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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Oboeboy (talk | contribs) at 16:18, 23 December 2008 (→Names ). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision .Revision as of 16:18, 23 December 2008 by Oboeboy (talk | contribs) (→Names )

This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a little unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something you would not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica . We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic . If you wish to add articles to this list, a broad consensus amongst contributors has identified two main guidelines. If the article in question meets one or both of these categories then it could possibly be deemed unusual:

  1. The article is something you would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
  2. The article contains some form of juxtaposition that most people would find unusual, such as "Killer Cockroach," "Henry VIII in Space," "edible computers," and so on.

Note: this is a narrow definition, and some articles may still be considered unusual even if they do not fit these guidelines.

For unusual contributions that are not so valuable, see Wikipedia:Silly Things.

A star () indicates a featured article.

A cow with antlers atop a pole, electrical wiring in the background. Wikipedia contains many other images and articles that are similarly shocking and udderly amoosing.

Places

Baldwin Street, Dunedin
A very long railway station sign for a very long name.
Mill Ends Park,
the smallest park in the world.
A chandelier made from human bones, decorating the Sedlec Ossuary.
The Principality of Sealand.
Aerican Empire A micronation with bizarre land claims, such as a mysterious cow pasture and the entire northern hemisphere of Pluto.
Avenue Road Is it an avenue or is it a road?
Baarle-Nassau A municipality of the Netherlands, containing small exclaves of Belgium, which in turn contain even smaller exclaves of the Netherlands. (The borders mean that there are houses and companies which are in both Belgium and the Netherlands.)
Badlands Guardian A natural topographic feature in Canada which, when viewed from above, looks remarkably like a human wearing a Native American headdress and earphones.
Baldwin Street A short suburban road in Dunedin, New Zealand, reputedly the world's steepest street.
Bielefeld Conspiracy The Bielefeld-Verschwörung tries to hide the horrible truth about a city in Westphalia, Germany that doesn't exist... well, maybe.
Bubbly Creek The branch of the Chicago River that is so contaminated with blood from the Stock Yards that it bubbles to this day.
Cardrona Bra Fence An eccentric tourist attraction in New Zealand.
Centralia, Pennsylvania A town that's been on fire since 1962.
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
The longest place name in the United States and 6th longest in the world.
Colletto Fava A 5,000-foot hill with a 200-foot stuffed pink bunny on top.
DISH, Texas A small town in Texas that changed its name to receive free digital video recorders and satellite television for ten years.
Dull It is as well.
Ebenezer Place, Wick The world's shortest street
Parliament Street, Exeter Formerly the world's narrowest street
Extraterrestrial real estate Want to buy a housing plot on the Moon?
Fallen Monument Park A Russian park best known for its toppled statues.
Ferdinand Cheval An uneducated postman (with no knowledge of architecture) who collected stones, on his 32km rounds for 33 years, which he used to build his surreal Palais Idéal (or ideal palace) of astonishing proportions.
Ferdinandea An "underwater island" off Sicily, which occasionally emerges and creates territorial disputes and was once mistaken by the US military for a submarine.
Florence Y'all Water Tower A Northern Kentucky town's unique "welcome" sign.
Forest swastika A gigantic Nazi swastika made of larch trees that went unnoticed for nearly sixty years.
Free Stamp A really big stamp in Cleveland, Ohio.
Fucking, Austria A town in Austria whose sign keeps disappearing.
Gravity hill A hill that gives the illusion of objects rolling uphill.
Gropecunt Lane An old name for various streets in London where prostitutes did their business.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump A Canadian native heritage site that according to humour columnist Dave Barry answers the phone: "Head Smashed In, may I help you?".
Helengrad A right-wing nickname for Wellington, New Zealand, derived from Prime Minister Helen Clark's apparent steel grip on her cabinet.
Hell, Michigan Only 294 miles from Paradise.
Hell, Norway See Gods-expedition to Hell.
Hitlers' Cross [sic ] The previous name of a Hitler-themed Indian restaurant now much less controversially called Cross Cafe.
Icelandic Phallological Museum
A museum in Iceland solely devoted to the collection of penis specimens and penis-related art.
Republic of Indian Stream An area of land in northern New Hampshire, USA, that was an independent country from 1832 to 1835.
