With close to 8 billion people in the world and 4.5 billion years of history behind us, it’s never safe to assume many original things are left to see or do. Things are done, then done again, then forgotten and rediscovered all the time. There are a few rare events that are so rare and so unusual that they have never happened before.
10. Only One Hypnotist Has Ever Been Jailed for Crimes Committed by Someone They Hypnotized
The Copenhagen Hypnosis Murders stand out in the world of true crime, not just because of the mysterious name. In 1951, a man walked into a Copenhagen bank, plopped a briefcase on the counter, and demanded money. When the teller hesitated, the man shot him and another bank employee. Then he left and bicycled home.
In the aftermath, Palle Hardrup was put on trial, and it was determined that, even though he killed two men, he was in a trance at the time. Bjorn Schouw-Neilsen, the hypnotist blamed for the trance, was sentenced to life in prison for the crime. To this day, it remains the only time a hypnotist has been found guilty of causing someone else to commit murder.
While common belief says a person can’t be hypnotized to do something they would be opposed to doing while of sound mind, there have been several cases in the past where hypnosis was used as a defense or blamed for people’s behavior. However, none ended in a life sentence for the hypnotist.
9. Only One Adult Has Ever Been Killed by Coyotes
Are you afraid of coyotes? Though not quite as infamous as wolves, these wild canines can be found all over North America, and they’re blamed for killing pets and livestock. Thousands of sheep and lambs are lost to coyotes every year. They can be fearsome predators and have been known to attack humans when cornered. But killing humans is not something coyotes are known to do. Almost never, in fact.
There have been 142 reported attacks of coyotes on humans in the US and Canada. Of those, there were only two reported fatalities. The first was in 1981, when a three-year-old girl was attacked and killed. But in terms of adults, it’s only happened once in recorded history.
In 2009, a pack of coyotes attacked and killed 19-year-old Canadian folk singer Taylor Mitchell. The case baffled experts who had never heard of such a thing before because it had literally never happened before.
It took a decade of research to come up with a reason, too. While many assumed the coyotes had become used to humans or being fed by them, the conclusion was that a lack of resources had forced the coyotes to embolden their hunting styles. They had switched to hunting larger prey like moose to survive, which made them more inclined to hunt a human.
8. Only One Person Recorded and Kept Super Bowl I
The Super Bowl is a big deal these days. In 2023, 113 million people tuned into the match. It generated over $578 million in ad revenue. But in 1967, when the NFL introduced the Super Bowl, no one had heard of it before. People still tuned in but in lower numbers.
Despite how historical it seems today, no one in 1967 cared enough about the Super Bowl to record and preserve the broadcast at either of the networks that aired it. Today, there is only one known recording of Super Bowl 1 anywhere in the world, and the NFL doesn’t own it. It belongs to a nurse from North Carolina named Troy Haupt. Haupt’s dad used something called a Quadruplex video machine to record the broadcast on film reels. When he was dying in the ’70s, he gave the tapes to his ex-wife, already understanding their potential value, and thought they’d pay for his kids’ education.
Haupt tried to sell the restored recordings to the NFL. he wanted $1 million, but the league offered $30,000. Then they retracted their offer and used archived footage from CBS to reconstruct the game on their own. At the same time, they told Haupt he’s not allowed to sell the tapes because they owned the broadcast. They clarified that they would sue for copyright infringement if he did so.
7. Uwe Hohn Is the Only Athlete to Throw a Javelin Over 100 Meters
Getting a world record in any sport is an achievement; many of these records stand for years before being beaten. There will always be one or two that people feel are unbeatable for decades, but few are so cemented in stone they can be called eternal. Uwe Hohn has an eternal record.
Hohn’s sport is the javelin throw. He’s the only athlete to have recorded a throw of over 100 meters. He landed 104.80 meters in 1984 at the Berlin Olympic Day of Athletics. The previous record was just under 100.
Hohn doesn’t hold any official record for this. In 1986, the rules for javelin were changed, and previous records were wiped clean. There had been an issue with flat landings and people arguing over whether an attempt was valid or not. So the rules and javelins used in the sport were changed. The new world record is 98.48m. It’s believed that the rule change and the newer javelins will make it impossible for anyone to achieve Hohn’s record.
6. Only One Person Has Ever Been Confirmed To Have Been Hit by a Meteorite
Anywhere between 10 and 50 meteorites hit the Earth every day. Many of these are remarkably small by the time they make it through our atmosphere, but not all. Still, with this amazing number pelting the planet constantly, only one person has ever been confirmed to have been hit by one.
