beard Liberation Front	A British interest group which campaigns in support of beards and opposes discrimination against those who wear them.
Berners Street hoax	The day that all of London gathered at one house.
Birth tourism	Going on vacation to get a different citizenship for the child.
Frank Chu	All he wants is royalties for being featured in a real life soap opera broadcast in 12 galaxies – or was it 785,249,000,000,000?
Correspondence between the Ottoman sultan and the Cossacks	Amongst other insults and profanity, it supposedly told Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire to fuck his mother.
Crypt of Civilization	A time capsule not to be opened before 8113 A.D.
Cutting in line	How rude!
Eggplant emoji	These are totally friendly emoji, having no hidden sexual meanings at all, right?
Peach emoji
Elaine Davidson	A Brazilian woman that has the record of having the most piercings in the face.
Erika Eiffel	Wife of the Eiffel Tower.
Elvavrålet	The time of night when Swedish university students throw open their windows and scream their stress away.
Escalator etiquette	Which side are you on?
Fat men's club	Social clubs for the weightiest members of society.
Female husband	Women who specifically marry other women whilst pretending to be men.
Jenaro Gajardo Vera	A Chilean lawyer who claimed to own the Moon.
Justo Gallego Martínez	A Spanish Catholic priest who, for almost seven decades, single-handedly constructed his own church.
Georgia Guidestones	A granite monument commissioned to help guide humanity, which became the subject of conspiracy theories, and the target of a bomber.
Guerrilla gardening	"Quick... torch on... plant those carrots!"
Go Topless Day	A day to advocate topfreedom for women.
Great Stork Derby	The strangest competition in Canadian history: female residents of Toronto were promised a financial reward to give birth to the most kids in just ten years.
Charles Harrelson	One of the most infamous hitmen in US history... and the father of actor Woody Harrelson.
He never married	A euphemism often used in mid-20th century obituaries in United Kingdom for gay men.
Marie Sophie Hingst	The late German historian and blogger who claimed to be born to Holocaust survivors, despite not being Jewish.
Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles	Not a ninja turtles fan group, but "an honorable drinking fraternity composed of ladies and gentlemen of the highest morals and good character, who are never vulgar."
Japanese adult adoption	The vast majority of adoptees in Japan are childless adult males, adopted by families needing a strong heir or a male successor for their businesses.
Elizabeth Klarer	A 20th century Afrikaner woman who claimed that she dated an extraterrestrial being and gave birth to an alien. She later wrote two books about this.
Knobbly knees competition	A favourite in holiday camps all over the UK.
Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle	A television show produced by the North Korean government intended to educate the public on good and bad hairstyles.
List of people who have lived in airports	Wish you were here?
Long-term nuclear waste warning messages	How do you warn people to stay away from nuclear waste repositories, in a way that will be understandable 10,000 years from now?
Jean-Marie Loret	He (and his children) claimed that he was the son of an affair between his mother and a WW1-era, pre-infamy Adolf Hitler.
Mónica Macías	The daughter of Equatoguinean president Francisco Macías Nguema who grew up in North Korea, with Kim Il Sung himself serving as her second father.
Man of the Hole	The last survivor of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil, and arguably the world's loneliest person.
Mitsuyasu Maeno	Porn actor, yakuza member, Japanese ultranationalist and failed assassin.
Mongrel complex	A concept regarding an inferiority complex reportedly felt by some Brazilians. Coined following an especially agonizing World Cup loss.
Montreal–Philippines cutlery controversy	A 7-year-old boy's eating habits became an international incident.
Neturei Karta	An international organization of Orthodox Jews that oppose Israel.
Niche insurance	Insure yourself against being abducted by aliens, losing your genitalia, or conceiving the second Christ.
Emperor Norton	A man who claimed to be "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" in 1859.
Panty tree	Trees covered in various articles of clothing cast off by ski lift passengers.
Pole and Hungarian brothers be	A two-nation proverb often cited, usually while drinking, in both Poland and Hungary.
Posthumous marriage	Saying "'til death do us part" with someone who's already dead.
List of conspiracy theories § Predictive programming	According to conspiracy nuts, all dystopian science fiction are actually proposals for the "global elite"'s "problem-reaction-solution" playbook.
The Queue	A queue, stretching for 10 miles at one point, all the way to Southwark Park, formed by Britons in September 2022 in order to pay their respects to their late sovereign.
Sentinelese	An autonomous Stone Age human tribe which completely avoids contact with the outside world.
Travelling gnome	Taking a garden gnome on an adventure... occasionally without telling the owner of the garden it was on.
Vesna Vulović	A Serbian flight attendant who became famous for surviving the highest fall without the use of parachutes.
War of the stop signs	Free movement means free movement.
Ziona	An Indian man that holds the record for fathering the largest living family in the world. In total, he had 39 spouses and 94 children. Talk about the weekly home bills....