Island of California The third largest U.S. State was formerly an island – on paper.
Jerimoth Hill The highest natural point in Rhode Island. Henry Richardson, a 77-year old man living in the area, has been known to threaten, insult and start fistfights with people who try to go through his property to reach it.
Jewish Autonomous Oblast Far away in the depth of Eastern Siberia there's a place with street names in Yiddish, even though 95% of its population is not Jewish. Welcome to Birobidzhan, Stalin's cold reply to Zionism.
Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker Now that it's a tourist attraction, I doubt it can be described "secret".
Kowloon Walled City A former Chinese enclave in Hong Kong, known for its extremely high population density, food courts which served dog meat, and claustrophobic dwellings.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
The longest officially-recognised place name in the United Kingdom.
Lost counties, cities, and towns of Virginia
All the places that are no longer found in Virginia, USA – and a few that never were – including Walton's Mountain and Illinois County (currently the home of Chicago, Illinois).
Lost A genuine Scottish hamlet's name.
Love Land An erotic-themed sculpture park on Jeju island in South Korea
Magic Roundabout Only in the United Kingdom would you find a large roundabout with five mini-roundabouts. (Not to be confused with the ones in Colchester, Hemel Hempstead or High Wycombe.)
Michigan Left Directions are more complicated in Michigan.
Mill Ends Park The smallest park in the world – 452 in2 (0.3 m2) – located in Portland, Oregon.
Mojave phone booth A public phone booth that stood for several years in the middle of a desert, miles away from any roads or other structures.
Moresnet A tiny European region (approx. 3.5 km2) that existed for a century as neutral territory between Germany and Belgium.
Märket A lighthouse built in the wrong place due to inexact maps is reason behind the very peculiar border between Sweden and Finland on Märket island.
Nameless, Tennessee For the U.S. post office, "Nameless" was an official name.
Nasty It's actually a nice place.
No Name, Colorado But wouldn't "No Name" be a name?
No Place Is in fact in County Durham, England
Original Spanish Kitchen A Los Angeles restaurant that suddenly and unexpectedly closed in the early 1960s, giving rise to an urban legend about the fate of its proprietors. The restaurant's contents – even as far as the place settings – remained untouched for decades.
Other World Kingdom A micronation and BDSM resort, whose ultimate goal is "Absolute matriarchy" - for all men to be enslaved by women.
Pity Me Feel sorry for those who live there.
Punkeydoodles Corners A hamlet in Ontario known for its name and frequent sign theft.
Reality Checkpoint A lamp-post with its own name.
Rio Rico, Texas A city that was ceded by the United States to Mexico in 1970 as a result of an earlier diversion of the Rio Grande river.
Ryugyong Hotel It would be the world's tallest hotel, except it has no windows, fittings, or fixtures...
St. James-Bond Church Not where one would find the Holy Hand Grenade... It is also unknown whether the holy water was shaken or stirred.
Principality of Sealand A micronation located six miles (10 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England, whose population rarely exceeds ten.
Quay House The smallest house in Britain, which is only 5.49 square meters in size.
Sam Kee Building Known as the world's narrowest commercial building.
Sedlec Ossuary A Christian chapel decorated by the bones of approximately 40,000 people.
Shagnasty Island Not to be confused with Love Island, this is in South Georgia
Shingo, Aomori Did you know Jesus escaped the crucifixion, and raised a family in Japan?
Spite House A 104-foot long, 5-foot wide house in New York City built entirely out of spite for the neighbors.
Spiral Island A now destroyed artificial island, made by thousands of floating empty plastic bottles.
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu
A small hill with a big name in New Zealand.
Torpenhow Hill A place whose name means "HillHillHill Hill." One of many tautological place names.
Truth or Consequences A town in New Mexico which renamed itself simply so it could host the show that bore its name.
Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein A farm about 200 km west of Pretoria, South Africa.
UFO-Memorial Ängelholm A memorial to a reputed UFO landing in Sweden.
Ugley The inhabitants are actually quite pretty.
The Wedge (border) It's harder than you think to construct the state of Delaware with a ruler and compass.
Westward Ho! The only place in the United Kingdom with an exclamation point in the official name.
Winchester Mystery House A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles
Zzyzx, California The location of Zzyzx Road, which was once alphabetically the last street name in the world. Also the name of a film, noteworthy for its box office gross of 30ドル.

See also

Numbers and dates

Unusual days, chronologies and mathematics.

