Modern audiences have grown accustomed to a pattern of TV broadcasting: war stories over Memorial Day weekend, frightening flicks before Halloween, and Christmas themes in December. Yet surprisingly, the original debut dates of these seasonally flavored films were not coordinated with the calendar, whether due to obstacles, indifference, or even intent.

Related: Top 10 Christmas Movie Moments

10 The Shop Around the Corner

The heartwarming dramedy The Shop Around the Corner unfolds during the run-up to Christmas, as two coworkers in a leather goods store in pre-WWII Budapest bicker constantly, unaware that they are falling in love as anonymous pen pals. However, holiday decorations were already down by the time it was released on January 10, 1940.

Director Ernst Lubitsch planned to begin filming before the end of 1938, but the deal fell through. The timetable was pushed back again when he changed studios. Lubitsch then made Ninotchka (1939) while waiting for his preferred stars, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, to become available. Once work finally began, the movie was shot in twenty-eight days.

This plot may sound familiar, having been recycled twice without the holiday setting. In the Good Old Summertime (1949) changed the venue to a music store to create a vehicle for Judy Garland. You’ve Got Mail (1998) brought the love/hate into the computer age with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks at competing bookstores.^[1]

9 Holiday Inn

In Holiday Inn (1942), Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire sing, dance, and compete for the same woman at a country inn that only does business at select times. Though its scenes are structured around holiday-specific songs, the film had its New York City opening in the holiday desert of August. Only later would it become a December TV staple, thanks to its Oscar-winning hit “White Christmas.” (These days, the “Abraham” number for Lincoln’s birthday is often cut due to its use of blackface as part of a plot device.)

Current events had a significant influence on the film’s content. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred during production, the patriotism of the segment honoring Independence Day was amped up with images of munitions production, military exercises, General MacArthur, and President Roosevelt. Likewise, Astaire’s dance number “Let’s Say It with Firecrackers” had so many real explosions added around his feet that crew members had to wear goggles.

On a more playful note, the introduction to November has an animated turkey jump between Thursdays on a calendar page, a reference to the confusion before Congressional action standardized Thanksgiving as the fourth, rather than last, Thursday of the month to encourage a longer Christmas shopping season.^[2]

8 Christmas in Connecticut

In a major holiday mismatch, Christmas in Connecticut (1945) opened on the Fourth of July. Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine writer who entertains her readers with accounts of her domestic skills in the rural home she shares with her husband and baby. In reality, she is single and childless, lives in a New York City apartment, and cannot boil water. When her publisher insists that she prepare a homecooked dinner for a World War II veteran, hijinks ensue as she pulls together a borrowed farm and family plus a holiday feast.

The movie itself had its share of fakery. The New England country house featured was the same California set used for Bringing Up Baby (1938). The sleigh ride scene was filmed on a Warner Bros. sound stage, with soap-flake snow as phony as the lead character’s cooking skills. But with the war finally coming to an end, this celebration of romance and returning soldiers was a perfectly timed hit, even if audiences stepped outside from a Christmas charade into the summer sunshine.^[3]

7 It Happened on 5th Avenue

Premiering It Happened on 5th Avenue on April 5, 1947, in Miami, Florida, was an equally peculiar choice for a story that takes place at Christmastime in Manhattan. The comedy-romance was originally announced in 1945 as the first project of director Frank Capra’s new production company, but he chose to make It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) instead.

Capra then sold the rights to Monogram Pictures, a studio known for B-movies and Westerns that wanted to upgrade its image with classier fare. Filming began on August 5, 1946, and was completed by mid-October, yet the movie waited almost six months for release.

Even with a change in directors, the movie is loaded with Capra-esque themes: a homeless man and others needing refuge move into the vacant mansion of “the second richest man in the world,” who has gone south for the winter. Complications arise when the millionaire’s adult daughter unexpectedly returns home. Under the guise of being poor, she falls in love with one of its other “guests” and then manages to reunite her divorced parents.

The script received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story but lost to yet another Christmas film released later that spring and set just across town.^[4]

6 Miracle on 34th Street

20th Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck believed more people went to the movies in the summertime, so Miracle on 34th Street (1947) had its debut on June 4, 1947, with the word “Christmas” dropped from its title. Its cryptic trailer made no reference to the holiday or gave the slightest clue to its plot. Previews merely listed the stars and praised the film as “Hilarious! Romantic! Delightful! Charming! Tender! Exciting! and even Groovey!”

Multiple cameras were set up along the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 28, 1946, to capture this one-take opportunity. Edmund Gwenn’s Santa Claus addressed the real crowd in front of the Macy’s marquee, and scenes inside Macy’s were filmed at night after business hours. Although audiences may have come in from the heat, the onscreen winter was all too real. During the closing scene when young Susan ran to her dream house, it was so cold that cameras froze, and a neighbor invited the crew inside her home to warm up while they were repaired.

Zanuck also thought the story was too corny to succeed, but this yuletide classic earned three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Gwenn and Best Original Story for its screenwriter Valentine Davies, as well as a nomination for Best Picture.^[5]

5 Easter Parade

When composer Irving Berlin wanted an old-timey tune for a 1933 musical revue, he repurposed the melody from his 1917 number “Smile and Show Your Dimple” with new lyrics to create “Easter Parade.” Years later, he reused the song in Holiday Inn, and, like “White Christmas,” this sentimental favorite ultimately inspired a spinoff story of its own.

However, the resulting film missed its spring target date and did not reach theaters until June 30, 1948, because of delays caused by casting changes. The original leading man, Gene Kelly, broke his ankle while playing volleyball and was replaced by Fred Astaire. Ann Miller stepped in for Cyd Charisse, who suffered a knee injury on another film.

Even with its new cast, the production had its share of drama. Costar Judy Garland had recently been released from a sanitarium for treatment of mental health issues and drug dependency, and her psychiatrist recommended that director Vincente Minnelli, her then-husband, be taken off the picture to reduce her stress. Miller performed her rapid-fire tap numbers wearing a back brace due to an injury she had suffered when her drunken (soon-to-be-ex) husband had thrown her down a flight of stairs while she was pregnant.^[6]

4 We’re No Angels

We’re No Angels showcases Humphrey Bogart in a rare comedic role. He is joined by Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray as three escapees from Devil’s Island on Christmas Eve, 1895, who plan to rob a struggling shopkeeper to fund a getaway. In response to the family’s kindness, the trio decides “cutting their throats might spoil their Christmas.” Instead, they plot to save the couple and their daughter from greedy relatives, with the aid of a small poisonous snake named Adolphe.

Paramount purchased the rights to the French source material in mid-February 1952. During the lengthy merry-go-round of development, trade magazines variously announced Van Heflin, Audrey Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Gig Young, and two members of the Los Angeles Rams as part of the cast.

Once Bogart was attached to the project, Michael Curtiz, who had won an Oscar working with Bogie on Casablanca (1942), was brought on board to direct. Principal photography was completed in early August 1954, yet this quirky Christmas tale sat on the shelf until July 7, 1955.^[7]

3 The Ten Commandments

Though today it is an Easter/Passover broadcast tradition, The Ten Commandments (1956) first dazzled audiences on October 5. But even without a holiday tie-in, director Cecil B. DeMille’s last film was easily the box office leader of its year. This three-hour forty-minute Technicolor spectacle was an expansion of DeMille’s 1923 silent film of the same name, in which the first part had portrayed Moses leading his people out of Egypt, followed by a contemporary tale that demonstrated the human cost of breaking the commandments.

Completing the movie was a miracle in itself. Executing DeMille’s vision required not only the famous parting of the Red Sea but also 1,200 storyboard sketches, more than 14,000 extras, and 15,000 animals. After years of pre-production, the 73-year-old DeMille suffered a serious heart attack in 1954 during three months of filming in Egypt.

Back in Hollywood, he completed almost four months of shooting on set, followed by fourteen months of post-production work. While perhaps not concerned about release dates, DeMille did reportedly time filming to enable Charlton Heston’s three-month-old son, Fraser, to play baby Moses.^[8]

2 Ben-Hur

The other perennial Easter epic, Ben-Hur, clocks in at only eight minutes shorter than its Old Testament companion piece. It took about as long from conception to release on November 18, 1959. MGM planned to begin shooting in July 1954 but encountered delays due to multiple script revisions and changes in the director, producer, and major studio executives.

By the time filming began in Rome in May 1958, set construction was long underway. The track for the chariot race covered 18 acres (7.3 hectares) and took six months to build. The race itself fills ten minutes of screen time but took ten weeks to shoot and ate up one-quarter of the $15 million budget ($162 million in 2024). Even though director William Wyler maintained a sixteen-hour, seven-day-a-week schedule, filming took nine months to complete. Recording the lengthy musical score alone required twelve sessions over a seventy-hour period.

MGM’s long wait and huge financial gamble paid off, with a five-fold box office return and a then-record-setting eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Charlton Heston, his only career nomination.^[9]

1 Die Hard

Despite its frequent F-bombs, a body count of eighteen, and a release date of July 12, Die Hard (1988) has long been heralded for its many holiday elements, beginning with Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” in its soundtrack. The action ramps up as Bruce Willis’s character, John McClane, and his estranged wife, notably named Holly, attend a company Christmas party. Festive trees and ornaments deck the halls of the building under siege. McClane even leaves a bad guy in an elevator wearing a Santa hat and a sweatshirt that reads, “Now I have a machine gun ho-ho-ho.”

Director John McTiernan is on record that Die Hard evolved into a Christmas movie during production, and 20th Century Fox came to agree. The studio brought the film back to theaters in November 2018 and released what it called a “30th Anniversary Christmas Edition” on Blu-ray with a trailer promoting it as “the greatest Christmas story ever told” and the tag line: “CHRISTMAS MOVIE? YIPPEE KI YES!”

Peter Billingsley, who played young Ralphie in A Christmas Story (1983), endorsed the Christmas claim during a podcast conversation with Die Hard cinematographer Jan de Bont in December 2023. Billingsley said of this rare holiday thriller, “Most importantly, I think it embodies the themes of Christmas of acceptance, forgiveness, love and family.”^[10]

All archaeological finds are invaluable, yet some are more priceless than others. Some tell stories so ancient yet so familiar that we can’t help but smile as we realize how little some things have changed these past thousands of years.

10 Unguentarium

Like the ancient Egyptians, the Romans took their funerary practices seriously lest the dead remain eternally trapped in uneventful purgatory. A by-the-book funeral could consist of five parts, starting with a procession and ending with a grand feast to ensure the departed’s successful voyage to the immortal domain. Afterward, Romans celebrated the dead during specified “holidays,” kind of like Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead.

Strangely enough, gravesites throughout the Roman world often surrendered vaselike sculptures called unguentaria. According to legend, they held the tears of family members grieving over the departed, although that appears to be a romantic myth. It’s now generally agreed that unguentaria—“unguent” meaning “ointment”—stored perishable goods for the living rather than commemorations for the dead.