Politics and government

1803 Gatton by-election	Two candidates, only one ballot cast, in this by-election in one of the UK's most notorious rotten boroughs of the early 19th century.
1927 Liberian general election	The most fraudulent election in recorded history, with a turnout of 1,680%.
1986 Illinois gubernatorial election	Followers of a bizarre political figure hijack an election, and force one of the main candidates into running under a different party.
2018 Makassar mayoral election	In which Munafri Arifuddin ran unopposed for mayor of Makassar, Indonesia, won more than 250,000 votes, and lost.
Above Znoneofthe	A Canadian politician who changed his name so that people would misread it as "none of the above" on the ballot (with the Z added to appear at the end of the list) and pick his name by mistake.
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act	An apparently innocuous piece of congressional legislation that became the subject of outrageous but widely believed conspiracy theories in 1956.
Animals as electoral candidates	Why be ruled by some monkey, RINO or pig when you can get a real chimp, rhino or pig into office?
André Dallaire	How often do would-be assassins break into a Prime Minister's residence without resistance?
Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany	A satirical party formed in the 1980s. Some of its main objectives include balkanizing Germany, legalizing all drugs and creating so-called "fuckpooling centers".
Antanas Mockus	The surprisingly effective mayor of Bogotá, Colombia known for civically-targeted publicity pranks.
Anti-Japaneseism	Advocates for self-inflicted genocide.
Anti-PowerPoint Party	Fighting the overuse of Microsoft PowerPoint in offices since 2011.
Bald–hairy	Russian leadership has alternated between bald and hairy leaders since 1825.
Banned in Boston	Boston now has a reputation as a liberal city, but it wasn't always so...
Barack Obama "Joker" poster	You wanna know how I got these scars?
Alejandro Cao de Benós	A Spanish man who is the only non-Korean person to officially work for the North Korean government. Benós is also featured in some documentaries about North Korea, such as The Propaganda Game and The Mole: Undercover in North Korea.
Biotic Baking Brigade	Pie-throwing anarchists.
Boris Skossyreff	Belarusian adventurer, who tried to seize the monarchy of Andorra and called himself Boris I of Andorra.
British Israelism	A long discredited form of British nationalism, by way of the idea that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel made their way to Britain.
Brown Dog affair	Political scandal that resulted in police protection for the statue of a dog.
Bunga bunga	Nobody knew what it meant, until one Italian politician made it mean "kinky sex".
Bushism	Any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of former United States President George W. Bush.
Bush shoeing incident	An incident where Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw a pair of shoes at George W. Bush on December 14th, 2008 during a press conference.
Byron (Low Tax) Looper	Not only did he give himself a parenthetical middle name, he tried to win an election by simply murdering his opponent. It didn't quite work out.
Candy Desk	A desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate has been kept filled with candy since 1968.
Charles the Bald	A 9th century emperor of the Carolingian Empire who is depicted in artwork as having a full head of hair.
Chernomyrdinka	Russia can do Bushisms too.
Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office	An official government position in the United Kingdom.
Count Binface	An intergalatic warlord and British political candidate (formerly Lord Buckethead).
Celso Daniel	A city mayor in Brazil who was, allegedly, assassinated in 2002 by criminals, but many people say that he was murdered for political reasons. Within five years, seven witnesses were found dead. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
Congressional office lottery	The process that determines when representatives in the House can pick their rooms, host to such rituals as playing Frank Sinatra songs and Jedi mind tricks.
Crusade of Romanianism	1930s Romania saw possibly the world's only political movement which attempted to synthesize fascism with libertarian socialism.
David Rice Atchison	Possibly President for a day, only finding out after his "term" had ended.
Deez Nuts	A satirical candidate who ran for president during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and polled 10% at his best. In the polls, he had defeated other notable candidates such as Harambe, Beast Mode, Darrell Castle (this one is real), and nearly Jill Stein.
Division of Batman	A former electoral district in Melbourne, Australia. And no, it wasn't named after the superhero.
Democracy sausage	Part of Australia's tradition of holding a fundraising sausage sizzle at polling places on election day. Not connected to the observation about similarities between how laws and sausages are made.
"Dewey Defeats Truman"	When Thomas E. Dewey was falsely thought to have defeated Harry S. Truman in the 1948 election.
Dizzy Gillespie 1964 presidential campaign	Had it succeeded, it would have created a dream cabinet including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Ray Charles.
Donald Duck Party	A non-existent political party, at occasions among the top ten parties in Swedish parliamentary elections.
Dunwich	Another rotten borough which had almost entirely fallen into the sea over two centuries before it was abolished. Not to be confused with the other Dunwich...
Ed Miliband bacon sandwich photograph	The biggest enemy of British politician - and then Leader of the Opposition - Ed Miliband? A simple bacon sandwich.
Eddie Eagle	Not the British ski-jumping pioneer, but the NRA's firearm safety mascot. For kids!
Wolfgang Engels	A 19-year old civilian employee of the National People's Army who smashed through the Berlin Wall with a stolen APC.
Euromyth	Paranoid and imaginative speculations about the bureaucratic excesses of the European Union.
Four Pests campaign	Mao Zedong's campaign to eliminate all sparrows in China. Helped (in some small way, at least) cause the Great Chinese Famine.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference	The bizarre scene when Trump's presidential campaign hosted a presser not at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia... but at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Philadelphia.
Fuddle duddle	A Canadian political incident involving most unparliamentary language.
Gaysper	When Spain's major far-right party accidentally created an LGBT+ icon.
George H. W. Bush broccoli comments	The president's strategy for winning the baby vote.
German Apples Front	A campaign to purify the German... fruit crop.
Glee Club	Predating the American television series by some decades, one British political party hosts this evening of entertainment in which participants are encouraged to sing rude songs making fun of politicians past and present, both in the party and in more general politics.
Greek Ecologists	A Green party which uses nudity in its political campaigns.
Günter Schabowski	A Freudian slip of this East German official started the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
H'Angus	A monkey football mascot who was elected mayor of Hartlepool, England, with a platform of "free bananas for all schoolchildren".
Harcourt interpolation	The speaker then said he felt inclined for a bit of fucking.
Harold Holt	He goes swimming, and then missing.
Helengrad	A nonexistent communist dystopia that supposedly gripped Wellington, New Zealand between 1999 and 2008.
Huh Kyung-young	A perennial South Korean political candidate who owns a palace filled with portraits of himself, claims to be able to levitate and teleport, and that he has an IQ of 430. Got 0.8% of the vote for President in 2022.
Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party	The best satirical party in Hungary.
Ich bin ein Berliner	President Kennedy did not call himself a jelly donut in front of a German audience.
Ilona Staller	A Hungarian porn star elected to the Italian Parliament.
Incidents of objects being thrown at politicians	In various countries, objects have been thrown at politicians for reasons varying from comedic to harmful with objects from pies to grenades.
Jakob Maria Mierscheid	A fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 1979, originally introduced in the 1920s by Weimar Social Democrats to avoid paying restaurant bills. Discovered the Mierscheid Law.
Jimmy Carter Peanut Statue	A statue of a grinning peanut in honor of Jimmy Carter...
Jimmy Carter rabbit incident Jimmy Carter UFO incident	...who had two very strange incidents happen to him. Was the rabbit really a killer? And is the truth really out there?
Jón Gnarr	An Icelandic comedian who started the satirical Best Party, and became the mayor of Reykjavík.
John Turmel	With a record of no wins and 100 losses in campaigns since 1979, he's probably the world's least-successful would-be politician.
Dennis Hof	An American pimp who owned several legal brothels in Nevada and won the Nevada 36th district election in 2018... While he was dead.
Justin Humphrey	An American politician who made a bill that would make it illegal to be a furry in Oklahoma schools.
Kasongo Ilunga	A man who spent several months of 2007 as the Minister for Foreign Trade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – even though he wasn't a real person.
Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary	If you ever find yourself an alien in the Klavern and someone asks "AYAK?" remember to answer "AKIA". It's all "CABARK".
Lyndon LaRouche	What does the Glass-Steagall Act, concert pitch, and a hypothetical Eurasian Land Bridge have in common? According to him, Elizabeth II's attempts to suppress "the truth" about them.
Legislative violence	Where politicians actively fight for what they believe in.
Liz Truss lettuce	The vegetable that outlasted a British prime minister.
Lord Bloody Wog Rolo	Australian political personality and founder of the British Ultra Loyalist League Serving Historical Interests Today (B.U.L.L.…).
Luke Lea	Former American Senator who tried to kidnap the exiled former Kaiser of Germany in 1919. The plan failed when the Kaiser refused to allow him to visit. He ended up stealing a bronze ashtray instead.
List of Kim Jong Il's titles	Because just being the "Great Leader" wasn't enough.
List of short-tenure Donald Trump political appointments	"You're fired!" (almost as quickly as you were hired)
Marxist–Leninist Party of the Netherlands	A fake Maoist political party set up by the BVD in order to spy on the Chinese government. Fooled Zhou Enlai, and may have helped facilitate Richard Nixon's tour of China.
Mitsuo Matayoshi	Perennial candidate. Self-proclaimed God. Repeatedly told opponents to kill themselves.
McGillicuddy Serious Party	A satirical political party in New Zealand.
Mel Carnahan	In 2000, he was elected to the United States Senate, despite dying in a plane crash 3 weeks before election day.
Merkel-Raute	More than one German leader has been known for a distinctive hand gesture.
Nagriamel	A libertarian, welfarist, traditionalist, cargo cultist Ni-Vanuatu political movement that was once led by a man named "Moses" with 23 wives and briefly tried to secede. Still represented in the Parilament of Vanuatu, making it perhaps the world's strangest non-satirical party with actual influence.
Name changes due to the Islamic State	Companies thought it would be a great idea to name their project "Isis" until...
National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation	A yearly event when the US president pardons two turkeys instead of letting them get eaten for Thanksgiving.
New shoes on budget day	One of Canada's less grand political traditions.
Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda	Mexican eccentric who repeatedly ran for president, lost, and claimed he'd won. Sound familiar?
NHK Party	The Japanese anti-TV licensing fees party with nine names since 2020, two feuding leaders, and a habit of picking YouTubers as candidates, that is somehow still represented in the Diet.
Niuas Nobles' constituency	An electoral constituency consisting of just three voters, who elect one of their number to one of the twenty-six seats in the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.
Nobody for President	Vote for Nobody! Nobody will listen to their campaign promises!
Nuisance candidate	In the Philippines political candidates can be disqualified for bringing the election into disrepute or mockery, having a name which confuses voters or not actually intending to run for office.
Official Monster Raving Loony Party Screaming Lord Sutch Catmando	Among other policies, this British political party advocates the banning of semicolons as "no-one knows how to use them". Its original leader still holds a British record by standing in 40 elections and losing all of them. Also, it was run for a while by a cat.
Old Sarum	A notorious UK rotten borough which elected 2 MPs, despite having an electorate of 11, none of whom actually lived there.
Gabriele Paolini	His sole aim in life: to get condoms on TV.
Panda diplomacy	Turns out that the best Chinese diplomats are pandas.
Parliamentary snuff box	The only place where you can legally get free tobacco in the UK is the House of Commons.
Pascual Racuyal	A Filipino presidential aspirant who promised to build plastic roads and govern the Philippines "via satellite".
Patrol 36	The most famous group of Neo-Nazi Israelis.
Pedro Lascuráin	President of Mexico for 45 minutes.
People's Revolutionary Government	The only Marxist-Leninist constitutional monarchy in history with Elizabeth II as monarch.
Pink Pistols	They're here, they're queer – and they're armed to the teeth.
Polish Beer-Lovers' Party	One of the major political powers in Poland in the early 1990s.
Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. presidential election	I was searching for waffles, not John Kerry.
¿Por qué no te callas?	It's not often a head of state tells another head of state to shut up at an official summit.
Proposed Canadian annexation of the Turks and Caicos Islands	First proposed in 1917.
Puedo prometer y prometo	Spain's first political joke after the end of the Franco era.
Putin khuylo!	Or "Putin is a dickhead", in Ukrainian.
Ratfucking	What the Watergate conspirators did. (Not bestiality, if that's what you're thinking.)
Redskins Rule	When Washington's NFL team won, the party of the current president retained the presidency; when they lost, the opposition party won.
Resignation from the British House of Commons	Illegal since 1624.
Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978)	A British Trotskyist ~~cult~~ party that went right-libertarian post-Cold War, discovered genocide denial, accused ITN of faking footage, and got sued out of existence.
Rhinoceros Party	A former political party in Canada, which often promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.
Richard Nixon mask	One of the United States' most popular masks.
Russian political jokes	In Soviet Russia, the article reads you.
Shanghai Fugu Agreement	A completely fictitious international treaty accepted by the German state of Hesse in 1985.
Shawinigan Handshake	A tense Prime Minister puts a chokehold on a protestor.
Shi Pei Pu	A male Chinese opera singer-turned-spy who seduced French diplomat Bernard Boursicot for 20 years by pretending to be a woman, even "having" a child with him.
Sister Boom Boom	A drag queen who dressed as a nun and ran for the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco.
Socialist fraternal kiss	When two socialist leaders are very close...
Socialist Patients' Collective	An organization that charged that diseases were caused by capitalism.
Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957	You've got to really care about white supremacy to talk for 24 hours straight. (Happily, it didn't stop the Civil Rights Act from passing.)
Taiwan Communist Party	The founder of the party claimed he had no knowledge of communist theory and only picked the name to garner interest.
The Wizard of New Zealand	The Prime Minister of New Zealand gave a friend the title of "Wizard of New Zealand."
"There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama"	A 2008 song celebrating the Irish heritage of then-candidate for President of the United States Barack Obama.
Tía Pikachu	A Chilean preschool teacher who wore an inflatable Pikachu costume in the country's 2019 protests, who was later elected to a board to rewrite the country's constitution.
Toad worship	The online cult of former Chinese President, Jiang Zemin.
Tsang Tsou-choi	From the 1970s to his death, he claimed to be the "Kowloon emperor".
Wilson Tucker	The power of group voting tickets brought a man living in America to Australian regional office despite only having gained 98 votes.
Unabomber for President	1996 saw a presidential campaign for an infamous domestic terrorist serving eight life sentences in a supermax prison.
Union of the Centrist Center	Actually centre-right.
Vermin Supreme	A presidential candidate with a boot on his head, who carries around a large toothbrush and pledges that, if elected, he will give every U.S. citizen a pony.
Waitangi dildo incident	Once upon a time in New Zealand, Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce was attacked with a dildo.
White House horseshoe pit	Where George H. W. Bush won an epic duel of horseshoes 21-0 in five minutes.
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan	A spoof scientific study by J.G. Ballard which compares the face of Ronald Reagan to an erect penis. Was circulated at the 1980 RNC as a prank.
You have two cows	A political satire comparing different political ideologies with cows, for some reason.

