November 2012
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Pana Wave →
The Pana-Wave Laboratory is a Japanese religious group. Estimates of membership range from several hundred to 1,200.
They first attracted attention in March 2003, when they attempted (and failed) to capture Tama-chan, an Arctic seal which had become a national celebrity in Japan since showing up in Tama River in Tokyo the previous year. The group believed that the seal had been led astray by...
October 2012
21 posts
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Kentucky meat shower →
On March 3, 1876 in a 100 by 50 yard area near Olympia Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, large chunks of red meat fell from the sky for a period of a couple of minutes.
Apparently the meat appeared to be beef, but two locals who tasted it stated that it tasted like mutton or venison.
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Requirements for becoming a president →
Qualifications and requirements to become a president in different countries of the world.
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Most royal candidate theory →
The most royal candidate theory is the term given to the fringe belief that every presidential election in the United States has been won by the candidate with the most royal blood, i.e. the closest ties to the European bloodline.
According to a chart published by twelve-year-old student BridgeAnne d’Avignon, all U.S. presidents except Martin Van Buren can trace descent from King John of...
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Resistentialism →
Resistentialism is a jocular theory to describe “seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects.” For example, objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a fleeing bouncy ball) exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans and lend support to resistentialist beliefs.
In other words, a war is being fought between humans and inanimate objects, and all the little...
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List of topics characterized as pseudoscience →
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Prostitution among animals →
Based on a 1998 study, media reports stated that a shortage of stones led female Adélie Penguins to trade sex for stones. Penguins use stones for building their nests. The female penguins, even when in a committed relationship, will exchange sexual favors with strange males for the pebbles they need to build their nests.
Prostitution is also observed among chimpanzees, who trade food for sex.
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List of fulfilled prophecies →
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List of Fictional Toxins →
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Metacrap →
Metacrap is a portmanteau drawn from metadata and crap.
Seven purportedly insurmountable obstacles to reliable metadata are:
People lie
People are lazy
People are stupid
Mission Impossible: know thyself
Schemas are not neutral
Metrics influence results
There’s more than one way to describe something
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List of notable conjoined twins →
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Changaa →
Changaa or Chang’aa (literal meaning “kill me quick”) is an alcoholic drink which is popular in Kenya. Distilled from grains like millet, maize and sorghum, it is very potent.
Illegally brewed changaa could be purchased for around US$0.15 to $0.25 per glass. The drink is sometimes adulterated by adding substances like jet fuel, embalming fluid or battery acid, which has the...
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List of sandwiches →
This is a list of notable sandwiches.
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Guerilla librarian →
A guerrilla librarian is a person who may or may not be a professional librarian, but has otherwise taken up the stewardship of books or other material. This stewardship is usually outside the acceptance of authority figures, hence the guerrilla or underground nature of the action taken. Guerrilla librarianship can be politicized and occasionally controversial.
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Sturgeon's Law →
Sturgeon’s revelation, commonly referred to as Sturgeon’s law, is an adage commonly cited as “ninety percent of everything is crap.”
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Family tree of the Greek gods →
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Zip bomb →
A zip bomb, also known as a Zip of Death or decompression bomb, is a malicious archive file designed to crash or render useless the program or system reading it.
One example of a Zip bomb is the file 42.zip which is a zip file consisting of 42 kilobytes of compressed data, containing five layers of nested zip files in sets of 16, each bottom layer archive containing a 4.3 gigabyte file for a...
August 2011
4 posts
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Teenage tragedy song →
The “teenage tragedy song”, also known as death rock or a “splatter platter,” is a style of ballad popular between the late 1950s and early 1960s, that lamented the early deaths of teenagers, either sung from the viewpoint of the dead person’s sweetheart, or sometimes from the viewpoint of the dead (or dying) person.
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Chipotle Mexican Grill →
Chipotle has been sued for failure to be Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant, as a customer who uses a wheelchair was unable to see the food preparation, denying him the “Chipotle Experience”. The case against the company was upheld in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Chipotle’s appeal, leaving the 9th’s Circuit...
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T.I. - Rescue of suicidal man →
T.I. has been praised for helping a twenty-four year old suicidal man in Atlanta named Joshua Starks, convincing the man not to go through with jumping from a 22-story building. On October 13, 2010, T.I. reportedly heard about the situation on the radio and drove to the scene at Atlanta’s 400 Colony Square Building. He drove to the site, and asked the police if he could help Starks. T.I....
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Freshman fifteen →
Colleges and universities have recently been cracking down on this common problem and are trying to educate people on how to prevent it.
A study done on 60 students at Cornell University showed that 20% of the weight gained by the test subjects was due to the fact students were eating at all-you-can-eat dining halls.
July 2011
15 posts
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Word salad →
Word salad is a mixture of random words that, while arranged in phrases that appear to give them meaning, actually carry no significance. The words may or may not be grammatically correct, but the meaning is hopelessly confused. A famous example is Noam Chomsky’s phrase, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”
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List of people considered father or mother of a... →
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List of the oldest currently registered Internet... →
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Nazi talking dogs →
During the 1930s and 1940s German animal behaviorists were encouraged to explore whether dogs could be taught to speak or communicate in other ways in order to be useful in the Nazi war effort.
Experiments were carried out to find evidence of telepathy between dog and man.
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Incest in the Bible →
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List of ethnic slurs by ethnicity →
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Western stereotype of the male ballet dancer →
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Curse of Turan →
The Curse of Turan is a belief that Hungarians have been under the influence of a malicious spell for many centuries. The “curse” manifests itself as inner strife, pessimism, misfortune and several historic catastrophes.
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Unsinkable Sam →
Unsinkable Sam (also known as Oscar) was the nickname of a German ship’s cat who saw service in both the Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy during the Second World War, serving on board three vessels and surviving the sinking of all three.
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Strawberry Quik meth →
Strawberry Quik meth is a drug scare from 2007. Drug dealers were allegedly using coloring and flavoring to disguise methamphetamines as Strawberry Quik, thus making them more appealing to children. The story was widely reported in the media, but no cases of children using flavored meth have been verified.
Fox News reported that drug dealers were using pop rocks to disguise the taste of meth and...
June 2011
5 posts
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Glasgow Ice Cream Wars →
The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were conflicts in the East End of Glasgow in Scotland in the 1980s between rival ice cream van operators, over lucrative territory and suggested use of ice cream vans as a cover for selling drugs.
The conflicts, in which vendors raided one another’s vans and fired shotguns into one another’s windscreens, were more violent than might typically be expected...
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List of games with concealed rules →
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“The Catholic Church’s restriction on eating meat during Lent does not...”
– Taboo food and drink - Guinea pig and related rodents
May 2011
10 posts
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The Prophet Hen of Leeds →
The Prophet Hen of Leeds was a doomsday hoax involving the Second Coming of Christ in England in 1806.
A hen began laying eggs on which the phrase “Christ is coming” was found to be written. Eventually it was discovered to be a hoax. The hoaxster had written on the eggs in a corrosive ink to etch the eggs, and reinserted the eggs back into the hen.
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Unfulfilled religious predictions →
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