Unguentaria served as old-timey equivalents of plastics, and the specimens unearthed contained cosmetics or fragrances. In his terrestrial treatise, Natural History, Pliny the Elder records that Romans preferred scents of marjoram, roses, and saffron. He also said that the women of the house utilized as many beauty products as women do today, including lotions for soft, smooth skin.

9 Fetus Paper

Before the days of Office Depot, paper was a luxury that was often made from less than savory ingredients. For example, the first collection of portable Bibles in Europe, all 20,000 of them, was said to be printed on parchment made from stillborn barnyard critters.

Known as uterine vellum, or abortivum parchment in Latin, these names suggested that the supremely thin pages came from calf and sheep fetuses. To put the issue to rest, an unexpectedly large collaboration between British, Irish, French, Danish, Belgian, and American scientists devised an innovative way to test the delicate paper without destroying it. They used a rubber eraser.

After a good rubdown, the electrostatic charge elicited from the eraser-on-paper action attracted tiny protein fragments from the pages. Analyzing the meaty dust revealed that the vellum was not, in fact, gruesomely manufactured from aborted animals. Instead, it was made from cows or other hoofed adult animals as per tradition. How medieval artisans were able to create such fine, thin sheets remains a mystery for another day.

8 Unexpected Mummy

Peru’s 5,000-year-old Caral-Supe (aka Caral) predates the Mayan, Incan, and Aztecan cultures by thousands of years. The 630-hectare, pyramid-boasting sacred site is South America’s oldest center of civilization and marks the start of city living in the region.

Due to a lack of records, we know little of ancient Peruvians, but a recently discovered female mummy suggests a progressive culture that valued women and men as equals. The 4,500-year-old corpse reposed in the ruins of Aspero, a quaint fishing village 25 kilometers (15 mi) from Caral and under the auspices of its mysterious creators.

The circumstances of the woman’s burial indicate her importance. Likely between the ages of 40 and 50 when she died, archaeologists found her laid to rest in the fetal position and placed atop a variety of charms. These included four figurines (known as tupus) carved in the likenesses of monkeys and birds, a seashell necklace, and a pendant made from a Spondylus mollusk.

The circumstances of the woman’s burial and the recovered items offer evidence that women could attain high status just as men could—a historical rarity and a candid glimpse into the hidden life of the Norte Chico peoples.

7 Etruscan Slab

The supremely religious Etruscan culture imparted great knowledge to Greece and Rome and left behind an ugly alphabet. Sadly, we don’t know much of their language, and most of what we’ve gleaned comes from funerary stones or inscriptions on household knickknacks.

Recently, archaeologists have unearthed a cipher of sorts on an old slab unearthed from beneath an Etruscan temple that dates back at least 2,500 years. It’s one of the longest, most substantial pieces of Etruscan literature ever recovered, containing at least 70 legible characters that are all nicely punctuated and a bevy of new words and phrases. The chipped, burned slab survived remarkably well, considering it was used as part of the foundation and bore the temple’s weight on its stony shoulders.

Similar tablets have provided windows into the surprises of everyday Etruscan life, like a female version of the Greek Olympics that included topless javelin and bare-breasted equine events. In fact, women enjoyed many freedoms withheld from their Grecian and Roman counterparts. Etruscan women were allowed to enjoy wine, socialize freely, and train as soldiers.

6 Jockey’s Monument

The Anatolian province of Konya served as the capital to the Seljuk culture of 1,000 years ago and afterward flourished as a prominent Ottoman city. It housed a hippodrome and horse-breeding center of some import according to a 2,000-year-old tablet, which paints Konya’s bygone inhabitants as avid race fans.

In the Beysehir district exists a monument to a once-famous jockey and bachelor named Lukuyanus, who died at a young age before fulfilling his jockeying potential. So a memorial was carved into the sacred Anatolian mountains to honor the youth after his tragic death. On it, archaeologists found still-legible text, including a lament to the unmarried hero and some information on the gentlemanly pursuit of horse racing.

The stone-etched document describes one long-abolished cardinal rule that would demolish modern horse racing as a profitable business: Winning horses were disqualified from further races. Victorious owners were excluded along with their horses in a magnanimous effort to share the wealth.

5 Chinese Gnomon

The ancient Chinese looked to celestial bodies to forecast the future affairs of men and developed an array of fancy stargazing tools to do so. These included gnomons, simplified sundials of Babylonian invention that were used to measure the Sun’s declination.

The earliest Chinese gnomons were sticks, which were set out at midday along the north-south axis. The length of the shadow cast indicated solar slant and the changing seasons, useful agricultural information that also led to the construction of calendars.

A more sophisticated, two-piece version was found in the over 2,000-year-old tomb of a Western Han dynasty marquis known as Xiahou Zao. For a while, it was known only as “lacquerware of unknown names.” Finally, it was realized that the two pieces belonged together to form a latitude-specific equatorial display.

The gnarliest gnomon was developed over 600 years ago by Guo Shoujing during the Yuan dynasty. It used a taller crossbar and longer base to accurately measure the length of the shadow and therefore the Sun’s height in the sky.

4 Roman Wine Vessel

The ancient Romans’ sense of humor did not adhere to modern principles of modesty but would have fit right in on the Internet. Case in point, an 1,800-year-old Roman drinking vessel covered with phalli.

The phallus cup was unearthed over 50 years ago, probably in Great Chesterford, Essex. But it was denied to us for the half a century that it collected dust in the private collection of Lord Braybrooke.

The vessel comes from a Roman camp where Rabelaisian soldiers—on break from pillaging Britain’s precious metals—quaffed diluted wine from it and laughed at its raunchy depictions like common frat boys.

One scene looks like it came straight from a reddit joke: A nude woman commands a chariot pulled by four disembodied phalli. Observant naturalists, the Romans realized that the male organ has no natural means of locomotion, so in their representation, they have innovatively grafted chicken legs onto each phallus.

3 Quids

The Anasazi (aka Ancestral Puebloans), the predecessors of the Pueblo culture of today, populated the American Southwest as far back as AD 100. Research shows that they enjoyed a common vice—chewing tobacco.

From the prehistoric equivalent of a compost heap found in Antelope Cave in Arizona, archaeologists recovered 345 small, fiber-wrapped balls of unknown purpose. Dubbed “quids,” similar bundles have popped up across the American Southwest, often embedded with teeth marks. At first, it was assumed that old-timey folk chewed on these during periods of food scarcity to simulate eating and to draw in the tiny bits of trace nutrients that remained.

Then researchers checked the bundles under a microscope. Peering deep past the 1,200-year-old fibrous coating, they discovered that the quids contained several types of wild tobacco, including coyote tobacco (pictured above). It’s likely that the tobacco fed daily addictions rather than sacred yearnings because the used quids were found in the trash. But many others have not been tested, and researchers are excited about what other substances may be inside.

2 Lake Baikal ‘Venus’ Figurines

The ideal female form is a popular motif for ancient sculptures, including the Mal’ta figurines recovered at Angara River in Russia’s Siberian Irkutsk Oblast. Or so it seemed. But magnification unveiled the figures as faithful depictions of the Mal’ta-Buret’ women, men, and children that lived 20,000 years ago.

Carved from mammoth tusk, most were supposedly female nudes. So archaeologists borrowed a set from Russia’s Hermitage Museum for, uh, research and threw them under a microscope. The scans revealed a glut of detailed garments—they aren’t nude at all, only smoothed over by time and dirt.

The figurines are clad in period-specific clothing such as bracelets, hats, shoes, packs, and bags. With other features invisible to the naked eye, artisans labored to create different hairstyles and even used different cuts to give the illusion of fur or leather.

Overalls seem to be overwhelmingly popular, as are a variety of furry helmets and hoods to keep the cold out. Mysteriously, the figurines are scored with tiny holes, presumably so they can be worn as charms or ornaments.

1 Babylonian Complaint

Shysters have always existed, and some have even been immortalized. For example, Ea-nasir appears on a nearly immaculate Babylonian complaint tablet recovered from Ur, one of Mesopotamia’s ancient capitals.

An ancient 0-star review, the nearly 3,800-year-old grievance was filed by a disgruntled customer, Nanni, against Ea-nasir, a shady businessman and purveyor of copper. The unscrupulous merchant promised Nanni a quantity of premium copper yet delivered ingots of downright insulting quality.

So Nanni sent messengers multiple times to exact a refund and apology from Ea-nasir. But Ea-nasir only offered salty remarks, and the messengers were sent back through enemy territory without money each time.

The tablet only recently gained fame. But it was translated way back in 1967 by Assyriologist Leo Oppenheim, who published the story and others like it in his book Letters from Mesopotamia. The tablet itself resided in what is believed to be Ea-nasir’s house. Though given everything we know about his unsavory character from this letter, he probably kept it for laughs.

In 2011 a novel strain of Escherichia coli or E coli bacteria caused a serious outbreak of food borne illness focused mostly in northern Germany. It took months before authorities were able to track the source of the contamination to the seeds of fenugreek imported from Egypt and used in brussels sprout production. Almost 4,000 people became ill and 53 died. This is just one of the latest and most newsworthy cases of food poisoning to strike without warning, around the world. Here are ten more examples you may not have heard about.

Though it comprises just 0.2% of the United States population, the state of Alaska accounts for 50% of its food-related botulism poisoning. Most cases are related to the eating of native food dishes. Arctic explorers gave accounts of entire villages dying of botulism poisoning from eating contaminated meat. Prior to the 1960s when education programs taught Native Alaskans how to identify the early symptoms of botulism, so as to receive the antitoxin in time, the death rate for those who contracted the disease was more than 50%.

Most people today think of botulism as “Botox” injections used for cosmetic application for wrinkles. Droves of celebrities now have their faces permanently frozen by repeated injections of detoxified botulism. But botulism is an ancient and deadly food poison caused by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria. The bacteria creates a toxin in the body which can cause muscle paralysis, breathing difficulties, loss of sensation to the skin, respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, paralysis, and death.

In July 2002 two people from a Yup’ik village in western Alaska came across the remains of a beached beluga whale that appeared to have died in the spring. They cut the tail fluke into pieces, and put the pieces in sealable plastic bags. They then shared the whale meat with family and friends. Within days of eating the whale meat, a local physician reported three suspected cases of botulism poisoning. A total of eight Alaskan Natives were confirmed to have botulism and they were treated successfully with antitoxin, No one died.

In one of the strangest cases of recent food poisoning, 13 people in China were hospitalized after eating snake. However, it was not the snake that (directly) caused them to become ill. It was what the snakes had eaten. The snakes had eaten frogs, which had been fed clenbuterol. All 13 people had eaten snake on September 1 and 2, 2010 at a local restaurant and had developed symptoms such as flushing, headache, chest tightness, palpitations, trembling, etc. These are common symptoms of clenbuterol poisoning. The cooking of the snake was not enough to rid it of residual clenbuterol that had built up from ingesting the contaminated frogs. Clenbuterol is approved for use as a bronchodilator for asthma patients and is also used by athletes as a performance-enhancing drug. Though it is prohibited, Clenbuterol can be added to animal feeds to obtain leaner meat. The frogs had been “juiced”, fed to the snakes, and the snakes poisoned the humans.

