World’s Strangest

In 1894, Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin—a French aristocrat and intellectual who had previously attempted to incorporate more physical education into the curriculum of the country’s schools—convened a congress in Paris with the goal of reviving the ancient Olympic Games (an idea Coubertin first introduced at a USFSA meeting in 1889). The congress agreed on [...]

Don’t throw away that used subway ticket! You could be holding a potential starfighter in your hands. Artist Hubert de Lartigue was playing with his Paris Métro ticket between stops, folding it this way and that, wondering how he could give it a cool shape. He did this for six months, and discovered that with a [...]

Why is customer service in Paris so horribly rude? It may have roots in the French Revolution (they really do take the égalité part of the national motto “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” seriously). Emma Jane Kirby of BBC News discovers first-hand that the customer isn’t always right in Paris: The fact is Parisians employed in any service industry [...]

This weekend, sadly, marks the anniversary of the bonfire of the vanities. Not that novel from the ‘80s, but the actual bonfire of the vanities, the event in 1497 when thousands of objects that might tempt people to sin were reduced to nothing but ash. Unfortunately, burnings such as this one weren’t that unusual – [...]

At a site south of Paris, France, archaeologists Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun discovered what they believe to be evidence of a successful and intentional arm amputation: The man, who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers began subsistence farming, was found to be missing his forearm and hand bones.[...] Pain-killing plants such as the hallucinogenic [...]

Break out the leisure suits, because French artist Michel de Broin used a crane to heft a huge mirror ball 50 meters over the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. It measures 7.5 meters across and is composed of a thousand mirrors. Can you dig it? Link via Gizmodo (where there’s a video) | Artist’s Website | [...]

Cannibalism, as repulsive as it is, can be understood in cases where consuming the deceased is an alternative to certain starvation. Those who eat human flesh by choice, however, tend to be the kind of people who will torture and murder to satisfy their curiosity. Be warned that some of the following links are disturbing. 1. [...]

While we would never condone anyone breaking out of the joint, we can’t help but be impressed with these folks who did so using brains (and dental floss) over brawn. 1. FedEx-Con While in jail, accused murderer Jean-Pierre Treiber worked in the prison’s stationery manufacturing department. In September 2009, Treiber constructed a cardboard box like he did [...]

Because my husband and I are expecting our first little _flosser, you might say I’ve had babies on the brain lately. While every other pregnant woman in the world is poring over What to Expect When You’re Expecting, I’m absorbing tons of useless trivia that probably isn’t going to serve me very well in the [...]

In December of 1888, Vincent Van Gogh cut off the lobe of his left ear with a razor. Many explanations have been offered for this bizarre behavior. Now a scholar claims to have found an explanation in the portrayal of a letter in Van Gogh’s Still Life: Drawing Board, Pipe, Onions and Sealing-Wax, painted the [...]