"Beghilos", "Hello"... there are many words that can be spelled using a calculator
Throat pastilles may be required.
−0 Zero has a negative flavor in the worlds of computing, experimental science and statistical mechanics.
0.999... An infinitely long way to write 1.
Calculator spelling Something you may've seen at school.
Chrismukkah A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C.
Dagen H September 3, 1967: the day that Sweden changed its traffic directionality.
Erdős–Bacon number Combination of the degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon and mathematician Paul Erdős
February 30 Not as completely fictional as you might think.
Festivus December 23: Holiday celebrated by the Costanza family on the television show Seinfeld, since appropriated by many.
Illegal prime Does the government forbid knowledge of the existence of certain prime numbers?
Indiana Pi Bill A notorious attempt to legislate the value of pi.
International
Talk Like a Pirate Day Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19.
January 0 Thought the day before New Year's Day would be in the previous year? Think again.
Manhattanhenge Twice every year, the setting sun aligns with Manhattan's street grid.
Mathematical jokes Mathematics can be funny?
Numbers station [Six bars of The Lincolnshire Poacher play] "¡Atención! ¡Atención! One, four, seventeen, twenty-four..."
Phantom time hypothesis A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Therefore, we are in 1728 rather than 2025.
Pi Day The day – March 14 – on which the constant π is celebrated.
Minkowski's question mark function A function with an unusual notation and possessing unusual fractional properties.
Square root day Any date when the day and month are both the square root of the last two numbers of the year (the next one being 3rd March 2009).
Time Cube Time is cubic, not linear. There are four simultaneous days in a single rotation of the Earth. Academic singularity is a DAMNABLE LIE! (And it definitely isn't "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff" (as The Doctor described it in the Doctor Who episode Blink )).
Undecimber In Java, the thirteenth month of the year.
Vampire number Integers with real bite; some even have multiple pairs of fangs.
Year 2038 problem The computing problem that will arise due to the POSIX Time representation used in many computers.
Year 10,000 problem The collective name for all potential software bugs that will emerge as the need to express years with five digits arises.
Year zero Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1?
Zeroth An ordinal number popular in computing and related cultures.

See also

Language

Unusual words, phrases, names, dialects and codes.

Behind the sofa: a motif of comedy and an archetype of the psyche.
Do you use the Google?
"Which këÿs för this heävy plästic müsïc?"
The Phaistos Disc.
A Toynbee tile found in downtown Washington, D.C.
The Voynich manuscript is written in an undeciphered script.
Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso . . . You're not alone, we can't spell it either.
Antiqua-Fraktur dispute A dispute over which typeface was more "German". The Nazis were for Fraktur, before they became against it.
Apples and oranges According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought.
Arcaicam Esperantom How do you make things look "old" in an artificial language? By inventing a new one!
Behind the sofa Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults.
Brainfuck It's not really what you think it is.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about buffalo buffaloing buffalo.
Bushism Any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of United States President George W. Bush.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical.
Cryptophasia The secret language of identical twins, also called idioglossia.
Dord A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939.
The dozens A usually good-natured African American ritual in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback.
Engrish Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases.
ETAOIN SHRDLU Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting.
Faux Cyrillic Give text some of that Яussiaи flavour.
Fictitious entry Maybe you think this entry is one.
Fnord Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordians.
Heavy metal umlaut Gïvë thë lögö för ÿöür hëävy mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänic fëël.
Hyphen War A dash between communism and independence.
Inherently funny word Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle , wankel , ...
Intentionally blank page The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank".
Katz's back-off model Back off.
Latin profanity Latin for the profane.
Leet T3h 1@ngu/\&e 0f H@xx0rz
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den A Chinese poem where each character has the same pronouncation, except for the tones.
Longest word in English Floccinaucinihilipilification , supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other contenders.
Markovian parallax denigrate We don't know. Neither does anyone else. Or do they?
Martian language Chinese language + Internet = new language
Nucular An intentional misspelling of the word nuclear to reference a common mispronunciation of the word.
Phaistos Disc Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs.
Placeholder name You know, thingamajigs, doohickeys, whatchamacallits...
Pompatus Steve Miller has much to answer for...
RAS syndrome An example of RAS.
Robert Shields You think you are hooked on recording every detail of your life.
Shit happens An existential observation of life's imperfections, albeit not an eloquent one.
Siamese twins in the English language Conjoined words.
Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George" An association formed to promote the elimination of referring to railway sleeping car porters by the name "George" regardless of their actual name.
Talk to the hand Because the face don't understand.
Thinking about the immortality of the crab A colorful Spanish idiom for daydreaming; try using this one if your teacher notices you becoming inattentive in class.
Toynbee tiles Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages.
Truthiness Satirical term popularized by Stephen Colbert meaning to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Yes, the man responsible for causing more vandalism on Wikipedia than anyone else has a featured article.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? A French phrase, meaning "Do you want to sleep with me?", popularized by the song "Lady Marmalade".
Voynich manuscript An undeciphered illustrated book written four hundred or so years ago, by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet.