Business and economics

1933 double eagle	An extremely rare U.S. coin that is illegal to privately own.
2018 Samsung fat-finger error	When new Samsung Securities shareholders got 112 trillion won (1017719218.54 USD) richer.
BackpackersXpress	It's hard to see what went wrong with this proposal to fly Boeing 747s full of singing, dancing and drinking backpackers between Australia and the UK.
Bads	Like goods, but no one wants them. Notable for being exactly the word a child would come up with for this concept as a joke.
Bank of England £100,000,000 note	If you thought the largest UK banknote was £50, then you're VERY wrong.
Big Mac Index	Ronald McDonaldonomics.
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions	Or "BUGA-UP" for short. An Australian group of subversive artists who live up to their self-description by defacing tobacco and alcohol billboard advertisements to promote healthy living.
Boss key	A special button on an application used to quickly mask an employee's counterproductivity.
CeX (retailer)	It sells.
Christmas Price Index	How much it would cost to buy (or hire) all the items in The Twelve Days of Christmas each year.
Dead cat bounce	In finance, a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock, because "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height."
Dead mall	That formerly active and popular mall that no one goes to anymore.
Elongated coin	What better souvenir than a mangled and defaced penny.
EURion constellations	Not-so-secret recognition patterns you can find on banknotes.
Fedspeak	Federal Reserve Board statements were made deliberately cryptic so no one understood them.
Financial Modeling World Cup	An esport competition of financial modelling, using Microsoft Excel.
Fukuppy	A branding exercise by a Japanese refrigeration company, which turned into a, well, ...
GameStop short squeeze	Internet traders meme their way into a battle for Wall Street. To the moon!
Ghetto tourism	And if you look to your left you will see an impoverished minority neighborhood.
Gruen transfer	Shopping malls are designed to confuse the customer, making them more susceptible to impulse buying.
Prix Guzman	A French Academy of Sciences prize to be given to the first person to communicate with a celestial body, other than Mars (widely believed to be inhabited at the time), and receiving a response. It caught the attention of Tesla among others, but was not awarded until 1969.
Hallmark holiday	A holiday that seemingly exists primarily for commercial purposes.
Hemline index	The other reason why CEOs like women with short skirts.
Hungarian pengő	The worst inflation in history caused this currency to be replaced with another that was 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times its value.
Inflatable rat	Common tool of U.S. labor unions.
IKEA pencil	Free, popular, and even used in surgery.
Kongo Gumi	The world's oldest company that is still in operation today.
Maid café	So cuteeee.
Men's underwear index	An economic indicator popularised by Alan Greenspan.
Meme coin	Actual traded cryptocurrencies based on internet memes.
Merchant Marine of Switzerland	A landlocked country with a significant commercial fleet.
Money burning	For behaviour modification, political notoriety and a warm fireplace. (See also K Foundation Burn a Million Quid above.)
Olim L'Berlin	A Facebook page that urged Israelis to move to Germany by comparing prices of a popular Milky pudding.
Oil futures drunk-trading incident	A rather costly drunken mistake.
Operation Bernhard	A Nazi plan to cause hyperinflation in the UK by way of forged banknote dropping.
Purple squirrel	Mythical creature, a job candidate with precisely the right education, experience, and qualifications that perfectly fits a job's requirements.
Rai stones	Stone money, some of which is 3 meters (10 ft) in diameter, and weighs 4 metric tons (8,800 lb).
Gerald Ratner	Business 101: If you own an incredibly popular jewellery company, maybe don't publicly announce that your products are all cheap garbage.
Swastika Laundry	A laundry service whose electric vans cheerfully displayed the notorious symbol around Dublin until the 1960s.
Tanganyika groundnut scheme	A scheme, stymied by a lack of water, to grow peanuts where none had been grown before.
Therbligs	In motion studies, the elemental motions used by a person when performing a process in the workplace. Named by and after Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (yes, the parents in Cheaper by the Dozen).
Ting Hai effect	A sudden drop in the stock market that follows whenever Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng stars in a new TV show.
Tingo Group Dozy Mmobuosi	A seemingly magical Nigerian agri-fintech company that was once valued for more than $1 billion. Actually discovered to be a personal vehicle for its founder, who's now charged with securities fraud.
Toyokawa Shinkin Bank incident	How idle chatter between three high school girls led to a 2-billion-yen bank run.
Trillion-dollar coin	A concept that was proposed as a way to bypass US debt-ceiling crisis through the minting of high-value platinum coins.
Tulip mania	The first recorded asset bubble was for Dutch tulips, which at the peak of the mania sold for 10 times a skilled artisan's income. Disputed to have ever occurred by some.
"Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!"	An ad campaign that figured the best way to sell cigarettes is to show all the consumers with black eyes.
Veblen good	Goods whose demand increases as price increases, violating the law of demand.
Why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland?	Because if you don't, your in-laws will hate you, your children won't respect you, even your therapist will judge you, according to this mocked PR campaign.
Zero-rupee note	A method of reducing bribery in India.

Law, law enforcement and crime

"Says in the Mail that these'll have to be straight now! Bloody Eurocrats..."