“Pruno” is prison lingo for “hooch” or any kind of homebrew made from whatever prisoners can lay their hands on. Some fruit, water, and sugar and “pruno!”, you have yourself a party! But sometimes you just can’t get any fruit, so if not, potatoes will do just fine. As in the case of a group of 2006 Utah prison inmates who laid their hands on weeks old baked potatoes for their pruno batch. Unfortunately for the prisoners, Clostridium botulinum bacteria which causes botulism, likes to live on the roots of potatoes. Eight prisoners developed botulism when they all drank the same pruno batch made from the potatoes. All developed classic symptoms of botulism poisoning—difficulty swallowing, vomiting, double vision and muscle weakness. Several had to be put on ventilators. One inmate who was spared took one sip of the pruno and spit it out it was so foul tasting.

Just two cyanide-contaminated grapes caused a nation wide “grape scare” in the United States in 1989. On March 2, 1989 an individual called the US Embassy in Santiago Chile and warned that some fruit being exported to the United States and Japan had been poisoned with cyanide. The terrorist claimed this was done to draw attention to the plight of the poor in his country. US officials took the threat seriously. Only seven years before, the United States had been rocked by the Tylenol scare when cyanide contaminated Tylenol led to the deaths of several people and all of the Tylenol in the country was recalled. The US FDA launched the most intensive food safety investigation in its history to determine if there was a threat to the American food supply.

Seasonal export of fruit is the second largest export industry in Chile. Thousands of tons of fruit are shipped from Chile and to ports around the world. Some of the grapes that arrived at the port in Philadelphia, PA appeared suspicious and were tested. Two grapes were found to contain a small level of cyanide. Based on these tests, the US FDA warned the public not to eat grapes and banned the import of fruit from Chile. This caused a “grape scare” in which Americans refused to buy or eat grapes. However, the FDA ban only lasted a few days and fruit from Chile was allowed to return to American ports and grocery stores. But in that time it is estimated Chile lost upwards of $330 million in exports. This caused a second crisis—this time a diplomatic one, when the government of Chile accused the United States of over reacting or even, deliberately tampering with the grapes.

Food safety organizations and agencies around the world test for contamination and sometimes they find it before mass outbreaks of disease or illness occur. Once such case occurred in 2004 when the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) detected, during routine food testing, the contamination of egg custard with lead. The health authorities determined the lead was in a shipment of corn (maize) imported into the country and then made into about 100 tons of cornflour. The cornflour was thus contaminated with lead when it was used in the making of other products. Some of the contaminated cornflour was shipped to Australia and Fiji and New Zealand authorities notified these countries of the danger. Products made with the cornflour were recalled.

The NZFSA traced the lead contamination to specific ship, the MV Athena which, in 2003, had hauled lead concentrate between ports in Australia. It then went to China to pick up a shipment of maize and carried the maize in the same compartment as that used to hold the lead concentrate. Obviously, the ships crew never cleaned the compartment, thus the maize became cross contaminated with lead.

Polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), is an endocrine disruptor and suspected of being a human carcinogen. PBB’s are one of just six substances—along with lead and mercury—banned by the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances. They were also behind one of the largest agricultural disasters in the history of the United States. In 1973 this manmade chemical, used as a fire-retardant, was mistakenly put into cattle feed, sold, and fed to animals across the state of Michigan. Before the mistake was discovered thousands of cattle and other animals would be destroyed, farmers would march on the state capital and dump the carcasses of their dead cows on the capital steps, and thousands of people would eat the PBB-contaminated milk and meat.

It all began at a company called Michigan Chemical which made both the PBB (sold as a fire retardant under the trade name FireMaster), and magnesium oxide, a cattle feed supplement under the trade name NutriMaster (a great example of non-confusing product naming). Somehow by mistake, 10-20 of the fifty-pound bags of PBB made it to the Michigan Farm Bureau Services operation where it was added to the cattle feed instead of the NutriMaster. The PBB-contaminated feed went to farmers all around the state of Michigan. Quickly, after being fed the PBB-contaminated feed, the cows began to grow weak and their hides grew thick “like an elephant”. Veterinarians were puzzled and had no idea what was causing the outbreak of a mysterious disease in cattle all over the state. After nine months, the source of the contamination was identified, but not before 500 farms were quarantined and not allowed to sell milk and thousands of cows were destroyed along with 1.5 million chickens and thousands of pigs, sheep and rabbits.

Today, people who ate the contaminated food feel it is probably the source of elevated cancer rates they feel are taking place all around the state. All across the state, people who live near pits where the contaminated animals were buried fear their water is contaminated with the PBB leaching out of the pits.

In the days before the widespread use of air-conditioning in homes, summer months were often times too hot for cooking of meals. On July 2, 1971, a couple in Westchester County, New York decided it was too hot so they went for a meal of Bon Vivant brand vichyssoise soup. Vichyssoise soup is often served cold and the couple ate the soup right out of the can. It tasted bad so they did not finish the soup, but it was already too late. The soup was contaminated with botulism. The man was dead within a day and the wife poisoned and paralyzed by the botulism toxin. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public warning and recalled all cans of the Bon Vivant vichyssoise soup, 5 more cans were found to contain the botulinum toxin. The FDA shut down the Bon Vivant plant and recalled all of their products. Because Bon Vivant also made generic “store brands” of soup as well as their own brand name products, people not only stopped buying Bon Vivant soup, they stopped buying any kind of soup at all. A full “soup-panic” was underway in the US. The incident destroyed consumer confidence in Bon Vivant and it soon went into bankruptcy.

One of the largest public health crises and mass food poisoning events occurred in 1971 when seed grain, meant to be planted and used as seeds, was instead used as food. The seed grain had been treated with a fungicide, highly toxic methyl mercury.

The seed grain was shipped to Iraq late in the growing season of 1971 from suppliers in Mexico and the USA. The mercury-treated seed was dyed red as a warming not to eat it, but the Iraqi’s did not know this. In addition, the red dye would wash off, but not the mercury. The bags containing the seeds were labeled in Spanish and English the rural inhabitants of Iraq could not read. The Iraqi’s either did not understand or chose to ignore the skull and crossbones warnings on the bags. The confusion led some to believe it was food, and not seed.

Those who ate the seed suffered muscle paralysis, numbness, loss of vision, and other symptoms typical of mercury poisoning. People were exposed to the mercury when they used the seed in making bread, when they ground the seed and breathed in the dust, and when they fed the seed to animals and then ate the animals. People began to fall ill and die in late 1971 and into 1972. All total it is estimated that at least 650 died from eating or being exposed to the mercury-contaminated seed, but some believe the true number could be ten times that. An estimated 10,000 people suffered permanent brain damage from the mercury.

The story of how more than 200 people in 1858 Bradford England became poisoned by arsenic (20 would die) is an amazing one but which illustrates the need to protect the public with laws to regulate and punish the adulteration of food and drink.

William Hardaker better known as “Humbug Billy” sold sweets at the Green Market in Bradford. He purchased his sweets from Joseph Neal who made them himself. The sweets or “lozenges” were peppermint “humbugs” which were supposed to be made using peppermint oil, sugar, and gum. However, to save money, Neal and others who made sweets at that time would insert instead an inert material they called “daft” instead of the sugar. Daft could be almost anything, plaster of Paris, limestone, and all manner of appetizing replacements.

For this batch of lozenges, Neal sent a lodger by the name of James Archer to his druggist, a man by the name of Charles Hodgson, to collect his “daft”. Archer, not being familiar with the finer points of daft collection, by chance came to the druggist on a day when Mr. Hodgson was to ill to wait on him. So instead of the knowledgeable daft man—Hodgson, Archer met a daft-challenged replacement, a Mr. William Goddard. Unsure of where to locate the daft in the store, Goodard asked Hodgson who said it could be found in a cask in the corner of the store. Goddard found the cask and sold Archer 12 pounds of what he though was “daft” but what was in fact arsenic trioxide.

Archer returned to Neal with the arsenic trioxide who gave it to his experienced sweet maker James Appleton. Appleton mixed 12 pounds of arsenic trioxide with 40 pounds of sugar and made the lozenges. He thought the finished product looked odd and so did Humbug Billy who demanded a reduced price. Humbug Billy soon became ill himself from eating the arsenic lozenges, but not before he sold enough of them to make over 200 people sick and kill 20 of them. Authorities eventually traced the line of the dead and sick back to Humbug Billy and his sweet stand. After testing, the lozenges were found to have between 0.7 and 1 gram of arsenic (a half a gram is lethal).

The event contributed to the passage of the Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom and legislation regulating the adulteration of foodstuffs.

What happened in Pont Saint-Esprit France on August 16, 1951? Over sixty years later, we still do not know the truth. What is known is that on that day over 250 residents of this small French village were overcome with hallucinations and madness, which resulted in 7 deaths and 50 people being sent to asylums. Authorities claimed it was a mass-poisoning event caused by a food borne illness, probably ergot poisoning of rye bread. Ergot is a type of psychedelic fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that can naturally occur in rye. Once eaten, the alkaloids produced by the fungus can cause hallucinogenic effects.

There is no doubt the people were experiencing severe hallucinations. Victims recalled feeling as though “serpents were coiling up my arms”, that “they were on fire”, and that they were “shrinking”. Some victims threw themselves out windows, others injured themselves by trying to claw and cut out insects they believed were inside their bodies. People were put into straightjackets and chained to beds.

The ergot poisoning explanation is one of several possible causes of this mass hallucinogenic event including exposure to mercury, nitrogen trichloride, or other fungi. However the explanation that may make the most sense is the town people were deliberately dosed with a hallucinogenic substance—LSD. In his fantastic book on the history of the secret LSD program operated by the CIA called “A Terrible Mistake”, author Hank Albarelli puts forth a convincing series of arguments, backed by declassified documents, suggesting the CIA was behind the Pont-Saint-Esprit event.

A CIA scientist named Frank Olson traveled to this little town not long before the event happened. Olson was one of the CIA scientists involved in “MKULTRA”, the secret LSD experiments conducted by CIA operatives and doctors, on unsuspecting victims. Some of the evidence Albarelli found included a document referencing Olson and Pont-Saint-Esprit which was ordered to be “buried” by David Belin. Belin was the executive director of the US government commission investigating CIA misdeeds in 1975. Another declassified report was of an interview with a representative of the Sandoz Chemical Company in Switzerland. In 1951, the Sandoz pharmaceutical plant was not only located a few hundred miles from Pont-Saint-Esprit, it was also the only laboratory in the world, at that time, manufacturing LSD. The Sandoz representative admitted, “The Pont-Saint-Esprit ‘secret’ is that it was not the bread at all… It was not grain ergot.”