See also

Names

People and things that have unusual names, but are otherwise unextraordinary.

File:Eristalis gatesi.jpg
Bill Gates' flower fly
Thursday October Christian
'SMAD, mad, mad, (削除) mad (削除ここまで), (削除) mad (削除ここまで) name?
Adolf Lu Hitler Marak A politician in an Indian state where people are commonly given names such as "Lenin R. Marak", "Stalin L. Nangmin", "Frankenstein W. Momin" and "Tony Curtis Lyngdoh". He claims to be "happy with [his] name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies".
Aptostichus stephencolberti A trapdoor spider named after Stephen Colbert. Naturally, because he asked for it.
Anal language 13,000 people talk Anal. Mostly in India and Myanmar. Not to be confused with Anus language, spoken in Indonesia.
Dick Assman A Saskatchewan service station owner whose name garnered international attention in 1995.
Nicholas Barbon No, Nicholas is not an unusual name, but there is more to it...
Praise-God Barebone Nicholas' father.
Bill Gates' flower fly A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates.
Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116
A name, pronounced "Albin", intended for a Swedish child by his parents in May 1996.
Deportivo Wanka An unfortunately-named Peruvian football team whose strips are remarkably popular in Britain.
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.
GoldenPalace.com Monkey A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com internet casino.
Template:FAstar Ima Hogg Fortunately, she's not.
Jennifer 8. Lee A New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight.
Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache
If you think that's a bad name, his brother was "Lyulph Ydwallo Odin Nestor Egbert Lyonel Toedmag Hugh Erchenwyne Saxon Esa Cromwell Orma Nevill Dysart Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache".
Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3 Actually, it's a polypeptide.
Neville Neville The father of Phil Neville and Gary Neville, English footballers.
Pikachurin An extracellular matrix-like retinal protein named after Pikachu.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville
A warning to us all about taking double-barrelled surnames too far...
Setaceous Hebrew Character A European agricultural pest with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Covered smut , False loose smut and Loose smut You may snicker now, but if you had any one of those, I guarantee you wouldn't be laughing much.
Sonic hedgehog A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame.
Thursday October Christian The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Zyzyxia lundellii
and Zyzzyva The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively.

See also

Science

Unusual articles dealing with science, medicine, anatomy, psychology, logic, physics, cosmology, and various pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories and hoaxes. For military science and technology, see military section.