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack	The first and largest bioterror attack in United States history involved the poisoning of salad bars with Salmonella in an attempt to sway an election in favor of the followers of an Indian mystic.
2007 Boston Mooninite panic	A guerilla marketing campaign for an animated TV series that quickly became a homeland security issue.
Sada Abe	Sensational journalism—from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Acoustic Kitty	A failed CIA experiment at using a cat for covert surveillance.
Animal trial	Historically, the law in some areas of Europe subjected animals to criminal liability for their conduct.
Attempted theft of George Washington's skull	Alas, poor George!
Baby Jesus theft	When a child is gone...
Batman rapist	Batman's back at it again, but this time it's actually a sex offender who attacked women in the city of Bath.
Bowling Green massacre	A nonexistent massacre mentioned by the Trump administration, subject to parody.
Burke and Hare murders	What is the best way to accelerate scientific progress? Killing people, of course.
Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 108	Non-suicide aircraft bombings for insurance money have been done afterwards, but certainly not for the purposes of elopement.
Chamoy Thipyaso	At 141,078 years, she holds the record for the longest prison sentence without lifetime imprisonment – and didn't even serve 1% of it.
Chewbacca defense	"Now, why would Wikipedia have an article about the Chewbacca defense? That does not make sense!"
Michael Cicconetti	A judge renowned for his strange alternative punishments.
Cicada 3301	Criminals or puzzle enthusiasts?
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94	The infamous "bendy banana law", this seemingly-dry piece of EU quality standards legislation convinced the UK media and many ordinary people that Brussels had banned bananas from being curved. One of the most infamous Euromyths.
Confraternities in Nigeria	In Nigeria, university student societies have been frequently linked to kidnapping, sexual assault and mass murder.
Crime in Antarctica	It's not the Wild West—er, South.
Crime in Vatican City	Because of its low population and large number of tourists, the statistics suggest the average citizen commits two crimes per year.
Dead Man's Statute	Enacted to prevent a witness from testifying about communications with a dead person.
Easter Act 1928	The government of the United Kingdom legally mandated a change of date for Easter Sunday to a period of seven days - and then never actually enforced it.
Emo killings in Iraq	Music fans killed for their alleged Satan worship and homosexuality.
Expert wizard amendment	New Mexico narrowly avoided requiring all psychiatrists testifying in court to put on a robe and wizard hat.
Free Bench	An unusual English legal custom permitting a widow to inherit her deceased husband's land. In one version, she would have to ride into court backwards on a black ram while reciting a nonsense verse.
Glasgow ice cream wars	In the 1980s, violent conflicts between ice-cream vendors (who also sold drugs and stolen goods) left six people dead.
Troy Leon Gregg	Escaped from death row, got killed in a bar fight that same night.
Disappearance of Johnny Gosch	In 1982, a 12 year-old went missing. As of 2023, the case is still unsolved, and Gosch's whereabouts remain a mystery. However, Gosch's mother claims that he visited her in 1997, and in 2006 she found a photo sent by an anonymous person to her front door.
Guano Islands Act	This strange piece of legislation enables citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits.
Gresham cat hostage taking incident	In 1994, a cat was taken hostage by its owner in a store. The owner would later get shot and killed by police.
Robert Hanssen	Tasked by the FBI to help rat out Soviet spies. The problem? He was one of them.
Helen Duncan	The last woman convicted under the UK's Witchcraft Act. Her favourite trick: "ectoplasm" made out of fabric and egg.
Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal	A craft store chain purchases stolen Iraqi artifacts.
'I know it when I see it'	"Not that, but something sort of like that?"
John Smeaton	Sometimes, the best way to avoid a terrorist attack is to simply kick the terrorist in the balls.
John "Half-hanged" Smith	They tried to hang him, but he survived. Later attempts to try him fizzled out until they just decided to deport him to America.
Lake Erie Walleye Trail fishing tournament cheating scandal	"We got weights in FISH!!!"
Learned Hand	Thanks to his name, this American judge could've part-timed as a superhero—"The Learned Hand of the Law" has a nice ring to it. Given his impact on tax law, his birth name of Billings Learned Hand is even more apropos.
Jay Leiderman	The lawyer that represented Anonymous.
Lesbian rule	Not the replacement for the Patriarchy, but an archaic term meaning legal flexibility (and originally a building tool from Lesbos).
Ley de fugas	Prisoners were allowed to escape, as an excuse to kill them for trying to escape.
Viola Liuzzo	One of the FBI's darkest criminal cases.
Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano	A Guatemalan attorney who arranged his own death and blamed it on the President, seeking justice for his murdered girlfriend.
Massachusetts School Laws	How 17th-century Massachusetts sought to rid itself of the Prince of Darkness.
The Matrix defense	A claim that the defendant committed a crime under the belief of being inside a simulated reality. The defense has been successful more than once.
Gary McKinnon	How a UFO enthusiast with Asperger syndrome was able to hack into the US government's computers.
Moron in a hurry	Used in passing-off law, this is the sort of fictional person who would look at a knockoff product and think it's the real thing for long enough to buy it.
Mug shot of Donald Trump	How a photo of the 45th president of the U.S. getting arrested (and released shortly after) became a source of comedy on the internet.
My Way killings	There's one song you shouldn't sing in a Filipino karaoke bar.
Ninja of Heisei	An elderly Japanese man who successfully committed over 250 burglaries while disguised in a ninja outfit.
Not proven	A controversial Scots law verdict for those neither guilty nor innocent.
Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi	In 1983, a teenage girl went missing in the Vatican and the search for her whereabouts became a major controversy. In 2023, the religious state opened for the first time an official investigation on the matter.
Onion Futures Act	Why you can't buy any onion futures, but you can for corn, oats, rice, aluminum, crude oil, wood, etc.
Operation Flagship	Do not trust the San Diego Chicken.
Perry Mason moment	"Mr. Menendez, did you know Big 5 stopped selling pistols in 1986?"
Phantom of Heilbronn	A DNA-traced serial killer, also known as the "Woman without a face", who turned out to be nonexistent.
Phantom social workers	They make children disappear.
Prenda Law	A law firm that blackmailed people for allegedly downloading pornography; the firm was described by one court as a "porno-trolling collective".
Prohibition of dying	There are really some places where death is illegal. (Although it is unknown what happens to anyone who breaks this law.)
Regulation of flamethrowers in the United States	No permit needed in 48 states.
Rough sex murder defense	It is what it is.
Mitchell Rupe	The man who was too fat to hang.
Salmon Act 1986	A UK law, designed to curb illegal fishing, which creates the humorously-named crime of "handling salmon in suspicious circumstances".
Sand theft	What do you mean I can't take the sand home?
Shaggy defense	Caught committing a crime, but don't know what to do? Say it wasn't you.
Shawn Nelson	They say that being in a tank gives you the high ground. It certainly reigns true here.
Small penis rule	A technique used by authors to avoid libel lawsuits.
Steve Comisar	America's #1 solar-powered dryer salesman.
Suspensory Act 1914	An act whose sole purpose was to postpone the coming into force of two other acts.
Tennessee login law	Laws against password sharing are older than you think, but have always been this unpopular.
Keron Thomas	In 1993, aged sixteen, he posed as a motorman on the New York City Subway and managed to operate a scheduled passenger train for over three hours.
Andre Thomas	Serial killer who tore out his eyes and consumed them in order to prevent the government from reading his mind.
Twinkie defense	When you don't want to go to jail.
Ugly law	A type of U.S. city ordinance banning anyone "diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" from being in public.
United Airlines Flight 976	The worst case of air rage ever? Or just a very bad case of traveler's diarrhea?
Angie Sanclemente Valencia	A former lingerie model alleged to have run one of the largest drug cartels in the world.
Clement Vallandigham	A lawyer who proved his client had not killed a man, but the victim had shot himself... by shooting himself dead.
Whipping Tom	The name given to multiple London sex attackers. One of them, upon seeing an unaccompanied woman, would grab her, lift her dress, and slap her buttocks repeatedly before fleeing. He would sometimes accompany his attacks by shouting "Spanko!"
Wet feet, dry feet policy	America seems to not like wet feet.

Legal cases

2008 French mistaken virginity case	France's most bizarre lawsuit: an angry man takes legal action against his newly married wife for not being a virgin.
62 Cases of Jam v. United States	When is imitation jam not jam?
Batman v. Commissioner	Batman said his teenage son was his partner. The Commissioner wasn't having any of it.
FTC v. Balls of Kryptonite	In some ways, the U.S. government is more powerful than Superman.
Hermesmann v. Seyer	A Kansas Supreme Court case that decided that a 12-year-old boy who was molested by his 16-year-old babysitter had to pay for her child support.
Iceland v Iceland Foods Ltd	Who has a greater claim to the name Iceland - a country established in 874 or a British retailer founded in 1970?
Jarvis v Swans Tours Ltd	A legal complaint about the lack of gemütlichkeit during a Swiss Christmas holiday.
Lawsuits against supernatural beings	Even if you can serve process on them, they are unlikely to show up in court.
Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.	Would you expect to be able to swap 7 million points (worth $700,000) for a Harrier jump jet (worth $22 million)? This man did and took Pepsi to court when they failed to supply him one. Unsurprisingly – to everyone except him – he lost the case.
Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber	Do you still count as "executed" even if you didn't die? This was a surprisingly contentious issue.
Manacled Mormon case	The religious rape case that became a movie and involved the cloning of a dog.
Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc.	The lawsuit that occurred because of a parody song about a barbie girl living in a barbie world.
Memoirs v. Massachusetts	A U.S. Supreme Court case concerning whether the 1748 book Fanny Hill was entitled to First Amendment protection. One of the dissenting opinions contained an extensive discussion of the supposedly pornographic content.
McMartin preschool trial	The most expensive trial in US history. Amid the 1980s' day-care sex-abuse hysteria, hundreds of children wasted 7 years of court time and $15 million of public money by telling bizarre and fanciful tall tales.
Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft	When your name is too good not to buy a domain name featuring.
Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia	Can a city require a business license for a talking cat, and does the cat have free-speech rights?
Monkey selfie copyright dispute	An actual monkey made a monkey out of the law.
Nix v. Hedden	The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.
Pearson v. Chung	Also known as the $54 million pants case, or "The Great American Pants Suit" according to one Wall Street Journal reporter.
Stambovsky v. Ackley	Also known as the "Ghostbusters case", the court ruled that a house in Nyack, New York was legally haunted by ghosts.
State v. Linkhaw	He sang so badly in church that a jury found him guilty of "disturbing a religious congregation".
Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson	The first and only murder case where demonic possession was used as a defense.
Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States	Are the X-Men humans under U.S. law?
Trial of the Pyx	Whence the British Pound lands in court every year.
United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff	Who has jurisdiction over Satan?
United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat's Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness	The FDA will not tolerate misbranding.
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins	The fins won a case that turned on whether buying something from someone counts as "aiding or assisting" them.
United States v. Causby	Planes vs. farmers.
United States v. Ninety-Five Barrels Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar	When is apple cider vinegar not apple cider vinegar?
United States v. Strong	A court case about someone who supposedly had an accident in a courtroom's bathroom, covering much of it.

Taxation

Bachelor tax	Implicit in many jurisdictions which offer a marital tax relief.
Beard tax	Used to be imposed in England and Russia.
Breast tax	An unusual tax meant to enforce the caste system in an indirect way.
Chicken tax	A U.S. tariff on trucks, which resulted in a period of chicken trade related tension known as the Chicken War.
Flatulence tax	When you keep a lot of cattle, you're contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect ... aren't you?
Taxation of illegal income in the United States	Don't worry: you can deduct your illegal activity expenses.

Punishments

"Had a little too much to drink, have we, sir?"

Bamboo torture	Death by a growing bamboo shoot.
Blood eagle	The "wings" were your lungs pulled out through your back.
Brazen bull	Encased in bronze and boiled to death, with wind instruments attached so your screams would turn into moos.
Disneyland with the Death Penalty	Best way to describe Singapore according to William Gibson.
Drunkard's cloak	Attire for the village drunk.
Enhanced interrogation techniques	No inhumane torture over here.
Half-hanging	For when you don't want to go all the way.
Hanged, drawn and quartered	Dark Ages punishment for high treason.
Music in psychological operations	Music used to especially torture prisoners of war.
Pitchcapping	A hat made of tar was molded on to your head, then ripped off, taking your skin with it.
Poena cullei	Taking a fatal trip down the river with a dog, snake, monkey, and rooster (none of whom did anything wrong).
Rhaphanidosis	For sex crimes in classical times, you got a radish shoved up your rear.
Rough music	A form of vigilantism, more loud than violent.
Scaphism	Probably the worst ever execution method - the condemned was enclosed in a pair of boats, covered with milk and honey, and eaten to death by insects.
Schwedentrunk	Victims were bound and were forced to swallow large amounts of foul liquid, usually excrement.
Scold's bridle	A muzzle for the nagging wife.
Washing out the mouth with soap	That'll teach you to say dirty words!
Whipping boy	A boy who received corporal punishment for misdemeanors of a prince; as well as some of his privileges.