It’s no secret that couples often speak their own language with one another. When two people become close, they develop their own inside jokes, codes, and nicknames. When we see others doing this, especially in public, it can quickly go from cute to sickening.

However, cutesy nicknames and baby talk between two people in love may actually be part of a cycle that only strengthens their bond. When two people in a relationship have a secret language, it draws them closer together. And when two people are exceptionally close, they invariably create some sort of special code to speak together.

These codes quickly become very important. One study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships found that a couple’s ridiculous nicknames and sneaky code words had a direct positive connection to their relationship satisfaction.

Other studies have found that couples who maintain a five-to-one ratio of positive-to-negative interactions tend to remain happy. That seems like a given, but the role that secret language plays in that is dramatic.

Using silly pet names and cracking inside jokes is a fast way to make both partners feel special, and that ramps up the number of positive interactions faster than less cutesy conversation. It’s no wonder that all cultures seem to have their own strange-sounding but absolutely standard pet names.

10 Sweet Pea, Poppet, And Possum
English

To the average English speaker, these nicknames likely don’t seem too abnormal. “Sweet pea” is a reasonably common nickname in the United States, particularly in the Southeast. In part, this owes to the small flower’s beauty and the luck of having the word “sweet” in its name.

On the other hand, it likely has something to do with the sweet pea plant’s historic reputation as an aphrodisiac. As an aside, all varieties of sweet pea produce toxins and should not be used to induce relations, no matter how sweet they may be.

“Poppet” is far more common in the United Kingdom, although it is quite dated now. While “love” is a far more popular pet name, “poppet” is still in use and is far weirder. It started as a pet name back when the term referred chiefly to a puppet or doll.

In some circles, such as those populated by modern-day witches, it still does. This is likely why the nickname comes across as so strange. True, it can be read as referring to a loved one as a cute little doll. But it can also be interpreted as calling your significant other your puppet, which is a little bit supervillain for the modern paramour.^[1]

Down under, “possum” is a perfectly acceptable nickname for your lover. For non-Australian women dating Australian men, this is a problem. The continent of Australia has a reputation for taking perfectly normal animals and turning them into something monstrous.

However, the trend is reversed for the Australian possum. Whereas most of the world’s opossums (a different animal than a possum) tend to be viewed as massive rats that rummage in trash cans and play dead when noticed, Australia’s possums look a bit more soft, fluffy, and friendly. So, despite the culture clash, it isn’t much worse than a lover using “kitten” as a pet name.

9 Mon Chou
French

There are many French pet names that are fairly well-known due to their popularity in the media. Mon coeur (“my heart”), ma moitie (“my other half”), ma cherie (“my darling”), and mon tresor (“my treasure”) are all terms of endearment that we tend to hear in soap operas or anytime a charming foreigner appears on-screen.

Mon chou is less commonly heard beyond the French-speaking populations of the world but is widespread within them. It translates easily to “my cabbage” and is similar to English pet names like “honey,” “pumpkin,” or even “cutie pie.”^[2]

To the French ear, it isn’t strange sounding at all and tends to be understood to mean “my favorite one.” The French may have a better view of cabbage than many of us. But what makes mon chou an interesting pet name is really its variations.

French is a language with many diminutive forms that lovers use to amp up the cuteness and sickly-sweet sound of the phrase. Ma choupette is the feminine form which uses the diminutive -ette by default. Mon choupinou for men and ma choupinette for women is one way that speakers simply make the word sound cuter.

A more exaggerated form of this is mon chouchou and ma chouchoutte. Finally, there is mon petit chou (“my little cabbage”).

8 Anata
Japanese

Japanese is not a language for terms of endearment as we often think of them. In Japan, levels of familiarity are often achieved by altering the level of formality used, adding and removing honorifics, and chopping names into shorter nicknames.

The most common way to refer to a person in Japanese is with their last name and the honorific -san. Anything more familiar than that can be said to be a term of endearment and a sign of closeness. Using close language when there is no such closeness is a good way to earn disdain.

But when there is closeness, the honorific may switch first. For a younger girl, you may use -chan at the end of her name. For a younger boy, you may use -kun. For a close friend from childhood, one might go so far as to add -cchi to the end of their name or to just one syllable of their name. Taichiro may become Tacchi to a close friend or lover.

As stated above, using familiarity where there is none often creates problems in Japanese conversations. For this reason, many don’t even use the word anata (“you”) so often as they do the person’s name with an appropriate honorific. Due to this particular quirk of Japanese, anata has become a perfectly acceptable pet name that married women often use to refer to their husbands.

In other words, it is normal to refer to one’s husband as “you” and count it as a pet name. To go a step further in Japanese, a woman might playfully refer to her husband as anta, a much more casual and relaxed form of anata that is considered extremely rude when said to a stranger.^[3]

Imagine calling a stranger on the street “sweetheart” or “dumpling,” and that’s fairly close to the reaction. But one way of translating anta does pretty much boil down to calling your partner “hey you.”

7 Gordo/Gorda
Spanish

In Latin American countries like Ecuador and Argentina, they tell it like it is when it comes to pet names. Nicknames tend toward the descriptive, which leads to the usual sort of compliments like chiquito/a (“little one”) or lindo/a (“beautiful”).

However, it also paves the way for descriptive nicknames like pobrecito/a (“poor little one”), loco/a (“crazy”), viejo/a (“old man/woman”), flaco/a (“skinny”), and, of course, gordo/a (“fatty”). All those are appropriate pet names and observations without much stigma attached.

A speaker of Latin American Spanish may call a close friend or family member any of these to their face without reproach, and lovers may croon softly to one another with the exact same words.

These are just descriptive words. In some ways, it’s stranger to think that we can’t describe people honestly without insulting them in English-speaking countries. It is the context that makes all the difference.

When calling someone “fat” or “skinny” in English, the understood context is that the person has failed in some way to manage their own body shape. When one is called gordo/a, the implication is most often that the person is healthy and eating well.^[4]

There are times when someone is too far removed to be using such blunt descriptors, but a significant other will happily toss around gordo/a anytime and mean no offense. If you date someone from these areas, your in-laws will happily and innocently inform you when you look a bit plump.

6 Mijn Poepie
Dutch

The people of the Netherlands have a similar reputation for blunt communication. There is a no-fuss approach to conversation that means people will say what they mean and mean what they say. Anyone who doesn’t may come across as insincere or, worse, a liar.

The Dutch maintain that mincing words wastes time and energy that could be put toward better things, while many English-speakers blush at the things a Dutch friend might say. Despite the culture clash, the approach works well for the people of the Netherlands. In 2013, UNICEF ranked the children of various countries based on their overall sense of well-being. Dutch kids were right on top.^[5]

So, what sort of pet names are used in such an idyllic place?

Mijn poepie for starters. This charming turn of phrase translates to “my little poop.” This term is used in romantic and platonic relationships and with both adults and children. It may also be one big reason why the Dutch don’t have a reputation for romance among other European countries. Its close cousin, scheetje (“little fart”), may be the nail in that coffin.

But English speakers shouldn’t raise too big of a stink about it, considering that “poopsie” is a pet name still in use. At least one gentleman was willing to admit to calling his wife “poopstink” on the worldwide web where all could see and read it.

Just to be fair, the Dutch also have many perfectly usual pet names. Schat (“treasure“), lekker ding (“delicious thing”), and dropje (“licorice”) all have reasonably normal meanings.

5 Mausezahnchen
German

Mausezahnchen is one of many long, silly compound phrases that Germans love to bandy about among loved ones. This one just happens to mean “little mouse tooth.”

German nouns are a funny thing on their own. Adjectives get smashed onto nouns to make long word chains regularly, so lovey-dovey Germans have to step it up if they want to make something appropriately ridiculous to call their beaus.

“Mouse” is a common and acceptable term of endearment in Germany. So lovers there don’t likely experience the same shudder that some English speakers might upon being called something that resides in a rodent’s mouth.

The list of massive, cutesy compounds is quite long. Igelschnauzchen breaks down to “little hedgehog snout,” honigkuchenpferd means “honey-cake horse,” and knutschkugel translates to “smooch ball.”^[6]

If you peruse a longer list of German endearments, you may notice some similarities to previous items on this list. Moppelchen means something like “little chubby person,” similar to gordo/a. Hasenfurzchen mimics the Dutch scheetje by calling a loved one a “fart,” but one-ups it by making it a much cuter “bunny fart.”

German pet names are also chock-full of animals and sweets, including bears, bunnies, mice, hedgehogs, strawberries, and tarts. One particularly ambitious appellation, schnuckiputzihasimausierdbeertortchen, means “cutie-pie-bunny-mouse-strawberry-tart.” It’s not so much a sweet nothing as a sweet everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.

4 Moosh Bokhoradet
Persian

This Persian phrase translates to “a mouse should eat you,” which is a little more threatening than charming if you aren’t familiar with it. The phrase might be better understood to mean something like a mouse could eat you or, to explain further, you are something so small that a mouse could swallow you whole.

It essentially means that the recipient of the compliment is cute. Children are more often than not subjected to cheek pinching while an adult cheerfully informs them of their suitability to become part of a mouse’s balanced breakfast.

This is one of the more colorful Persian affectionate phrases, but there are a few others that are definitely worth noting. Jeegareto bokhoram (“I want to eat your liver”) and jeegare man-ee (“you are my liver”) are not ways of indicating that Hannibal Lecter levels of cannibalism are about to ensue. Instead, these are common ways of pledging one’s love.^[7]

Along the same lines, ghorbanat beram means “may I be sacrificed for you.” It earns its notation here for the drama factor alone, but the meaning is genuine. If a Persian speaker says any of these three phrases, they want you to know that they would do anything for you. They might still feed you to a mouse, though.

3 Ywn Ghzal
Arabic

Ywn ghzal refers to the hypnotic eyes of a gazelle. Abd Al-malik Ibn Marwan, born 646/647 in Medina, Arabia, was the fifth caliph, the leader of a Muslim community of the Umayyad Arab dynasty centered in Damascus. He also historically once caught a gazelle with such hauntingly beautiful and enchanting eyes that he had to release the animal.

It is said that the gazelle’s eyes reminded him of his beloved’s own mesmerizing stare. In Arabic poetry, a woman’s gaze is often described as lethal spears that snag a man and keep him captive. Thus, men will use this phrase to woo a woman whose spell they feel they are under, especially if the feeling is not mutual.

Ghazal, pronounced a bit like “guzzle,” itself may also be used as a pet name, as women in poetry were often metaphorically referred to as gazelles. In these poems, hunters would often be struck by the stare of a gazelle and would linger on in lovesickness until they died.