To clarify off the bat, there have been many stories of people being hit by meteors, especially in historical accounts of fire raining from the skies and destroying whole cities. There’s even a fairly reliable report from 1888 in Turkey of a man being killed by a meteorite, the event being witnessed by a couple of people, but there’s no follow-up on exactly what happened to know for sure if it was space debris or something else. So none of these can be fully confirmed. As a result, we only have the story of Ann Hodges.
In 1954, Hodges was asleep at her home in Alabama when a 9-pound chunk of rock from beyond crashed through the roof, smacked into her radio, then ricocheted off her thigh.
5. Adam Rainer Was the Only Person To Be Both a Little Person and a Giant
Life comes in an endless array of forms. Even among a single species, an individual can form and grow in countless ways. We can shape ourselves through diet, exercise, body modifications, environmental exposure, etc. Conditions outside of our control, like genetics and disease, may also have an effect. Sometimes those things can pile up for a truly unique result, like Adam Rainier. He is the only person in history known to be both a little person and a giant simultaneously.
In his youth, Rainer was a short man. He was just over four feet in height at the age of 18. Being under 4’10” makes someone qualify as a dwarf.
By the time he turned 21, Rainer had begun to grow considerably. He gained around three inches per year for an entire decade. By the time he was 31, he was over 7 feet tall.
Doctors determined that Rainer had a pituitary tumor that caused acromegaly, the same condition Andre the Giant and other famous giants had. Despite the risks, Rainer had surgery to remove the tumor. Unfortunately, it was not entirely successful, and his health continued to suffer due to his growth. He died when he was just 51.
4. Earth is the Only Planet Where Fire Occurs
Earth is a very unique planet. It’s the only one with fast-food restaurants, smartphones, and water slides. Also, the only one with life that we know of. But the uniqueness goes beyond even that. For instance, Earth is the only world we know of on which fire occurs.
Fiction shows us numerous fiery worlds, but in reality, that doesn’t happen. Even the sun isn’t a ball of fire, that’s a fusion reaction occurring. Fire requires fuel and oxygen; no other world we’ve observed can provide that. Even here, at high elevations, it’s hard to get a fire to burn because of the thin atmosphere.
Other planets can be hot, of course. KELT-9b is 670 light years away, and the surface is 7,800 F. But it’s not on fire.
3. Only One Submerged Submarine Has Ever Sunk Another
Submarine warfare rose to prominence in WWI but saw widespread use in WWII. US submarines sank 1,314 enemy vessels during the war. None were submarines. In fact, only in one case did a submerged submarine sink another. The two participants were the British Navy’s HMS Venturer and Germany’s U-864.
Turns out, submarine-to-submarine fighting was incredibly hard. The vessels were never built to take each other on; they were meant to sink surface ships by sneaking up, firing torpedos, and escaping. Underwater, a vessel like the Venturer could only navigate at 12 miles-per-hour.
U-864 was on a secret mission to aid Japan that the Allies had learned about. She also had engine issues. When the Venturer made to intercept, the Captain turned off sonar and listened with just the hydrophone, hearing the enemy’s struggling engines.
Knowing the enemy would never surface, the Venturer’s captain did the seemingly impossible task of calculating the German’s position based on sound and a lot of advanced math. They predicted the zig-zag path of U-864 and fired four torpedos. In avoiding three, the sub ran into the fourth.
2. The DB Cooper Case is America’s Only Unsolved Hijacking
The case of DB Cooper is incredibly well-known these days. Several movies have been made about the 1971 hijacking that saw the infamous Cooper take off in a plane with his ransom money, only never to be seen again after parachuting away. His true identity was never discovered, and, despite the best efforts of the FBI, he was never caught.
Less well-known is just how big a stain this story is on US law enforcement. This is the only unsolved hijacking case in American history. Though some of the money Cooper took was found years later in the woods, it’s unclear if the man died or escaped with the rest of the ransom. The FBI closed the case in 2016, saying their resources could be better used elsewhere.
1. Douglas Crofut Likely Committed Suicide by Radiation
This one is a bit of a mystery based on “confirmed” information, but what happened seems clear enough. Douglas Crofut is the only person to have ever committed suicide by radiation.
Crofut was an unemployed industrial radiographer with knowledge of radioactive materials. Reports indicate he had a long history of alcoholism and brushes with the law. He was sent to hospital in 1980 with severe radiation burns from a then unknown source. He claimed to have no idea how it happened.
It was concluded that he must have been exposed to Iridium 192 or Cobalt 60. Both are highly radioactive, and both are used in equipment that Crofut had knowledge of, machines used to x-ray pipe welds to see if they were sound. One such device had coincidentally been stolen from a location near Crofut’s house.
Crofut was in debt and had reportedly tried to kill himself previously by dousing himself in gasoline and burning himself. The radiation burned him through his chest and was described as one of the most gruesome things doctors had ever seen, with cells decaying before their eyes.