See also

Religion and spirituality

Abeguwo	Remember when you were a kid, and joked that the rain was peeing? Well...
Adorcism	For when you want spirits inside you.
Asher yatzar	A Jewish blessing, read to praise the ability to excrete urine or faeces.
Axinomancy	Foretelling the future by looking at an axe or hatchet.
Jim Bakker	Televangelist founds a Christian theme park so successful that it competes with Disneyland, gets arrested for fraud and loses his park, then promptly returns to televangelism upon release. Also admitted to never fully reading the Bible until his imprisonment, and to getting information on it from Lyndon LaRouche.
Ben Hana	A homeless man in Wellington, New Zealand who worshiped the Māori sun-god Ra (not to be confused with the ancient Egyptian sun-god Ra).
Bhekuli Biya	"Frog marriage", designed to bring rain. At least one has ended in divorce in order to stop floods.
Braco (faith healer)	Meet the Gazer and be healed with a single glance.
Cargo cult	Tribal rites and rituals developed in the belief they will attract the goods, wealth and materials – the "cargo" – of a more technologically advanced and affluent culture.
Church of the SubGenius	A parody religion created in Texas which preaches that a 1950s salesman, who is also a yeti, is their messiah and tries to protect people from the numerous conspiracies that haunt their lives.
Coconut Religion	A religion founded in Vietnam that advocates subsisting solely off of coconuts and coconut milk, created a "Coconut Kingdom" on an islet of the Mekong River, and referred to its leader and founder as "His Coconutship".
Coke Fatwa	It's the real thing... and thankfully, it's not haram.
Crepitus (mythology)	A Roman god of flatulence (allegedly)
Ded Moroz	Like Santa, but Russian, and blue.
Dendera light	Does an engraving of the Egyptian creation myth show that Ancient Egypt had lightbulbs? As it turns out, no.
Dhana Kumari Bajracharya	A woman did not walk for 60 years.
Dinkoism	A parody religion that places Dinkan, a comic character from Malayalam children's magazine Balamangalam, as the one true God and the creator of the Universe.
Disconnection (Scientology)	The result of a poor signal with Scientology.
Fluffy bunny	A controversial epithet in Wicca.
Flying Spaghetti Monster	The basis of a satirical religion created to make fun of intelligent design.
Gang Bing	After his act of self-castration, he became the patron saint of eunuchs.
Haitian Vodou and sexual orientation	Surely a troll, you say? No! A perfectly legitimate article!
High-Heel Wedding Church	Want to get married in a giant shoe in Taiwan?
Iglesia Maradoniana	A religion with the Argentine footballer Diego Maradona as its god.
Incident (Scientology)	Bubble Gum Incident, Obscene Dog Incident, Bodies in pawn, blah, blah...
International date line in Judaism and Jewish law in the polar regions	Jewish law can get tricky when you travel to Hawaii... or go for a hike near the North Pole.
Invisible Pink Unicorn	Best buds with the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Jedi census phenomenon	A phenomenon in which 390,000 British citizens listed their religion as "Jedi Knight" on a 2001 census form, which would've made it the fourth-largest religion in England and Wales.
Jerusalem syndrome	For some people, a visit there is just too much.
Jewish pope Andreas	A Jewish pope..?
Johnson cult	Was US President Lyndon B. Johnson worshiped as a god in Papua New Guinea?
Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory	Can't decide whether to blame the Jews or the Freemasons? The conspiracy nuts have you covered.
Kacchera	Sikh underwear.
Kapo (mythology)	The Hawaiian fertility goddess, known for having a detachable vagina.
List of UFO religions	Our Father, which art in spaceship...
Lou de Palingboer	God sells eels?
Love jihad	The Indian far-right posits that Muslims are converting the world by... being more attractive to women than them.
Jesús Malverde	A popular saint among drug dealers in Mexico.
Matshishkapeu	The "fart man" of Innu mythology. Don't cross him or he'll make you constipated.
Missionary Church of Kopimism	To Ctrl+C is human; to Ctrl+V is divine.
Mizab al-Rahma	The holiest rain gutter in Islam.
Oomoto	L. L. Zamenhof as kami.
Open-source religion	And we're not talking about the Church of Emacs either.
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption	A legally recognized religion created by comedian John Oliver for the sole purpose of exempting his show from taxes by way of the Religious Tax Exemption.
Prince Philip movement	A religious movement on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu which holds that Queen Elizabeth II's late husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a divine being.
Pseudoskepticism	The philosophical or scientific argument that tries to appear skeptical, but really is trying to prove a position, as in "I don’t see enough evidence that we landed on the moon".
Raël	A French journalist who started a religion named after himself in the 1970s.
Religion in Antarctica	There's no continent on Earth without organized religion.
Reincarnation Application	Must be filed by all living Buddha within the People's Republic of China before they are allowed to reincarnate.
Religious pareidolia	A tendency to see religious imagery in the textures of corn chips, cinnamon rolls, toast, clouds, etc.
Saint Urho	A fictitious saint of Finland created in Minnesota.
Silver Sisterhood	A bizarre neo-Victorian Irish spiritual movement with a sideline in creating text adventure games, including the first 18-rated game.
Sin-eater	An old belief that someone eating over a body would consume the sins of the deceased.
St. Priapus Church	A religion based on the worship of the phallus.
Space opera in Scientology	L. Ron Hubbard's history of the universe, including alien Invader Forces, "little orange-colored bombs that would talk" and brainwashing episodes in "a railway carriage quite like a British railway coach with compartments".
Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case	How a British schoolteacher teaching overseas in Sudan got in trouble for letting her six-year-old students name a teddy bear "Muhammad".
Taghairm	A couple of uncomfortable methods of fortune telling.
Tlazōlteōtl	Aztec god of vice, purification, steam baths, lust, filth, and a patroness of adulterers.
Toilet god	God living in the toilet.
Turtles all the way down	A myth about the nature of the universe, or perhaps a myth about a myth about the nature of the universe.
United Nation of Islam	Royall, Allah in Person claims to have spent the 1980s in a spaceship with angels who informed him that he was God and instructed him on how to govern the world. Public records say he was a truck driver.
Universe People	Specific cult in Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The Urantia Book	Over two thousand pages of anonymous, religious, subconscious ramblings on religion and "God" (whatever that means in the billion planets out there).
Xenu	An ancient interstellar dictator who unleashed a genocide which created Christianity and psychiatry and whose story is "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc.) anyone who attempts to solve it".
Yakub (Nation of Islam)	Mad scientist creates white race.

Christianity

A representation of Kolob (reference numeral 1).

"Thou shalt commit adultery." So says the Bible.

Adam-God doctrine	A previous Mormon belief that Adam was an alien who became God on his death.
Alexamenos graffito	Possibly the oldest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus was made by a boy mocking his Christian peer by depicting the Messiah with a donkey for a head.
The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters	Started by Peter the Great, and consisted mostly of drinking and partying.
As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly	An oldie but a goodie from the Bible.
Banquet of Chestnuts	Enough to make even the most committed and diehard Roman Catholic agree that the church was in a pretty poor state at the time of the Reformation.
Bible errata	A typesetter's complaint finds justification in Psalm 119.
Carlo Acutis	a to-be Catholic patron saint of influencers. He was also an epic gamer
Cadaver Synod	In 897, Pope Stephen VI had the body of the former Pope that appointed him, Pope Formosus exhumed, dressed in papal vestments and then seated on a throne while he read charges against it and conducted a trial.
Caganer	A traditional Catalan statue, similar to a garden gnome, that depicts a person defecating. Often included in Catalan nativity scenes or other Christmas decorations.
Christmas in Nazi Germany	The Nazi Party reinvented Christmas by removing a certain baby boy raised in the Jewish faith.
Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God	A fundamentalist Mormon group with a surprisingly large body count.
Chute na santa incident	An infamous kicking of a saint. Apparently done to one-up a rival TV network's previous blasphemous broadcasting.
Clare of Assisi	Because she claimed to have seen and heard Mass on the walls when she was ill, she was made the patron saint of television in 1958, despite dying 674 years before television was invented.
Criticism of Mother Teresa	Seriously? Yep, seriously. Her detractors include Christopher Hitchens, Tariq Ali and devout Hindus.
David Berg	A Christian cult leader that was so perverse, even Jim Jones mocked his sexual fixations.
Harold Davidson	A 1930s Church of England clergyman, known as "The Prostitutes' Padre", who was defrocked and later died after being mauled by a toothless lion.
Ejaculatory prayer	A short and impulsive prayer not—as the name may suggest—a prayer related to ejaculation.
Ruben Enaje	A former construction worker from the Philippines who has been voluntarily crucified 35 times as of 2024.
Ezekiel 23	One of the odder visions from God: a piece of Rule 34 with Samaria and Jerusalem portrayed as women who sleep around.
Feast of the Ass	No... this isn't about that ass. It's an old tradition where a girl and a child on a donkey go to church together, with the donkey sitting beside the altar during the sermon.
Flirty Fishing	Sharing the Gospel through prostitution.
Freedomites	A Canadian religious cult that bombed and set fire to public buildings. All while nude.
Gambling on papal elections	How much you wanna bet he's going to be Catholic?
General Butt Naked	A former Liberian warlord who found Christ and now preaches to the communities he committed atrocities against would be pretty odd even if he weren't called... that.
Great Disappointment	Hundreds of people were convinced the world would end on a very specific date. Turns out they were wrong. Ahem.
Hell house	A type of Christian horror house to make children more pious.
Holy Prepuce	One of several relics purported to be associated with Jesus. Also known as The Holy Foreskin. (See also Circumcision of Jesus.)
Jesus H. Christ	Does it stand for Henry?
Kolob	Which star does God live on?
List of people claimed to be Jesus	Christ has risen...again...and again.
Luce	Don't mess with this jubilee mascot! She has the power of God and anime on her side!
Mental health of Jesus	Many say "Hey look it's Jesus!" But none say "How is Jesus doing?"
Miracle of the Sun	70,000 people in Portugal gather to witness a miracle and are treated to an inexplicable solar event.
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God	Suicide cult or mass murder? You decide.
Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible	The Bible refers to lost books – even pagan ones – much more than you'd think.
Omphalos hypothesis	The answer to all the evidence against creationism – maybe the Earth was created to look like it was billions of years old!
Phallic saint	Figures of holy people, but a hundred times more hung.
Pope Joan	Medieval documents cite the existence of a female pope – proof of a Vatican cover up or a blasphemous slur?
Pope John numbering	There have been 21 legitimate Popes John, but there have been two known as John XXIII.
Pope Michael	Elected Pope in 1990 (by six people, including his parents) as a conclavist opponent to the current Pope, while not even an ordained priest.
Pornocracy	A near-60-year period, also known as Saeculum obscurum or the "Rule of the Harlots", where the Popes were controlled by the women of a corrupt noble family.
Prophecy of the Popes	According to this document, Pope Francis is the one who will bring about the fall of Rome. Most aren't convinced.
Rod of Iron Ministries	An offshoot of the unification church based in Pennsylvania that says that the rod of iron described in the Book of Revelation is actually a good 'ol American AR-15. They also preform ceramonies with the firearm.
Rumspringa	Amish Gone Wild.
Saint Guinefort	A Saint who was also a dog. Not to be confused with this Saint, who was also a dog. Sort of.
Secret Gospel of Mark	An incredibly elaborate forgery, or proof Jesus was gay?
Self-crucifixion of Mattio Lovat	An Italian attempts to crucify himself in public settings. Two times. And prevented by passerby in both attempts.
Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga	One of only a few territories (others notably including Samoa and Kiribati) where the famously Saturday-observing church observes the Sabbath on Sunday.
Skoptsy	"Holy" emasculation, started by a man who claimed to be a deceased emperor.
St. James-Bond Church	No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and saviour!
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera	Was Jesus' father buried in Germany?
Unfulfilled Christian religious predictions	Doomsdays that didn't.
Wicked Bible	A 1631 reprint of the King James Bible, which rendered commandment number 7 as "Thou shalt commit adultery".
Zipporah at the inn	God apparently tries (and fails) to kill Moses.