Fittingly, the term ghazal is also the name of a form of Arabic poetry where the focus is on sexual desire, the pursuit of love, and sometimes mysticism and religion. These beautiful medieval poems follow a complex rhyme scheme where words are repeated at the ends of lines while only the preceding content changes.^[8]

2 Negao
Brazilian Portuguese

In English-speaking countries, we rarely refer to people to their faces by a descriptor. This tends to be reserved for describing someone to a third person who may not know the individual. Openly describing a person to his face can be considered rude. After all, we know what we look like more often than not.

Similar to the culture shock of gordo/a in Spanish, Portuguese also uses descriptors as a normal and acceptable way to refer to a friend. Alemao (“German”) or Polaco (“Pole”) are used to call white friends regardless of their actual ethnicity or nationality.

Similarly, negao is used to refer to a black friend. The term usually isn’t meant offensively. Like gordo/a, it’s a simple descriptor. It’s a racial variation of amigao (“big friend”), which is complimentary.^[9]

However, it has caused confusion for many dark-skinned, English-speaking transplants in Brazil. Skin tone is very important to the equation—Brazilian races break down to indigenous, white, yellow, brown, and black.

Race is complex in Brazil and sometimes difficult for foreigners to understand. Negao is no more negative than Alemao unless a rude tone is used, but that doesn’t mean that Brazil is without its racial tensions. Families will often be composed of people who are classified as white, yellow, brown, or black, but there is a clear hierarchy.

Tightly curled black hair is referred to as cabelo ruim (“bad hair”), and being viewed as not black is a huge social boost for Brazilians. In recent years, Brazil has tried to downplay this and its history in the slave trade. Naturally, that’s easier said than done. Nevertheless, referring to someone’s race remains a common term of endearment.

1 Ben Dan
Chinese

Ben dan is a term that women often use playfully with their husbands and boyfriends. It means “dumb egg.” It has its origins in schoolyard bullies and is about as offensive as calling something stupid or silly.

Eggs work hard in Mandarin to fill out the insult roster. Huai dan (“naughty egg”) is used for bad people, and hun dan (“confused egg”) functions similarly to the word “bastard” in English.

Finally, wan dan (“finished egg”) is an expletive. In conversation, it can be used to say someone is in deep trouble. So when a woman calls her husband ben dan, she is teasing him that he is silly or maybe in some kind of playful trouble.^[10]

Mandarin Chinese has its share of beautiful terms of endearment as well. A term pronounced chenyu luoyan translates as the seemingly nonsensical phrase “diving fish, swooping geese.” The phrase tells two Chinese stories at once, though.

The first is about Xi Shi, a woman so beautiful that her face could make fish forget to swim and geese forget to fly. Thus, the fish would dive while absently staring at her and the geese would swoop to the ground for the same reason. Wang Zhaojun was another historical beauty responsible for grounding the geese, and lovers can liken their beloved to both women in one fell swoop using this phrase.

Renee Chandler is an Atlanta-based graphic designer and writer. She is currently coauthoring a novel that you can preview and support on Patreon at www.patreon.com/pterohog.

Before Peter the Great, who ruled from 1682 to 1725, Russia was lagging years behind the rest of the world. While the Enlightenment was bringing the European world into a new age, Russia was stagnant, until Tsar Peter I dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern world.

Peter the Great did some incredible things for Russia, but he was mainly working off the idea that if the Europeans were doing something, Russia should be doing it, too. And that led to some absolutely insane decisions.

For better or for worse, Peter the Great brought Russia into the modern world—but he did it in some of the strangest ways possible.

10 The Terrible Disguises Of Peter The Great

Peter the Great was determined to make Russia a nation that rivaled the greatest European powers. He wanted Russia to do everything the Europeans did. First, though, he had to figure out what that was. So, Peter decided to make a tour of Europe—in disguise.

It was a fine idea, in theory, except that Peter was 203 centimeters (6’8”) tall. The man towered above every person he saw, and he traveled with an entourage of 250 Russian nobles. So when a gigantic, wealthy Russian man walked around telling people he was a migrant laborer, absolutely nobody was fooled.

The tsar spent months working as a shipbuilder in the Netherlands. He told his employer that he was a foreign craftsman. They didn’t believe him. Everybody knew who he was. But, mostly for the novelty, they let Peter work there, anyway.

Whole crowds of Dutch citizens would come out to watch Peter the Great building ships and living in peasant quarters. As a man who grew up in a castle, he was probably doing the worst job at it that they’d ever seen. He worked as a laborer long enough to help build a ship. If he didn’t realize that his disguise wasn’t working by then, it must have hit him when his boss asked if he wanted the ship sent to his palace.

9 The Beard Tax

When Peter the Great returned to Russia, he was determined to make some changes. From there on out, they were going to do things the European way, and Peter wasn’t going to waste any time. During the reception to welcome him home, Peter hugged his noblemen. Then, without a word of warning, he pulled out a razor and chopped off their beards.

Having a beard became a crime shortly after. This was a major a change: Until then, Russian had viewed a long, flowing beard as a sign of manliness. But the Europeans had made fun of Peter for his, so the beards had to go.

Anyone with a beard had to pay a tax of 100 rubles each year. Peasants and clergyman were excepted, but if a peasant entered a city with beard, he paid a fine. People who paid the tax were given a coin that read, “The beard is a useless burden!” to let the police know they were legally permitted to have one. If they were caught without the coin, the police could forcibly shave them on the streets.

For all of his hatred for beards, though, Peter the Great loved mustaches. For the men of the Russian military, he set out another decree: Beards were forbidden, but mustaches were mandatory.

8 The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod Of Fools And Jesters

Up until then, the Russian Orthodox Church had been led by the patriarch of Moscow. Peter the Great changed all that. He was a raging drinker and partier, and he didn’t care for all the pious stuff. So he replaced Russia’s religious leaders with a new group called the Holy Synod, filled with people he could control.

He didn’t particularly respect his own church, either. Around the same time, he set up another group called the All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, and their job was to get as drunk as possible as often as they could. This was Peter’s old drinking group, now reformed to let the church know exactly what he thought of it. He even made one of his friends the “prince-pope” of the All-Drunken Synod and had him do a mock Stations of the Cross before they all got hammered.

People weren’t thrilled. Some started to say that Peter the Great was the antichrist himself. But the people in power didn’t mind. Eventually, every powerful man in the government was part of the All-Drunken Synod—including some of the clergy.

7 The Medal Of Drunkenness

Peter the Great might have been a raging alcoholic, but he didn’t want Europeans coming to Russia and seeing drunken peasants sleeping on the streets. He was determined to fix the drinking problem—in the silliest ways possible.

Anyone caught on the streets intoxicated was forced to wear an 8-kilogram (18 lb) cast iron medal around his neck for the next week. It looked exactly like a medal of honor, except that it read “For drunkenness,” and it was incredibly heavy.

The Medal of Drunkenness didn’t do much to curb alcoholism in Russia, but Peter probably wasn’t too worried. His other rules made it pretty clear that he thought getting drunk was a God-given right. In another law, Peter decreed that a woman could be flogged if she made her husband leave the tavern before he was done drinking.

6 The Museum Of Deformities

In Europe, Peter the Great had seen countless cabinets of curiosities. These were the era’s freak shows, and he found them incredibly fascinating. Putting freaks on display, he believed, was a scientific and educational tool that would enrich the country, so he had a museum built as soon as he got back.

His museum was called the Kunstkamera, and it was full of the strangest things he could find. It had two-headed babies preserved in jars, deformed animal skeletons, and more. It even held live exhibits where children with birth defects would meet and greet the visitors.

For Peter, it wasn’t just exploitation. It was education. When he opened it, he declared, “I want people to look and learn!” The press agreed. In France, the papers spread the news about his museum of oddities. Impressed, they wrote, “Tsar Peter Alexeyevich is intent on enlightening his country.”

5 Mandatory Pants

In this era, Russia still wore its traditional clothing. The men would step out dressed in long, thick robes with tall hats on their heads—until Peter the Great forced them to put on some pants. “No one,” Peter declared, “is to wear Russian dress.” From that day forward, it was law: “Western dress shall be worn by all!”

Every piece of clothing was dictated. There were laws on what type of underwear you could wear. There were punishments in place for wearing shoes in the bed. Men were required to wear French-cut coats with German-cut clothes underneath, and they could be punished if they didn’t.

Like his beard tax, Peter introduced his mandatory pants laws by pouncing up behind unsuspecting noblemen and cutting the sleeves off their robes. Then he laughed at them and said, “Now you won’t be dragging your clothes through your food!”

He certainly changed fashion, but it wasn’t exactly well-thought-out. Those thick cloaks had kept Russians warm through the winter. Now, dressed in German underwear, they were struggling not to freeze to death.

4 The Russian Flag

The modern Russian flag was Peter the Great’s creation, too. It’s a bold but simple design: three stripes, with white above, red below, and blue between, colors carefully chosen to symbolize . . . uh . . . absolutely nothing.

Russia got its flag because when Peter was in Europe, he was delighted by the way Dutch ships had little flags on them. Russian ships, he decided, needed to have little flags on them, too. He didn’t really know what to hoist, though, so he just moved the colors on the Dutch flag around and had his ships use that as their flag.

At first, the new flag was only used on ships, but in time, it turned into the country’s national flag. Soon, the whole country was marching under those three colors, most unaware that the patriotic symbol of their nation was just an old emperor trying to be like the Netherlands.

3 The Construction Of St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg, too, was just another attempt to copy the Dutch. Peter the Great ordered his men to build the city on top of a swamp and demanded that it look as much like Amsterdam as possible.

His dream was to make it Russia’s most European city. He even imagined that people would travel around St. Petersburg by drifting down the canals in boats, like in Venice. And he was willing to work his people to death to get it.

One of the first buildings constructed in the city was the Peter and Paul Fortress. Over 20,000 laborers worked on it, some being required to work with their bare hands. Thousands of people died building it.

To make sure he had enough stone, Peter made it illegal to build any stone buildings anywhere in Russia other than St. Petersburg. All stones, Peter demanded, were to be sent to the city.

Peter was thrilled with the result. He even made St. Petersburg the capital of the nation. Others, though, were less impressed. Dostoyevsky, for one, called it the “most artificial city in the world.”

2 Mandatory Nicotine Habits

Tobacco had been banned by the previous tsars. The Russian Church viewed smoking as an “abomination to God,” and they dealt with it severely. A person caught smoking could be exiled to Siberia or worse. Some had their nostrils torn open or their lips cut off to keep them from ever smoking again.

Peter the Great, though, took a different approach. He didn’t just legalize smoking—he insisted on it. Every Russian was encouraged to smoke as often as possible. Some members of the nobility were even required to smoke under the decree of the tsar.

As with everything else Peter did, smoking was something he’d seen the Europeans do. It was also an opportunity to get them into the country. He let foreign companies set up tobacco plantations in Russia and started building tobacco-manufacturing plants around the nation.