File:Cuss 1.JPG
Cuss 1, the first drilling ship for Project Mohole, a 1961 attempt to drill through the Earth's crust.
Galloping Gertie, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Trepanation
Accessory breast Some people have more than two.
Album graecum White dog dung, mixed with honey and used as a treatment for throat and skin problems.
ALH84001 The famous rock that made news around the world when it was said to have had fossilized Martian life.
Alien hand syndrome An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take a life of its own.
Anophthalmus hitleri Rare blind beetle named after Adolf Hitler, poached by collectors of Hitler memorabilia.
Apollo moon landing hoax accusations Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Archaeoacoustics Can ancient pottery be used to play back recorded voices from the distant past?
Autofellatio Acts of oral self-stimulation.
Bananadine Exactly how psychedelic are those dried banana peels?
Bloop Does a mystery sound from the bottom of the sea indicate that Cthulhu may awake...?
Bristol Stool Scale Taking a close look at a toilet bowl for the sake of science. The scale was inspired by eye charts.
Buttered cat paradox If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...?
Capgras delusion A rare disorder where a person believes that a close acquaintance, usually a family member or spouse, has been replaced by an identical-looking imposter.
Charles Bonnet syndrome Millions of perfectly sane people are having freakish hallucinations - and just not admitting it.
Colors of noise Including white, pink, purple, blue...
The Complexity of Songs About a treatise on space complexity of songs by venerable computer scientist Donald Knuth
Cosmic latte The colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white.
Dancing mania Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Danger triangle of the face This ominous-sounding term refers to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area which makes it possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain.
Vladimir Demikhov Eminent Soviet biologist, and father of the canine head transplant.
Natasha Demkina Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision.
Dihydrogen monoxide A commonly-used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to erosion, drowning, acid rain, and countless other maladies.
Dimples of Venus For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face.
Drake's Plate of Brass A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry.
Elvis taxon A taxon (species, genus, family etc.) that is believed to be extinct but is falsely claimed by someone to still exist.
Embryo space colonization A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.
Emerald Cockroach Wasp A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too.
Exploding head syndrome Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two.
Fatal hilarity Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter?
Female hysteria A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm.
Five-second rule The belief that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds.
Flat Earth society A British society that holds the belief that Earth is flat, not spherical.
Flynn effect The world is steadily getting smarter.
Foreign accent syndrome A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Phineas Gage A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Gay bomb A potential non-lethal chemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing, that could be dropped on enemy troops to cause "homosexual behaviour".
Gimli Glider Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider.
Guided rat Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand."
Gynecomastia Also known as "man boobs".
David Hahn A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Hamster zona-free ovum test A test, sometimes called a hamster test, involving human semen, hamster eggs, and a petri dish.
Hodges Meteorite The only human in recorded history to have been verifiably injured by a falling meteorite.
Homokaasu "Gay gas"—mysterious chemical substance conspiracy theory.
The Hum A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations.
Human penis size Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends.
Hypertrichosis Also known as "Human Werewolf Syndrome".
Infinite monkey theorem An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will produce all possible written texts.
ISO 3103 The ISO standard cup of tea.
Jenkem Huffing the gas from fermented human feces for a hallucinating effect
Lighting farts The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence.
List of chemical compounds with unusual names The name says it all.
Magic smoke An alternative theory of integrated circuits: once the smoke is released they no longer work.
Maggot therapy The use of fly larvae in medical practice.
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon A figure said to have terrorized the town of Mattoon, Illinois in 1944.
Male lactation Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it. Go ahead and try!
Male pregnancy Don't expect humans to do this, but seahorses can.
Maple syrup urine disease Not quite as tasty as it sounds.
Lina Medina A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was 5 years old, becoming the youngest-known human mother ever.
Mellified Man A legendary medicinal substance from Arabia.
Mole Day A Day in celebration of Avogadro's number, ×ばつ1023.
Monty Hall problem The counter-intuitive way to prevail at playing Let's Make a Deal .
Mucophagy The consumption of mucus.
Mumbai "Sweet" Seawater Incident Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle.
Nacirema An obscure New World tribe with some interesting practices.
Nanoputian A series of organic molecules having a structure that looks human.
Navel lint A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it.
Nose grease Grease obtained from the surface of the human nose.
Nothing up my sleeve number A number which is "above suspicion".
Chandre Oram A man in India with a 13-inch tail.
Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis A tooth in the eye.
Ota Benga The tragic story of a Pygmy man from the Belgian Congo who was briefly exhibited in the Bronx Zoo.
Panamax The maximum size a ship can be and still fit through the Panama Canal.
Parasitic twin A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially-formed fetus developing within the body of the other.
Passenger train toilets Why passengers must be discouraged from flushing or using toilets while the train is at a station.
’Pataphysics A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.
Pathological science A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field.
Penis panic A colloquial term referring to a type of mass hysteria or panic where males grow fearful of removal or shrinking of the penis.
Photic sneeze reflex People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.
Pikachurin An extracellular matrix-like retinal protein named after Pikachu.
Pykrete A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound.
Quantum immortality An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Raining animals When it's literally raining cats and dogs.
Red rain in Kerala Did blood rain from the sky?
Reversed map A reversed map of the world, against conventional projections which have north at the top.
Roy Sullivan An unlucky park ranger who got hit by lightning seven times. And survived them all.
Schmidt Sting Pain Index Created by an entomologist, after having been stung by almost everything, to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale.
School bus yellow A color especially formulated for use on U.S. school buses.
List of sex positions A comprehensive guide featuring extensive hand-drawn illustrations.
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 Not much more can be said than the title.
Smoot A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sokal Affair A famous hoax played by physicist Alan Sokal on the postmodernist humanities academic world.
Sound of fingernails scraping chalkboard Stop that noise!
Tanganyika laughter epidemic What happens when contagious laughter becomes an actual epidemic.
Target fixation To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Toilet-related injury Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends.
Tomacco One of the few made up words in The Simpsons that resulted in a real life application.
Thagomizer A feature of Stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip.
Thiotimoline A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water.
Thumb twiddling An activity that is done with the hands of an individual whereby the fingers are interlocked and the thumbs circle around a common focal point, usually in the middle of the distance between the two thumbs.
Mary Tofts A maidservant who, according to her doctors, gave birth to at least sixteen rabbits.
Trepanation A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness.
Triskaidekaphobia Fear of the number 13.
Ulam spiral A bored mathematician discovers an unusual numerical pattern while doodling.
Uncanny Valley How to measure your emotional response to androids.
Unobtainium A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess.
Vomit comet Lack of gravity is not good for the stomach.
Will Rogers phenomenon Also known as the Will Rogers paradox; the apparent paradox obtained when moving an element from one set to another set that raises the average values of both sets.
Wrap rage If you have ever been driven to a towering fury by packaging that just won't open, you may have this condition.