See also

Military

Sometimes, the best fighting men are women.

The wooden broomstick on which the Night Witches worked their magic.

Adrian Carton de Wiart	Fought in two World Wars, shot repeatedly, survived two plane crashes, escaped a POW camp, married a countess, and amputated his own fingers when his doctor refused. Also looked like a pirate.
Angels of Mons	Phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt rose up from the dead to enact justice on the invading German Empire during the Battle of Mons...supposably.
Vasily Arkhipov	Potentially averted a nuclear war.
Bolivian Navy	Not having access to the sea won't stop Bolivia from having a 5,000 man navy.
Boot Monument	In celebration of Benedict Arnold's foot.
List of camoufleurs	Pioneering artists in the field of military camouflage.
Caspian Sea Monster	Actually a product of the Cold War.
Jack Churchill	Longbows and broadswords weren't used in World War II. Or were they?
The Crucified Soldier	A Canadian soldier who was reportedly crucified with bayonets during the Second Battle of Ypres...ouch.
CONOP 8888	The Pentagon's zombie apocalypse plan.
Boston Corbett	English-born soldier who killed John Wilkes Booth. Devoutly religious to the point of eccentricity, he was later committed to a mental institution, and disappeared after escaping from it.
*D-Day Daily Telegraph* crossword security alarm**	Crossword puzzles: A major danger to national security.
Deborah's Hole Camp	An Iron Age hillfort situated atop the cliff above Deborah's Hole cave.
Demob suit	Imagine the feeling: you've come back from war and they've given you a nice civilian suit, but it's too small for you.
Devil Eyes	This CIA psyop plan called for Hasbro to make G.I. Joe style figures of Osama bin Laden with a hidden demon face underneath.
Dreadnought hoax	A practical joke at the expense of the Royal Navy, inspiring the influential Bloomsbury Group.
Juan Pujol García	A spy who worked as a double agent for the Nazis and the United Kingdom during World War II.
Henry Gunther	The last man to die in World War I, and quite possibly the dumbest.
Simo Häyhä	Showed some extraordinary Finnish sisu in the Winter War against the Soviets.
Ice cream barge	Warning! Delicious creamy goodness ahead!
Kamikaze	A series of typhoons which were said to have prevented two Mongol fleets from invading Japan, seven years apart.
Koshiro Tanaka	A salaryman who decided he wanted to do more with his life... and achived this by joining the mujahideen to fight the Soviets.
Aimo Koivunen	Finnish soldier in the Continuation War, and first documented case of meth overdose during combat.
Line-crossing ceremony	An initiation rite performed when a ship crosses the equator.
List of wartime crossdressers	Because war demands proper fashion.
Alan Mcilwraith	A call center worker who pretended to be a British Army officer, and then pretended to be a magician.
Wilmer McLean	It can be said that the American Civil War both started and ended in one man's front yard.
Miss Russian Army	A beauty contest minus the swimsuit competition but plus the automatic weapons drills.
Montauk Project	Real military science experiment or urban legend? Maybe the civilians who were in full view of the military base will be able to tell you.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front	A rebel, some might say terrorist, group in the Southern Philippines who may or may not be aware that their initials are also an acronym for mom I'd like to...
Mozart Group	An ambitious American private military company created for the purpose of supporting Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. Fell apart after less than a year due largely to underfunding, infighting and rowdy soldier behavior.
Navies of landlocked countries	Mongolia once had one of the world's largest navies. Today they have one vessel with a crew of seven sailors, one of them able to swim.
Nebraska Admiral	The landlocked U.S. state of Nebraska and its "Great Navy".
Night Witches	An all-women Soviet bomber regiment who, despite flying in wooden training planes (or perhaps because of it), were highly successful and contained 23 different Heroes of the Soviet Union.
NORAD Tracks Santa	A tradition with the American and Canadian military to track Santa Claus for children.
Hiroo Onoda	A Japanese soldier who hid out in the Philippines during World War II, refusing to surrender until 1974.
Stanislav Petrov	Another man who potentially averted nuclear war.
Pentagon UFO videos	Yes, they're official.
Philadelphia Experiment	An alleged experiment in 1943 involving electromagnetic technology to render vessels invisible.
Portuguese Fireplace	A fireplace in the middle of the New Forest.
Project A119	If you can't land on the Moon, nuke it.
Ratlines	The underground secret lines for fleeing Nazis after World War II.
Russian warship, go fuck yourself	An eternalized catchphrase of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Shi Yousan	Early 20th-century Chinese general who seemingly made it his life mission to betray everyone he met.
Siachen Glacier	The world's highest battlefield, with very predictable terrain.
Otto Skorzeny	His career reads like several thriller novels in a row; he worked for the Nazis, Franco, Nasser, Perón, and apparently Mossad as a hit man (without ever denouncing Nazism).
Henry Tandey	Allegedly met a young Adolf Hitler during World War I - and spared his life.
The terrorists have won	Or have they?
Truelove Eyre	A man who supposedly saved William the Conqueror's life during the Battle of Hastings.
András Toma	A Hungarian soldier taken as a prisoner of war by the USSR in 1945 and declared dead... until he turned up in a Russian mental hospital in 2000, having not spoken to anyone for 55 years.
Lauri Törni	Fought in the Finnish Army, Waffen-SS, and United States Army, in that order. Only member of the Waffen-SS interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
USS William D. Porter	The US Navy's unluckiest ship ever?
William Patrick Hitler	Hitler fought in World War II... on the side of the United States. The last surviving member of the Hitler family
Tsutomu Yamaguchi	Survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945. See also Jacob Beser.
Yang Kyoungjong	A mysterious Korean soldier said to have served Japan, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany.
Z (military symbol)	A modern symbol of Russian military might is a letter they don't even use.
Zeppelin LZ 66	Real-life sky pirates.
Zhang Zongchang	Eccentric Chinese warlord that, among other things, assigned numbers to his many concubines, as he could not remember all of their names.

Animals in the military

Corporal Jackie	A baboon owned by a draftee who didn't want to leave him behind, he ended the First World War as a South African corporal, having picked up several injuries and a habit of saluting superior officers.
Dickin Medal	Only awarded to animals.
Moose cavalry	The supposed moose cavalries of Sweden and Russia.
Sergeant Stubby	The only dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat.
United States Camel Corps	Full-blooded Arabian mount, imported!
Unsinkable Sam	Three strikes (or in this case, sunken ships) didn't knock him out at all.
Wojtek	Arguably the most extraordinary soldier of all time.