Cigarettes, though, are never complete without caffeine, so Peter brought coffee to Russia, too. The Russians thought it was disgusting. They called it “smut syrup,” but Peter pushed it hard enough that pretty soon, there were enough coffee drinkers to open Russia’s first coffee house.

1 The Dwarf Wedding

Peter the Great loved people with dwarfism. In his time, treating little people like jesters was normal, but he took it to extremes. He would get little people to hide naked inside pies and then jump out to surprise people for a laugh.

He wanted more dwarfs—so he tried to breed them. He had a little person in his court, Iakim Volkov, married to another dwarf, hoping to breed a race of little people. But he wanted it to be a big affair. He ordered every little person in Russia to attend.

About 70 little people made it, and he dressed them all in the latest Western fashions, lined with gold. This wasn’t a gesture of respect. Most of these dwarfs were poor, uneducated peasants. His attendants deliberately loaded them up with alcohol and then laughed while the peasant dwarfs clumsily stumbled through dances and erupted into drunken fistfights.

Peter thought it was hilarious—but more than that, he thought it was an allegory for Russia. Russia, he believed, was like those drunken little people. They had the clothes, and they were doing the dances, but they were just playing at being Europeans.

New Zealand. Aotearoa. The Land Down Under. Land of the Long White Cloud. Home to hobbits, the All Blacks rugby team, where good coffee is easy to find, and the wine isn’t half bad either.

While New Zealand is my much-loved homeland, there can be some strange goings-on down this way, and here’s just a handful of oddball stories that have hit the headlines here in recent(ish) years.

Related: Top 10 Ironic Stories Of Cops Getting Themselves Arrested

10 Shrek the Sheep

Shrek the sheep gained international fame in 2004 owing to his gigantic wool fleece. Shrek had evaded shearers for six years by hiding in caves in the rugged foothills of the Central Otago region in the South Island. Merino sheep are usually shorn annually, so when Shrek was finally caught, he was immense. “He looked like some biblical creature,” explained Shrek’s owner, John Perriam, of Bendigo Hill station.

Shrek had grown a fleece weighing some 27 kilograms (60 pounds), containing roughly enough wool to make suits for 20 large men. He instantly became a national celebrity and was shorn live on television. His fleece was auctioned off to raise money for children’s medical charities. Josie Spillane of Cure Kids said that over the years, Shrek had raised more than NZ$ 150,000 (US$ 104,400) for the charity, which funds research into life-threatening childhood illnesses.

Shrek died in 2011 at the age of sixteen, with is a good old age for the Merino breed.^[1]

9 Blow on the Pie

It has been referred to as the food safety tip that echoed around the world. Police dog handler Guy Baldwin went viral back in 2009 for giving a suspected car thief some sage culinary advice regarding the safe handling of hot pastries.

Filmed in the early hours of the morning for the reality crime show Police Ten 7, the officer had pulled over a teenager suspected of driving a stolen car. The motorist claimed he was out at 3 am because he was hungry and intended to purchase a hot pie from a nearby service station. The officer’s dead-pan response went viral, providing the nation with a catchphrase that inspired T-shirts, songs, and a multitude of parody skits.

The officer asked the all-important question, “It’s three o’clock in the morning, and you’re buying a pie from the BP station. What must you always do?” The confused teenager simply had no response to that unexpected line of questioning. “That pie has been in the warming drawer for probably about 12 hours; it’ll be thermonuclear,” asserted Baldwin. “You must always blow on the pie… Always blow on the pie, safer communities together, okay.”^[2]

You heard it here, folks. Always blow on the pie.

8 Road Flock

This list item combines both sheep and the police. Incredibly, it also involves sheep belonging to the police.

In 2016, four people driving a stolen Honda Integra led police on a 90-minute car chase through Shrek the sheep’s ‘hood in Central Otago. Earlier attempts to stop the car using road spikes had failed, and it was a flock of some 150 sheep being driven down the road that eventually caused the vehicle to come to a stop.

Fortunately, none of the sheep or farm dogs were injured as the car came to a halt without even attempting to drive through the flock. They were being moved by a farm worker, who was totally unfazed by the scene unfolding behind him as two men and two juveniles were taken into custody by police.

It turned out that the herd was, in fact, owned by a Queenstown police officer. “I don’t know if the local officer trained the sheep or not, but they sure did a good job in stopping that car,” a journalist on the scene later commented.^[3]

7 Thomas the Blind Bisexual Goose

In 2018, a blind, bisexual goose named Thomas was farewelled and laid to rest next to where his swan partner of nearly two decades lies. A commemorative plaque immortalized their love story by proclaiming:

” Here lies Thomas, the great-hearted goose,
Nestled near Henry, in their final roost.
Here where they raised young and found sanctuary,
Somewhere above us, great souls fly free.”

It was an enduring, complicated love story that crossed genders as well as species. Thomas the goose and Henry the swan spent 18 years together before they were joined by another swan, a female named Henrietta. The feathered polyamorous threesome raised 68 cygnets together before Henry’s death in 2009. Then, Henrietta flew off with another swan, leaving poor Thomas “heartbroken and crying for his friend.”

Thomas eventually fathered ten goslings of his own. However, they were stolen by another goose named George, who raised them as his own (George, you heartless bastard!). “You would see George and the babies, with Thomas just following them around,” a local bird-fancier recalls.

Failing eyesight saw Thomas rehomed in a bird sanctuary, where he lived out his final years eating corn and helping to raise orphaned baby swans. “He was a gentleman; he was kind to every other bird he bumped into, literally,” a staff member later commented.

When the commemorative plaque was unveiled, local Waikanae man Mik Peryer mourned that “this is the end, the love story is over.” He explained the significance of the memorial service for Thomas as being “something that needed to be done. The story touched a lot of people, particularly that he was gay.”^[4]

6 Dug the Faux Spud

When Hamilton couple Colin and Donna Craig-Brown discovered a behemoth potato in their veg patch weighing a whopping 7.9 kilograms (17 pounds), they felt certain that it would break the Guinness World Record for the heaviest potato.

Dubbed “Dug the Spud,” it was more than 2.8 kilograms (6 pounds) heavier than the existing Guinness record for the heaviest potato, a spud found in England in 2011. Seven months and one genetic test later, the couple received some devastating news. “Sadly, the specimen is not a potato and is, in fact, the tuber of a type of gourd. For this reason, we do unfortunately have to disqualify the application,” a Guinness World Records representative informed them.

Not even a potato, Dug was revealed to indeed be a tuber, that is, a swollen underground stem or root. The DNA testing showed that the tuber belonged to a type of gourd, a vegetable with a hard outer skin like a pumpkin. The couple was stunned by the news. “It looked like a tater, it tasted like a tater, it grew like a tater,” Colin explained. “So I figured it’s a tater.”

Dug is still currently residing in the couple’s freezer. “I say g’day to him every time I pull out some sausages. He’s a cool character,” Colin said. ^[5]

5 The World’s Loneliest Tree

A lone Sitka spruce tree growing on New Zealand’s windswept, inhospitable sub-antarctic Campbell Island shouldn’t technically be there at all. The Sitka spruce is actually a species native to the northern hemisphere, but what makes this all the more remarkable is that this tree is more than 247 kilometers (170 miles) from its nearest neighbor on the Auckland Islands. This makes it the loneliest, most remote tree in the world.

Unlike Dug the “pretender” Spud, this somewhat unremarkable-looking tree is a genuine world record holder because of its isolation. The previous record-holder was the Tree of Ténéré, a well-known landmark in the heart of the Saharan Desert in Niger. The acacia tree was some 402 kilometers (250 miles) from any other tree until it was allegedly mowed down by a drunk Libyan truck driver in 1973.

The 9-meter-tall (30-foot), 100-or-so-year-old Sitka spruce was thought to have possibly been planted around the turn of the 20th century by New Zealand’s then-governor, Lord Ranfurly, while on a bird collecting expedition for the British Museum. It is suggested that he planted the conifer in the hope of transforming the island into a place of “productive forestry.”

As the spruce is apparently trapped in a juvenile state by the harsh climate and physical damage, it is unable to produce pinecones and seed, so it is likely to remain a lone sentinel at the bottom of the world.^[6]

4 Zoologist Shagged by World’s Rarest Parrot

The kakapo is a large, nocturnal, flightless parrot found only in New Zealand. It is also critically endangered and was on the brink of extinction in the mid-1990s when only some 50 birds were left. However, thanks to intensive conservation efforts, a total of 210 birds were known in June 2020, all of which carry radio transmitters and are intensively monitored and carefully managed.

The most well-known kakapo is a young male named Sirocco, who rocketed to fame in 2009 after his X-rated encounter with zoologist Mark Carwardine made him a YouTube sensation. Carwardine was filming the BBC documentary series Last Chance to See with British comedian Stephen Fry. A rather frisky Sirocco attempted to energetically mate with Carwardine’s head as Fry laughingly quipped he was witnessing someone being “shagged by a rare parrot.”

Hand-raised by conservation officers due to suffering from respiratory problems, Sirocco had imprinted on humans at an early age and seemingly swore off mating with his own kind. Apparently, his unsavory rendezvous with Carwardine’s head was far from being his first, nor would it be the last.

His unorthodox rise to fame saw former Prime Minister John Key dub him the nation’s “official spokesbird for conservation.” Sirocco has since gone on annual nationwide tours as an ambassador for his species and even visited Parliament. He also promotes various wildlife conservation issues through his official Twitter and Facebook accounts.^[7]

3 Spaghetti Vandalism on Mount Victoria

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In March 2018, a group of jogging students made a bizarre discovery on Wellington’s Mt. Victoria lookout—a massive dumping of…freshly cooked pasta.

Students Jack Anderson, Elleana Dumper (ironic name), Tobias Leman, and Flynn Beeman were on an early morning run. They came across the pasta on top of Summit Rock, at the lookout point boasting panoramic views of the city and harbor, just before 9 am.

Wellington City Council said they had, in fact, received numerous reports about the mysterious pasta vandalism. “Our contact center logged the incident after it left a bad taste in their mouth, and the cleaning crew was dispatched to deal with spaghetti junction,” a council spokeswoman said. “The public health team said they don’t recommend anyone eating spaghetti on the rocks,” she added.

The local park rangers couldn’t recall seeing a mass food dumping like this before and added that it made a nice change from the hazardous dumping of cars, TVs, and fridges that the clean-up crews usually have to deal with.

The source (sauce???) of the pasta at the popular tourist spot was never discovered.^[8]

2 Pole-Dancing Prostitutes Destroy Street Signs

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Prostitutes in New Zealand’s largest city Auckland were accused in 2012 of destroying street signs by dancing and swinging from the roadside poles in order to entice potential customers.

Local resident Donna Lee explained how prostitutes use them as dancing poles. “The poles are part of their soliciting equipment, and they often snap them. Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people.” She claimed more than 40 signs had either been bent or broken over an 18-month period.

