Weird Universe Archive
May 2019
May 11, 2019
Shortest Commercial Flight
Odd Trivia: The shortest scheduled commercial flight in the world takes a mere 90 seconds. It's the Loganair flight between the Scottish islands of Westray and Papa Westray. From cntraveler.com:In good conditions, Loganair’s 1.7-mile jaunt between the Scottish islands of Westray (population: 640) and Papa Westray (population: 72) in the Orkneys, off the north coast of the mainland, can take under a minute. Headwinds can make the flight a whopping two-and-a-half minutes. Retired police officer Graham Maben is one of the route’s regulars; the 70-year-old Orkney native now runs a tour business on the islands, and estimates he has taken the flight around 40 times over the past 15 years.
Posted By: Alex - Sat May 11, 2019 -
Comments (2)
Category: World Records, Air Travel and Airlines
Follies of the Madmen #424
This ad raises the intriguing question: "What female thing did the saddle screw to produce the wallet?"
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Sat May 11, 2019 -
Comments (3)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Sexuality, 1940s
May 10, 2019
The Breath of a Nation
This is so clever and visually surreal that's it's hard to believe it was not made yesterday.Lots more info here.
Posted By: Paul - Fri May 10, 2019 -
Comments (0)
Category: Surrealism, Cartoons, Marriage, 1910s, Alcohol
Pickle Split
The specialty of Pine Mountain Country Coffee House in Festus, Missouri. Apparently it's become quite popular.They should serve it with a side of cheese slaw.
Posted By: Alex - Fri May 10, 2019 -
Comments (1)
Category: Food, Pickles
May 9, 2019
Tony Pastor
Mr. Pastor had a somewhat unusual voice and presentation. I'm thinking Jim Nabors combined with Lou Costello.His Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Thu May 09, 2019 -
Comments (1)
Category: Eccentrics, Music, Twentieth Century
Mouse kills cat
This was big news back in 1934.Though I find it somewhat hard to believe, as reported. Surely it's more plausible that the cat accidentally choked while eating a mouse, rather than the mouse purposefully plunging down the cat's throat.
Lafayette Journal and Courier - Oct 16, 1934
Posted By: Alex - Thu May 09, 2019 -
Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Pets, 1930s
May 8, 2019
World Black Pudding Throw Championship
The Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 08, 2019 -
Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Eccentrics, Food, Regionalism, United Kingdom
Janet Downes, Sologamy Pioneer
We’ve posted before about sologamy, which is the term for marrying yourself. Back in 2017, we described it as a growing trend. But apparently the woman who gets credit for pioneering this practice was Janet Downes of Nebraska who, on June 27, 1998, married herself. She recited her vows in front of a mirror.
Downes died in 2007. But in a post over at realdivasride.com, she recollected about her self-wedding and explained how it came to be:
In 1998 I was about to celebrate my 40th birthday. I had a wedding theme planned for my party and everyone thought I was nuts. Maybe I am a little but I got tired of seeing everything in the stores that was related to ‘40’ being in black. So I decided to poke a little fun at society because I didn’t feel old. That coupled with the fact that after 19 years of adulthood, I was finally at a place in my life where I was happy with almost every aspect of my life. I’d been married & divorce twice at that time, yet I no longer needed a man to ‘fulfill’ me. I had 3 beautiful children (Nicole, Jasmine & Eugene Jr.) and for the first time, was satisfied with my body. You know what I mean ladies? We always seem to feel that our breasts are too small or too big. Always complaining that something is wrong with our hips, butt or legs. We can always find something wrong with ourselves when we look in the mirror. One day I woke up & decided, I was happy with who I was, just the way I was. So that led me to, marrying myself. I didn’t know it at the time but that little stunt got me international fame. It seems that I was the first woman to think of it and actually carry it out. It was a beautiful wedding and I am happy with myself, even now.
Calgary Herald - June 18, 1998
Posted By: Alex - Wed May 08, 2019 -
Comments (0)
Category: Marriage, 1990s, Weddings
May 7, 2019
Raising a Perfect Wife From Scratch
Sabrina Sidney, was a British foundling girl taken in when she was 12 by author Thomas Day, who wanted to mould her into his perfect wife. Day had been struggling to find a wife who would share his ideology and had been rejected by several women. Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book Emile, or On Education, he decided to educate two girls without any frivolities, using his own concepts.
In 1769, Day and his barrister friend, John Bicknell, chose Sidney and another girl, Lucretia, from orphanages, and falsely declared they would be indentured to Day's friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Day took the girls to France to begin Rousseau's methods of education in isolation. After a short time, he returned to Lichfield with only Sidney, having deemed Lucretia inappropriate for his experiment. He used unusual, eccentric, and sometimes cruel, techniques to try to increase her fortitude, such as firing blanks at her skirts, dripping hot wax on her arms, and having her wade into a lake fully dressed to test her resilience to cold water.
The full story here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue May 07, 2019 -
Comments (0)
Category: Eccentrics, Education, Husbands, Wives, Eighteenth Century, Nineteenth Century, Love & Romance
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