Wars, operations and battles

1998 Sokcho submarine incident	North Korean submarine becomes entangled in a large South Korean fishing net. All of the crew aboard perished before it could be towed to port.
Anglo-Zanzibar War	The world's shortest war. It literally lasted 38 minutes.
Attack of the Dead Men	Russian combatants looking like zombies win the battle by scaring away the Germans.
Attack on Marstrand	A Danish-Norwegian siege in Sweden that succeeded partly because the Danish commander used all sorts of trickery to force a Swedish surrender. One popular story tells that he ordered his soldiers to walk slowly and in larger groups so it looked like there were more of them.
Bahia incident	Did you know that the American Civil War also took place in Brazil?
Battle of Castle Itter	American and German soldiers team up against the Nazis in a battle for a medieval castle.
Battle of Domažlice	A Hussite army routs the twice as numerous crusading Holy Roman army with the power of singing.
Battle of Fishguard	That time when France tried to invade Wales, got drunk and surrendered because they took the British forces too seriously.
Battle of Karánsebes	How the Austrians fought against themselves over liquor and resulted in 1,200 own casualties.
Battle of Lake Baikal	Czechoslovak Legionnares stole a steamship and won a naval battle against the Red Army.
Battle of Tanga	A World War I battle where 8,000 British troops were defeated by a German-led force of 1,100 Askaris – aided by swarms of angry bees.
Battle of the Crater	If you're going to blow up the enemy, don't run into the crater right after and let them shoot you like fish in a barrel.
Battle of the Eclipse	Lydia and Media had been fighting for six years, until an eclipse happening during one of their battles abruptly convinced them to stop.
Battle of the Herrings	An incident during the siege of Orléans, where French and Scottish forces attempted to stop a supply convoy full of barrels of herring.
British invasion of Iceland	How do you stop an enemy nation from invading a neutral country? By invading it yourself.
Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising	When you're subject to execution for being late, what else can you do but revolt?
Dai Hong Dan incident	North Korea and the United States team up to defeat Somali pirates.
Empresa de China	Spain's plan for an Iberian-Filipino-Japanese motley crew to take over China. Cancelled after England sunk the Armada.
Emu War	Final score for this one: Emus 1, Australians 0.
Flagstaff War	A war that started between British military forces and the indigenous Polynesian people in New Zealand after a flagstaff was cut down four times.
Football War	A six-day war fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 that was triggered by a game of football (soccer).
Gombe Chimpanzee War	A four-year war, fought between two groups of chimpanzees in Tanzania.
Huéscar-Danish War	When one town joined a war on the opposite side from the rest of its country, then forgot about it for 170 years.
If Day	A simulated Nazi invasion of the Canadian city of Winnipeg, complete with book-burning, arrests of politicians, and newspaper censorship.
Iowa Cow War	A battle between cow ranchers and the state of Iowa over tuberculosis testing.
Lobster War	A particularly heated dispute over whether lobsters swim or walk.
Operation Cottage	The Japanese never showed up.
Operation Mincemeat	The true story behind the best-reviewed West End musical of all time.
Operation Paul Bunyan	An American and South Korean military operation conducted over a tree.
Operation Pig Bristle	A daring air force operation to transport 25 tonnes of pig bristles from Chongqing in China to Hong Kong during the Chinese Civil War. The bristles were shipped to Australia to be made into paint brushes.
Operation Red Dog	A group of American and Canadian white supremacists plot to independently filibuster a small Caribbean nation. A plan straight from the mid-1800s: foiled in 1981.
Operation Tamarisk	Claimed to be the most successful intelligence operation in the Cold War; emptying supplies of Soviet toilet paper, forcing them to use documents, and retrieving these documents after use.
Operation Wikinger	Poor communication leads to the German air force scoring a great victory ... against the German navy.
Pastry War	Looting a pastry shop? This means war!
Pig War	A war between the United States and the British Empire that almost erupted over one dead pig.
Taiping Rebellion	One of the most lethal wars in history centers around a Chinese man claiming to be the brother of Jesus Christ.
Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War	A "war" that lasted 335 years without a single shot being fired, between the Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly.
Toledo War	A war between the State of Ohio and the Michigan Territory that resulted in one injury and over a century of bitterness.
Toyota War	A war in the last phase of the Chadian–Libyan conflict, named after the Toyota trucks that were used in the battle.
Turkish Abductions	A 1627 slave raid by Turkish pirates off the coast of Iceland.
War of the Bucket	Supposedly started when Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a city well in Bologna. (They actually stole it later during the war as a trophy)
War of Jenkins' Ear	A nine-year war, started when Captain Robert Jenkins complained that the Spanish Coastguard had cut off his ear.
War of the Stray Dog	Greek soldier chases his pooch across the Bulgaria border. Warfare nearly ensues.
War of the Donkey	Two Venetian noble families go to war over a single donkey. Just one. It probably died during the conflict anyway.
War of the Insane	Hmong revolt against taxing by the French colonial administration in Indochina lasting from 1918 to 1921.
War of the League of Cambrai	A war that started when France and the Pope attacked Venice. Ended when France and Venice defeated literally everyone else in Western Europe.
War Plan Red	U.S. war plans from the 1930s to invade Canada in the unlikely event of war with the United Kingdom. Also see the counterpart war plan Defence Scheme No. 1 (the Canadian war plan to invade the United States).

Weapons and military equipment

The Bazooka Vespa – the ultimate in Mod(ern) warfare.

Anti-tank dog	Failed Soviet weapon of the Second World War.
Antonov A-40	The "flying tank", an experimental Soviet tank with wings and tailboom, meant to glide into the battlefield, ready for combat. Trials were unsuccessful.
Bat bomb	A World War II plan to bomb Japan with bats carrying tiny incendiary bombs.
Baynes Bat	An experimental British glider, designed to convert tanks into gliders which could fly into battle.
Bazooka Vespa	A heavily armed scooter
Bicycle infantry	Soldiers have occasionally been trained to use the bicycle for military purposes.
Blue Peacock	In case the Soviets decided they wanted the whole of Germany, the British planned to plant a bunch of nuclear landmines... heated by chickens.
Cornfield Bomber	An F-106 jet fighter made a perfect gear-up landing in a farmer's field – after the pilot had ejected at 15,000 feet (4,600 m).
Dazzle camouflage	A colorful way to hide in plain sight.
Davy Crockett (nuclear device)	A portable nuclear weapon.
Double-barreled cannon	A failed civil war era attempt to create a weapon of mass destruction. Now a monument in Athens, GA.
Explosive rat	A World War II weapon designed to cause boiler explosions. Never used, yet still a success.
Gay bomb	A speculative non-lethal chemical weapon that could be dropped on enemy troops to cause "homosexual behaviour". Not to be confused with the fag bomb.
German submarine U-1206	A Nazi submarine that was attacked by British forces after it was forced to surface due to a malfunctioning toilet.
Golden rivet	The hidden secret in every Navy ship (allegedly).
Grand Panjandrum	Britain's World War II Catherine wheel of death.
Harmonica gun	What's the best way to play the harmonica? Turn it into a weapon, of course!
History of military ballooning	Aerial warfare had to start somewhere.
HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen (1936)	A Navy ship that attempted to avoid detection by Japanese aircraft and escape back to Australia by having it disguised as a tropical island.
Human torpedo	Secret naval weapons of World War II.
Millwall brick	An improvised weapon constructed from a newspaper.
Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards	A set of playing cards created by U.S. Army soldiers featuring the most-wanted Iraqis, with Saddam Hussein as the Ace of spades.
Project Habakkuk	A British plan to construct an aircraft carrier out of ice (pykrete).
Project Pigeon	Bombs guided by pigeon pecks.
Project Plowshare	The search for peaceful uses of nuclear bombs. Most audacious and impractical idea: nuking a 160-mile canal out of Israel.
Puckle gun	A gun with square bullets to be used against non-Christian enemies.
Schwerer Gustav	The largest piece of artillery ever used in combat.
Skunk (weapon)	A nonlethal weapon with an extremely strong odor that may linger on clothes for years.
Sticky bomb	The most unpopular weapon the British soldier has ever been asked to use.
Tachanka	Twentieth century chariot used in combat.
Tsar Tank	An Imperial Russian tank designed as a tricycle with nine-metre wheels.
United States Navy Marine Mammal Program	A U.S. Navy program which studies the military use of Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions.
Whistling Dick (cannon)	A cannon of "rather modest proportions". Huh, I wonder why they mentioned the size...
Who Me	A top secret stench weapon designed to be unobtrusively sprayed on German officers by French Resistance members.
Zhanmadao	An anti-horse sword.

See also

Death

Don't panic – you're in a safety coffin.