At the time, local Mayor Len Brown stated, “there is no doubt that the street sex trade is enjoying its unrestricted use of public space and is possibly the only industry in New Zealand to enjoy such status.” He added that other industries have to acquire licenses or receive special authority while street prostitution “faces no such constraints.”

Residents in the area hoped that bringing attention to the issue would put pressure on the government to allow Auckland Council to outlaw sex workers from certain areas. A spokesperson from the Prostitutes Collective said that banning prostitutes from popular streets would be counter-productive. “They’ll be expected to pay a fine which they can’t pay. They’ll go to court, then they have to come back onto the streets and work to pay them off. It’s just going to clog up our justice system,” said Prostitute Collective Auckland spokeswoman Annah Pickering.^[9]

1 Bess the Boar

Photo credit: WIkimedia Commons

Also in 2018, KFC fries and warm bread rolls were used by emergency services to corral a large pig on the loose in the Waikato town of Waihi.

Estimated to weigh some 150 kilograms (331 pounds), the hefty hog casually trotted down one of the small town’s main streets with police in hot pursuit at its heels. “We got into a pursuit with a pig,” Waihi police Constable Harley North later explained.

At the time, North was unable to say how the swine got loose, believing it was likely someone’s pet that had broken out for a night on the town. Using finger-licking good bribes, the pig was eventually corralled into a makeshift pen at a local church. “The pig was left to contemplate his sinful behavior,” North said.

Later the pig was spotted being escorted by a “tall, dark stranger” down the Waihi street. The pig turned out to be a brazen boar named Bess. Just over a week later, he did another runner and was found chowing down on an orange tree. He was coerced back home by the embarrassed owner carrying a big bucket full of tasty treats.

Bess apparently got a stern telling off from the local police, who said they were considering fitting Bess with an ankle bracelet and imposing a strict curfew.^[10]

Following up on my recent list “Ten Odd News Stories Out of New Zealand,” I thought I’d look over what we call “The Ditch” to my Australian neighbors and see what oddities are turning up in the headlines over there.

Turns out, the Aussies have some rather strange goings-on over their way, too, and here’s just a handful of oddball stories that have hit the headlines in Australia’s recent(ish) times.

Related: 10 Incredibly Odd Things That People Have Stolen

10 Wallaby Mugs Easter Bunny

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Easter Bunny’s best-laid plans were almost ruined this past Easter if a mischievous male wallaby—oddly named Polly—had his wicked way.

In Clarence Point, Tasmania, local resident Amanda Sparkles and her two daughters were awakened around 6 am by loud noises on Easter Sunday. Instead of catching the Easter Bunny in the act, Amanda explained how she was surprised to find a wallaby stealing Easter eggs hidden around the property. “The very naughty boy had been on the deck, caravan, swing set, spa bath, collecting and hiding all the eggs he could find,” she wrote in a post on Facebook.

Brought into care as an infant after his mother was killed by a car, Polly is now a 20-kilogram (44-pound) adult and freely roams around the Sparkles’ farm, where Amanda is a registered wildlife rehabilitator.

As with dogs, cats, and many other animals, chocolate is also bad for wallabies and kangaroos, so Polly could not indulge in any of his stolen goodies. Amanda was able to use a piece of his favorite vegetable as a bribe to retrieve one of the eggs in his possession.

Once Polly had handed over his Easter egg, Amanda and her daughters realized they had another problem—all of the other Easter eggs were still missing. “We then started looking around to see if there were any more,” she said. “We couldn’t really see many at all, but Polly kept on going in and out of the bushes… We realized he’d gathered up eggs and put them all into the shrubs.”^[1]

9 Death Threats and the Robot Waitress

A Sydney restaurant owner says she received several death threats earlier this year after using a robot waitress amid pandemic staff shortages.

The Matterhorn, a Swiss restaurant on Sydney’s North Shore, recently spent $AU 28,000 on a high-tech robot waitress to help carry plates and take customer orders. The robot, named Bella, also sings “Happy Birthday” to customers, as singing in indoor restaurants is currently not permitted in the state under Covid regulations.

The Matterhorn’s owner, Liarne Schai, explained that Bella wasn’t merely a gimmick, as international border closures and staff poaching resulted in a critical worker shortage throughout the hospitality industry. Wages for some positions have skyrocketed during the pandemic, with casual waiting jobs advertised for as much $AU 80 per hour. (Sheesh, where can I sign up?) Despite paying their staff “well above award wages,” The Matterhorn just couldn’t compete with these inflated wages, so they invested in Bella.

“99.9 percent of the customers love Bella,” explained Schai. “It’s the funniest thing to watch people talking to it like it’s a person, but the nicest part of it is by the time the novelty wears off, she fades into the background like a good waiter does anyway,” she said.

However, not everyone was impressed by the restaurant’s robotic employee. They received an email insinuating that the restaurant was “part of the right-wing prefecture and that we were facilitating robots taking over the world.” Following media reports about Bella, a man phoned the restaurant to issue death threats to the owners. “He said that he’d seen us on the news and that he wanted the owners to die the most horrible, painful, torturous, cancerous death possible,” Schai explained.

Rather than being some kind of evil robotic overlord bent on the destruction of humanity, Schai described Bella as being more of an “automatic trolley.” Bella allows the human staff to spend more time with the customers, giving them “an extra seven to eight minutes servicing each table that we would normally be spending running back and forth.”^[2]

8 The Shocking Case of the Un-Australian Vegemite Toast

In April 2022, a cafe in Sydney was labeled as being “un-Australian” for its miserly serving of Vegemite toast.

For those that don’t know, Vegemite (and its far superior rival Marmite) is concentrated yeast extracts. It is a dark, thick spread, kind of malty, and super salty. Kiwi kids and Aussie kids alike are raised on the stuff, and it’s safe to say that for the uninitiated, it’s an acquired taste.

But back to the story…

A customer at the cafe took to social media to share what they had been served—a somewhat anemic-looking piece of buttered toast with a meager smear of Vegemite. It immediately sparked a heated debate about “how much Vegemite is the right amount?” In this instance, the cafe clearly fell well short with its stingy offering.

One person criticized the cafe for messing up every step of what should really be a no-brainer. “Not enough toasting, not enough butter, not enough Vegemite,” they said. Another person added, “I always wondered how badly you can f**k up Vegemite on toast. We have a new leader.”

Some critics went as far as to call it “un-Australian,” while others questioned why you’d order something like Vegemite toast from a cafe in the first place. And in case you’re wondering if this is really such a big deal, in November of last year, a man was served Vegemite on toast for breakfast while being held at the Albany Police Station. He apparently became outraged about the thickness of the Vegemite and angrily smeared the iconic Australian spread all over his cell, later requiring a “specialist cleaner” to clean up the mess.^[3]

7 The Alien Sea Creature with Human Lips

In April 2022, long-time Bondi resident, Drew Lambert, was shocked to come across a bizarre “alien-like” creature washed up on the beach when he was out for his morning jog.

Lambert later explained how he first thought it could be a “weird form of shark.” However, he noticed the mouth was on the bottom of its body, and while its skin was not dissimilar to a shark, it lacked a dorsal fin. “[I thought] oh my god, that’s weird. It looked like it was puckering up for a kiss,” he explained. “I just looked at it and said, ‘What the hell? Does this fish have human lips on it?’ “he added.

A supervisor at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium, Laetitia Hannan, later confirmed that despite its missing fins and tail, it appeared to be a coffin ray, a fish native to Australia. Another name for it is the numbfish, as they are capable of dishing out electric shocks to fight off predators, generating up to 200 volts of electricity. While some divers have been on the receiving end of a rather nasty shock, none are known to have proven fatal.^[4]

6 Woman Loves Herself… a Lot

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In May 2020, Sydney teacher Patricia Christine made the ultimate commitment… to herself. In a 30-minute “self-commitment ceremony” attended by nine of her closest friends, she married herself.

Having called off her engagement to an ex-partner eight years ago, Patricia said she felt under psychological pressure created by society to get married before turning 30. In total, the event cost approximately $AU 95. Patricia purchased her own Bohemian wedding dress, diamond wedding ring, and flowers.

During the unique ceremony, which took place in a local park, Patricia put forward her views on the importance of self-love. She later explained that she hoped that her act of marrying herself would motivate other young women to accept themselves, regardless of their relationship status and any societal pressure to get married.

She explained that in the vows she made to herself in an “emotional’ ceremony,” she promised to love herself despite the mistakes she had made in life and committed to trusting herself to follow her dreams. “I wanted to defy societal expectations and show women that the most important relationship we have is with ourselves,” she stated. Adding “we search our whole lives to make a huge declaration to another, but we don’t do it for ourselves first.”^[5]

5 Gigantic Crocodile Eats Dinosaur

Massive spiders the size of your face, a whole bunch of deadly snakes (there’s a 2-decade old list that says that 21 of the 25 most toxic snakes in the world are all from Australia!), sharks, box jellyfish, and stonefish—just to name a few of the deadly critters that can be found around Australia. And of course, there are crocs. Earlier this year, scientists were excited by the discovery of a massive 95-million-year-old crocodile relative that fed on dinosaurs.

It was named Confractosuchus sauroktonos, which means “broken crocodile dinosaur killer,” the “broken” in the crocodile’s name is a reference to the enormous, smashed boulder where the fossils were discovered. While this specimen measures some 2 to 2.5 meters (6.5 to 8 feet) in length, museum research associate Matt White believes it would have grown considerably larger had it not died.

The fossil species found in a rock bed in eastern Australia is from the Cretaceous Period, when most of the more commonly known dinosaurs roamed Earth. Making this find all the more exciting was that the croc had a partly-digested and near-complete chicken-sized dinosaur in its stomach. The juvenile as yet unidentified ornithopod (a medium-to-large plant-eating dinosaur) weighed around 1.5 kilograms (3.5 pounds) at the time of its death. The croc likely also died shortly afterward, resulting in the half-digested dinosaur in its belly getting fossilized too.

While the fossil croc was missing its tail and limbs, most of the smaller dinosaur’s skeleton was still intact even after it was swallowed. Scans revealed that the croc bit down so hard on it that it ended up breaking one of the ornithopod’s femurs in half and even left a tooth embedded in the other femur.

This discovery is believed to be the first definitive evidence that crocodiles were eating dinosaurs in Australia. “It is likely dinosaurs constituted an important resource in the Cretaceous ecological food web,” said White. “Given the lack of comparable global specimens, this prehistoric crocodile and its last meal will continue to provide clues to the relationships and behaviors of animals that inhabited Australia millions of years ago,” he added.^[6]

4 M&M’s Stacking

Queenslander Brendan Kelbie is, by his own admission, a serial record-breaker. His Guinness World Records include: most drumstick flips in one minute (98), longest duration spinning a basketball on a pair of spectacles (29.67 sec), longest time spinning a basketball on the nose (9.57 sec), and longest duration to spin a fidget spinner on one toe (6 min 52.28 sec), just to name a few!

