From July to September of 1518 in modern-day France, hundreds of people developed a "dancing mania." There were many theories — like stress-induced mass hysteria and religion — that explained why people were dancing and, as a result, some of them died from it (heart attacks, strokes, and exhaustion).
As a result of a poorly maintained sewage system that drained directly into the Thames River in London, the smell of sewage permeated London during the hot summer of 1858.
Who knew there was a term for when Twitter rumors kill someone off too soon?! But it was actually happening pre-social media, like in 2003 when CNN.com accidentally published some obituary drafts that said Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan, who were all alive at the time, had died two years prior.
It's a weird name for a mathematical theory (known as the hedgehog theorem in Europe), but it states that "there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on even-dimensional n-spheres" or, in simpler terms, "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick."
Believe it or not, that's a whole grammatically correct sentence that employs the word buffalo in three ways — as a noun, as a verb, and as an attributive noun.
What would you do if it seemed like raw chunks of red meat appeared to be raining down from the sky? Probably coming up with explanations as to how it could be, like the people of Bath County, Kentucky on March 3, 1876.
"Frequently performed by sperm banks when screening potential sperm donors," this test is supposed to determine the efficacy of sperm in penetrating ova to determine infertility.
This rare syndrome is believed to be related to the medial temporal lobe of the brain which can make people compulsively eat, put inappropriate objects in their mouth, and even engage in hypersexuality.
David & Goliath T-shirts were my life for a minute, and they also caused controversy after men's rights activist Glenn Sacks claimed misandry and inciting violence in children as a reason why the shirts shouldn't be sold.
It would be an unremarkable (though lovely) statue on its own merits, but the addition of traffic cones by mischievous visitors, a tradition dating back to at least the 1980s, elevates the piece.
Mozart liked poop jokes and references and made them in many letters, and even hid some in recreational compositions, fascinating those dedicated to studying the history of his work.
Micronations are defined as "small, self-proclaimed entities that claim to be independent sovereign states but which are not acknowledged as such by any recognized sovereign state, or by any supranational organization," and also known as "model countries" and "new country projects."
A French man with an unusually large appetite — who was allegedly kicked out of his home because they could not afford to feed him — ended up a charlatan and later a soldier, and was believed to have once eaten a meal meant for 15 people.
Extreme ironing is a very real extreme sport, no matter how many people say it's not. In fact, that's part of the draw for people who take their irons to trees, rafts, and mountainsides to engage in the activity, which originated in the UK in the late '90s.
Buddha's list of no-can-dos is actually the earliest list of games known to man and contains games that limit where a player can walk, games played on boards with rows of 8 or 10, and games that involved dice.
A federal prisoner suing Satan and his cronies? Just a day in the life in early 1970s Pennsylvania. That prisoner couldn't tell a process server where to find Satan to serve him, however, which ultimately tanked the case.
Initially a joke first published by The Economist in 1986, the price index measures purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies. In other words, the price difference between a Big Mac in the US and anywhere else in the world should be about the same, adjusted for each currency's exchange rate.
Which of these is your favorite? Have a suggestion? Let's hear it in the comments.