Atacama skeleton	Remains found in Chile that caused much speculation about ancient aliens for 10 years, until they were discovered to just be of a foetus.
Badge Man	Unknown figure reportedly visible atop the grassy knoll in the Moorman photo of the Kennedy assassination.
Black Volga	The car that makes people disappear in the Eastern Bloc. Its equivalent on the other side of the Iron Curtain is the black helicopter.
Mercy Brown vampire incident	One of the best documented cases of vampire investigation.
Richard Chase	The only way to stop the Nazi-controlled UFOs from poisoning your macaroni and cheese is to inject yourself with animal blood and eat human brains.
Coffin birth	When a pregnant woman dies, the decomposition of her body can result in a gas build-up that causes the fetus inside her to be expelled.
Collyer brothers	When packratting was taken to a tragic extreme.
The Dawn of the Black Hearts	Black metal musician takes staged photograph of his recently deceased bandmate, photograph outlives him despite being destroyed.
Death by coconut	You can die if a coconut falls on your coconut.
Death by GPS	Turn-by-turn directions to the afterlife.
Death during consensual sex	These two are not related to each other. Usually.
Death erection	These two are not related to each other. Usually.
Death from laughter	Don't laugh – it's happened.
Death by misadventure	Death probably due after one saying "Hold my beer, and watch this!"
Death by vending machine	A penny wise and several hundred pounds foolish.
Death Master File	No, it's not a Bond villain's kill list. It's just the SSA keeping track of everyone who dies in the United States. Wait...
Defenestration	The time-honoured tradition of throwing people out of windows.
Disappearance of Frederick Valentich	An Australian pilot disappeared in the ocean, having seen a strange object above his aircraft. No trace of either his body or the aircraft have been found.
Dyatlov Pass Incident	A group of Russian hikers attempt to escape an unknown horror on "Death Mountain."
Euthanasia Coaster	A roller coaster intended to kill its passengers.
Execution by elephant	An unusual form of capital punishment used throughout history. (See also History of elephants in Europe.)
Fan death	A persistent urban legend in South Korea, where the media – and even medical professionals – regularly report on people dying because they left a fan running in a closed room.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead	An early catch phrase used on Saturday Night Live, based upon the dictator's lengthy death.
Ghost bike	Bicycle rider in memoriam.
Green Boots	A climber who became a landmark on Everest even after freezing to death.
Hammersmith nude murders	Murders that involved the other unidentified serial killer named Jack, with the title "the Stripper".
The Hands of Che Guevara	Documentary about the search for the severed hands of the Latin American guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara, who was captured and executed by Bolivian Special Forces in October 1967.
Hell money	Apparently, the Chinese afterlife is subject to hyperinflation.
Sogen Kato	Believed to be the oldest living man in Tokyo... until the discovery of his 30-year-old mummified corpse.
Kennedy curse	Apparently John F. Kennedy was not the only Kennedy to meet an early demise-far from it.
Kick the bucket	A heated argument lies behind the origin of this idiom.
Lampshades made from human skin	They probably wouldn't even be that good at diffusing light.
Ricardo López	An obsessed fan who attempted to kill Icelandic singer Björk by a letter bomb rigged with sulfuric acid.
Henry Lee Lucas	Claimed to be the most prolific serial killer in history, confessing to over 600 murders. Later recanted almost all of them.
Children of Llullaillaco	Two incredibly well preserved cadavers of two Incan children found next to the Argentina–Chile border.
List of expressions related to death	"Go home in a box", "go bung", "hop the stick", ...
List of people who died on the toilet	You could say they died on the throne.
List of entertainers who died during a performance	"And for my last act...I shall die and not come back to life!"
List of postal killings	"Don't let Walter Hobbs deceive you; this life is not all shiny bins and fun", ...
List of selfie-related injuries and deaths	Extreme cases of people being unaware of their surroundings.
Lead Masks Case	Two electricians tried to contact aliens with psychedelic drugs and masks made out of lead. They died shortly after.
London Necropolis railway station	Single tickets only, unless you're a mourner or other visitor.
Lord Uxbridge's leg	The grisly afterlife of a leg lost during the Battle of Waterloo, formerly owned by Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey.
Maschalismos	The act of mutilating the dead to prevent them from rising again.
Michael Malloy	Like Rasputin, but homeless, drunk, and Irish.
Elmer McCurdy	A dead criminal whose mummified body was bought by carnies and used as a prop for decades, its later owners not even knowing the corpse was real.
Ken McElroy	"Nobody saw nothing" taken to its logical extreme.
Micromort	A quantitative death risk equivalent to one in a million.
Mordred	Mordred is back for revenge—watch out!
Murder of Vivianne Ruiz	The first recorded "Jane Doe" in Australia, and a murder with enough twists and turns to be a legal drama. The case for the defence (unsuccessfully) contended that a bloody fingerprint found on a newspaper shoved down the victim's throat was actually tomato juice.
Herbert Mullin	Haven't had any earthquakes recently? Thank this man.
Oliver Cromwell's head	This English political leader's head has an interesting journey after its owner is posthumously executed, more so than the one he cut off himself.
Richard Paul Pavlick	Plotted to kill then president-elect John F. Kennedy via suicide bombing, but delayed it upon seeing Kennedy with his family.
Poe Toaster	Not a kitchen appliance, but a mysterious figure who paid an annual tribute to American author Edgar Allan Poe.
Post-mortem photography	Back in the early days of photography it was common to take pictures of recently deceased loved ones, propped up to look as if they were alive.
Death of Gloria Ramirez	One of the most bizarre unsolved deaths ever documented. The media nicknamed her the "Toxic Lady".
Refrigerator death	A cool way to die.
Republican marriage	A form of execution in which a naked man and woman are tied together and drowned. (What did you think it was?)
Rookwood Cemetery railway line	A former railway line that served a cemetery near Sydney.
Safety coffin	Coffins manufactured just in case their tenant is not actually dead before being buried.
Salish Sea human foot discoveries	Dismembered feet keep washing up.
Frane Selak	Dubbed the luckiest/unluckiest man to exist, cheated death seven times and also managed to win the lottery!
Sky burial	It's not really a form of burial. Also known as jhator which means "giving alms to the birds."
Sokushinbutsu	A practice of self-mummification among Buddhist monks.
Space burial	Around 150 people have had their remains interred in space. Or would that be ex-terred?
Spontaneous human combustion	The sudden burning of a person's body without any apparent source of ignition.
Suicide booth	A common feature in the world of tomorrow.
Suicide of Sunil Tripathi	"The perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing was... a student who'd already been dead for a month! We did it, Reddit!"
Tamam Shud case	A dead man is found on an Australian beach with no identification and a bizarre fragment of a book in his pocket. To this day, his identity and cause of death are still unconfirmed.
Carl Tanzler	A radiographer who became obsessed with a dead TB patient, had her exhumed, and lived with her corpse for 7 years.
Toilet-related injuries and deaths	As if constipation wasn't enough.
Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People	A group of Indians suffering more from theft than cardiac failure. Its founder managed to run for political office despite having been declared dead for over a decade.
Lal Bihari
Video-Enhanced Grave Marker	Graves with video screens and speakers on them.
Joyce Vincent	A woman who sat dead in her home with the TV and heater running and Christmas presents on her lap for three years until her corpse was found.
Wikipedia coverage of death	It's more than just a rush to change every "is" to "was".
Xin Zhui	A remarkably preserved Chinese mummy from 163 B.C. with all features and soft tissue still intact.

See also

Questions

Wikipedia is not afraid to tackle the tough questions:

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?	A proverbial question of theology.
If a tree falls in a forest	Philosophy meets the logging industry.
Meaning of life	Why are we here?
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?	Have you ever wondered that? No? Apparently this is one of the most important contemporary philosophical questions.
Where's the beef?	In 1984, people thought this was really funny for some reason.
Why did the chicken cross the road?	People have asked this for over 150 years.

Lists

List of American and British defectors in the Korean War	Yes, somehow yes?
List of animals awarded human credentials	Animals getting so-called diplomas from diploma mills.
List of catgirls and catboys	This one had an edit war over whether or not Hermione Granger should be added.
List of common misconceptions	A gold mine of strangeness.
Lists of Danish football transfers 2008–09	Keep in mind that this is not just a list, this is a list of lists.
List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events	But in the end, nothing happened.
List of foreign-born samurai in Japan	That's right.
List of garlic festivals	Even one festival devoted entirely to garlic of all things is strange enough.
List of helicopter prison escapes	Yes, you read that right.
List of incidents at Disney parks	Donald Duck's anger issues are far from being your main concern at a Disney attraction.
List of inventors killed by their own invention	Including everyone from Marie Curie to Thomas Midgley Jr.
List of largest hourglasses	Wikipedia probably wasted as much time on this pointless list as it takes for one of these to run out.
List of lists of lists	A list of all lists of lists -- and yes, it contains itself.
List of non-water floods	Beep beep, massive waves of melted butter, wine, and chocolate coming through!
List of paraphilias	Just too many to list.
List of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia	Yes, this has actually happened.
List of people who have been considered deities	People from emperors to John Coltrane have been considered deities.
List of people who have been pied	A pie to the face, usually as the result of differing political views.
List of people who have lived in airports	Quite a few, in reality.
List of potato museums	How are there enough to warrant a list?
List of scholarly publishing stings	Instances of people submitting fake or nonsense scholarly articles to expose an academic journal as a predatory publisher.
List of sexually active popes	A surprisingly long list for a supposedly celibate role.
List of shoe-throwing incidents	The recurring trend of high-ranking people being attacked with shoes.
List of wrong anthems incidents	Everything from playing the wrong country's anthem to playing Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca".

Other pages

Ø (Disambiguation)	Not to be confused with Ø (disambiguation)
Disambiguation (disambiguation)	Not to be confused with a disambiguation page
Wikipedia:Disambiguation (disambiguation)	Not to be confused with the above page.
meta:meta:meta	Two pages with weird titles.
commons:commons:commons	Two pages with weird titles.
Talk:Talk	Four talk pages with weird titles.
Talk:Talk Talk
Talk:Talk Talk Talk
Talk:Talk Talk (Talk Talk song)
User:Bishonen/European toilet paper holder	A joke article which became the Main Page's featured article for one minute on April Fools' Day 2005.
Wikipedia:Discussions for discussion	Great venue for grating big discussions.
*Wikipedia:Why is BFDI* not on Wikipedia?**	Despite having over 1 billion views, it has 0 total mainstream newspaper and scholarly mentions to qualify for an article on Wikipedia. However, people have been attempting to create an article about it for over 10 years, that Wikipedia administrators had to completely redact 4 words from all areas of the Wikimedia Foundation and write an essay about such a situation to relax their administrator burnout.

Lists of Wikipedia articles

Wikipedia:Before they were notable	Celebrities (and products) having their articles deleted years ago.
Wikipedia:Deleted articles with freaky titles	Wikipedia articles that have existed and, judging by the title and contents, probably shouldn't have existed.
Wikipedia:List of really, really, really stupid article ideas that you really, really, really should not create	The title says it all, really.
Wikipedia:Unusual articles	The page you're currently reading.
Wikipedia:Unusual articles/Removed	If you're looking for more.