In October 2021, Kelbie laid claim to yet another record—when he stacked six M&M’s on top of each other, and it stood for at least 10 seconds before falling. Guinness requirements also specify that flavored M&M’s such as peanut are not permitted, and only the plain chocolate ones can be used.

“I’ve decided to break this record because I’m a serial record breaker, and I am a versatile world record holder,” he told Guinness.^[7]

3 Unlicensed Cooler

In November 2021, an unnamed 25-year-old man in Kerang, Victoria, was stopped by the Swan Hill Police Service while driving a motorized cooler on the sidewalk. Police shared photos on social media of the small cooler being loaded onto a rather large tow truck as the “vehicle” was impounded for 30 days.

Police stated that while the driver of the cooler passed a breathalyzer test and was not intoxicated, he did not have a valid driver’s license, and he had, in fact, never held one. As a result, the driver is now facing charges of driving without a license and driving an unregistered motor vehicle.

“This motorized esky (a brand of portable cooler) is considered a vehicle due to the size/engine capacity and must comply with legislative requirements and road rules,” the police statement read.^[8]

2 Extra Leg of Lamb

Sam Kuerschner, a sheep farmer from Orroroo, South Australia, said a lamb born in 2021 was destined to become a family pet instead of dinner when he discovered that the animal had an extra leg growing out of the back of its head.

He said he felt rather shocked after discovering that the lamb had a fully-sized fifth leg attached to his head in what “looks like a mullet” hairstyle (no mutton chop beard was mentioned). However, the lamb did not appear to be affected in any way by the extra appendage. “It seemed completely happy and healthy and didn’t seem to be suffering any kind of medical issue,” Kuerschner explained.

He was sure his children would be keen to have the unusual pet. “When the time comes to wean it off its mother, I think I’ll take it home, and it can run around the house yard. I’ve got three little kids, and they’ll be fascinated to have that as a bit of a special pet for hopefully the rest of its life,” he said.

Polymelia is a birth defect in which an affected individual has more than the usual number of limbs. The extra limb is most commonly shrunken and/or deformed. However, in this instance, the leg is apparently fully formed and appears to be attached to the back of the sheep’s head by flesh rather than a bone joint. Veterinarian Paul Nilon estimated that one in 200,000 sheep is born with an extra limb.^[9]

1 The Echidna Penis That Broke the Internet

In April 2022, Australian Geographic was accused of being more like Australian GeoGRAPHIC after posting an NSFW pic of an echidna penis on Facebook. Sometimes known as spiny anteaters, echidnas are unusual quill-covered, egg-laying mammals resembling hedgehogs that are native to Australia.

“Have you ever seen an echidna’s penis?” the post began. Fans of Australian flora and fauna were taken aback by what came next…an engorged echidna penis thrust onto their screens in full technicolor, all in the name of science.

“Labeled one of the ‘weirdest penises of the animal kingdom,’ it’s bright red and has four heads,” the post explained. “Now there’s a dinner conversation starter…” concluded the post. You’re not wrong there!

People commenting on the post were busy trying in vain to compose themselves after gazing upon the colorful, multi-headed “d*ck pic.”

“I cannot un-see this,” wrote once traumatized page subscriber, “scarred for life!”
https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/a-photo-of-an-echidnas-penis-landed-in-facebook-feeds-without-warning-and-you-cant-unsee-it/news-story/380bac2225d72087db4a586057d3848e
“Wears condoms. They fit like a glove,” another quipped.

Reproductive biologist Jane Feleon explains,” We’re not really sure why it looks so weird, but we do know that they only use their penis for mating, not urine.” Adding “because they don’t need it for urine, they had the freedom to make it much more elaborate.” Elaborate…so that’s what they’re calling it these days!^[10]

You can’t deny it. There is something quite chilling about moving into a place that many others have passed through before. Who knows what you might find? If you’re lucky, maybe it’ll be some expensive artwork, secret passages, or strange remnants of past lives. But if luck isn’t on your side… well, stick around to find out.

This list covers ten “what the hell” cases of people who have made very bizarre and sometimes disturbing discoveries within their own four walls.

10 From Russia to New York

After George Davis passed away, his family sorted through his belongings only to find a mysterious box in the attic. It held a small Fabergé figurine which experts later identified as a gift from none other but the Russian Czar Nicolas II to his wife, Empress Alexandra. The hardstone portrait figure was of Nikolai Nikolaievich Pustynnikov, a loyal personal Cossack bodyguard to the empress. The valuable item had little sapphires in the eyes, a little gold trim and gold braid, and elaborately inlaid and enameled double-headed imperial eagles.

They valued the 100-year-old figure at $800,000 but clearly underestimated the public’s interest. At the auction, a jeweler from London bought it for a whopping $5.2 million!

Surely, George Davis’s family didn’t see such an inheritance coming.^[1]

9 The Roman Bath

Many Americans dream of a trip to Europe, but when Mark and Jenny Ronsman moved into their new house, they didn’t know that Italy would be only one floorboard away.

Once they removed the reliable Wisconsin wood in their office, they were amazed to discover a fully intact Roman-style bath. The striking blue mosaic really was the last thing they had expected, but they were more than excited. They spent hours removing the leveling material, whitening the grout, and sanitizing the tub.

Mark Ronsman said online: “I was truly shocked and overjoyed that something so beautiful was in our house!” And we agree. Even Caesar would have been jealous of that discovery. ^[2]

8 Soldier in Love

Oh, how romantic it would be to find decades-old love letters!

When Phil Mathies decided to give his bathroom an upgrade in 2014, he involuntarily became the side character of a real-life rom-com. The contractor he hired ended up finding dozens of love letters that dated back all the way to 1918. The bizarre part? They were hidden inside the attic wall!

The letters told the story of a WWI soldier named Clement and his beloved Mary. When Phil Mathies tracked down Clement’s relatives, they were thrilled to receive the letters. As Phil learned, Clement and Mary did end up together and had their own family. It was true love.

But how the letters ended up in the walls of this Indiana home will forever remain a mystery.^[3]

7 Pure Cash

What would you do if you found seven grand inside an abandoned house? Be sneaky and keep it? Not on Dave’s watch!

Dave, an urban photographer, really only wanted to take some pictures of antiques for his blog. But what he found behind an old mattress probably made his heart jump. Stuffed inside a yellow Home Hardware bag was almost $7,000 in cash, tightly rolled up in bundles. The notes were held together by elastic bands, which marked dates from the mid-1960s to the 1970s.

Dave decided to track down the granddaughter of the previous owners to hand back the money. Naturally, she was thrilled and told the photographer that her grandparents likely earned the money with the fruit stand they owned. They must have collected it over decades.^[4]

6 Two for One

This case gave us major horror movie vibes.

Affordable living space is rare in New York City, so just imagine how Samantha Hartsoe must have felt when she found out that she had access to more rooms than expected.

It all started with cold air coming from behind her mirror. Once she investigated the draft, she found the entrance to an entire vacant unit! On her TikTok, Samantha Hartsoe documented her trip beyond the wall, and several million people joined her, waiting for what was behind the next corner. Why does this apartment not have its own door? And why is it connected to Smanatha’s flat through only a small hole?

Let’s just hope there aren’t any unexpected neighbors.^[5]

5 A Gamer’s Paradise

We all enjoy board games, but some people take their love for Chess, Backgammon, and others to a whole other level.

In 2021, a Reddit user shared his in-laws’ discovery when they decided to remove the carpet in their new home. What did they find underneath? Another Roman bath? Hah, no. Somebody had drawn an entire Monopoly board onto the floor!

It had all the streets, a jail, and even a community chest! Weird, right? Actually, no. According to other Reddit users, XXL board games weren’t that unusual back in the day. They were a popular way to decorate playrooms and could be found in many basements.

Well, the next game night at this user’s in-laws’ place will be one to remember.^[6]

4 A Mysterious Painting

Okay, bare with us because this case is way more interesting than watching paint dry.

In 1970, a private collector purchased a Van Gogh painting but was left beyond disappointed when the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam told him that it was a fake due to the lack of a signature. But years later, with the help of modern technology, that statement was refuted. The collector was holding a real Van Gogh in his hands. It was the first full-size painting to be discovered in 85 years!

In letters to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh wrote about the painting and how he was unsatisfied with the result. According to the artist, Sunset at Montmajour was not what he had hoped to create; therefore, he didn’t sign it.

And this poor artwork had been hidden in a Norwegian attic for over a century because, more than once, people thought it to be a counterfeit. Sorry, Vincent.^[7]

3 Oh, Honey

So far, the people on this list have gotten quite lucky, but not all surprises are pleasant.

When Justin and Andrea Isabell found something dark dripping down the walls, they first thought of water damage as their area had just witnessed a tropical storm. But it wasn’t water. Instead, real honey was running down the walls in their Pennsylvania home.

Yes, you read that right. Honey.

Justin and Andrea Isabell then went on to check their attic, only to find a massive bee colony that housed 20,000 to 30,000 bees! Imagine all that aggressive buzzing. It’s a surprise they never heard anything downstairs. Despite their sons’ wishes, they decided to not keep the bees. First, the swarm fled to a neighbor’s tree before a beekeeper rehomed their colony.

No more free honey for the Isabells.^[8]

2 A House within a House

The typical horror movie. You move into an old, abandoned property and climb the stairs up to the attic, only to discover a creepy dollhouse that has been left behind for some reason.

Just that this time, it was not made for dolls. Instead, the owner found a full-sized house. In the attic. Yes, we know how crazy that sounds.

The Redditor shared pictures of his findings that showed intact windows, light fixtures, and a bathroom. There even were some abandoned belongings lying around. Creepy! The Redditor theorizes that the abode used to be part of a two-story building until the owners—for whatever reason—decided to build an attic around the top floor.

Was that really necessary? Attics are already scary enough as is!^[9]

1 The Tragic Story of a Child

We decided to end this list with a very disturbing and heart-breaking case that ended up inspiring its own horror movie.

Laurie and Jeff Dumas’s new house had more left-behind demons than they had gambled for. In the attic, they stumbled upon a room that was separated from the rest of the building. The deadbolts on the door really tried their best to keep the couple out, and once Laurie and Jeff Dumas made it inside, they found that the floor was entirely made of metal.

As Laurie Dumas started looking for an explanation at the local library, she was told that she owned a disappointments room. This was a room in which parents used to lock their disabled children to keep them out of sight.

The former owner had been a judge who imprisoned his daughter, Ruth so that her disability couldn’t tarnish his reputation.

Laurie and Jeff Dumas shared this horrifying and disturbing discovery on an HGTV episode of If Walls Could Talk. In 2016, Director D. J. Caruso retold the story with his movie The Disappointments Room.^[10]