See also

Inventions and objects

East German Ampelmännchen
Toilets in Japan have some special features
Loose wheel nut indicators show that this bus is safe to ride
Stainless steel soap is used to remove odours from the hands

Unusual devices, tools, utensils, furniture, machines, and techniques.

Aglet The largely unacknowledged invention which revolutionised shoelaces.
Ampelmännchen The East German little man on the traffic signal.
Brannock Device The foot-measuring device found in shoe stores everywhere.
British Rail flying saucer Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the 10:13 to Venus.
Canard Digérateur Or "Digesting Duck", an automaton built to simulate a duck eating, digesting, and excreting.
Centennial Light A hundred year old light bulb that has been burning nonstop for 30 years.
Digital sundial Unlike an analog sundial, a clock that indicates the current time with numerals formed by the sunlight striking it.
Dreamachine A device made with a light bulb and a record turntable that reportedly induces lucid dreaming. (And you thought the makers of Die Another Day made it up. There's still no news about invisible Aston Martin V12 Vanquishes.)
Dymaxion car A 1933 concept car with 3 wheels. It was 20 feet long, carried up to 11 passengers, could go at speeds of up to 120mph and had a steering wheel that turned the car in the opposite direction.
Electronic voice phenomenon Alleged spiritual voices heard in white noise and radio interference.
Fictional elements, isotopes and atomic particles Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
History of perpetual motion machines The concept has eluded and baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years. They do not exist.
Hollowed-out book Why books are popular in prisons.
Human mail Why buy an expensive ticket when you can go by mail?
Japanese toilet The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights.
Interactive Urinal Communicator A talking Urinal made for advertising purposes
Jesus nut The bolt on the top of a helicopter that connects it to the rotor blades.
Marvin Heemeyer Why it's always a bad idea to put the guy next door out of business if he has a ten-ton armor-plated bulldozer in his garage.
Knork In contrast to the spork, here's a knife/fork combo.
Koteka An unusual traditional garment of western New Guinea, also known as the "penis gourd".
Lloyds Bank turd Possibly the largest example of fossilised human feces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England.
Loose wheel nut indicator Yes, those funny yellow tags you see on truck wheels really do have a purpose.
The Mississauga Blob A flaming object that fell from the heavens onto a back-yard picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in 1979. The mystery of its true nature drew worldwide attention and speculation. Turns out it was a frisbee.
Nazi UFOs Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there.
one red paperclip A man's small piece of metal turns out to be worth more than expected.
Pimpmobile A large luxury automobile that has been heavily customized in a garish, extravagant style to advertise its owner's wealth and importance.
Pointy hat A distinctive feature of a wide range of people during history.
Rocket mail The delivery of mail by rocket or missile, attempted by various organisations in many different countries, with varying levels of success.
R/P FLIP A manned ship designed to be capsized at a 90° angle for weeks on end.
Russian floating nuclear power station Self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants.
Shipping container architecture The concept and art of using shipping containers to build stuff.
South Pointing Chariot An ancient Chinese mechanical compass which took a millennium to reproduce.
Space advertising Plans to launch giant billboards into space.
Spork A cross between a spoon and a fork.
Stainless steel soap Metallic soap that removes odours from the hands.
Tin-foil hat Headgear that allegedly prevents a person from having their minds read or controlled.
Toilet roll holder A surprisingly complex device for holding a roll of toilet paper.
Whizzinator A fake penis used to beat drug tests (complete with dried urine, heater, syringe). Comes in white, tan, latino, brown, and black.
Xianxingzhe A Chinese robot, according to the Japanese, that will save its country from corporate capitalism with its crotch cannon.
Zanbatō An enormous Japanese sword that does not exist.

See also

Computers, the Internet and games

The Utah teapot
AOL disk collecting A hobby in collecting AOL software disks, infamous for its excessive distribution.
All your base are belong to us A phrase that originated in the 1989 video game, Zero Wing and sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002.
Any key You don't actually have to press it, so don't bother looking.
Atari video game burial Are your video games not selling? Why not do what Atari did — bury them in a New Mexican landfill.
Banhammer What administrators use to deal with noobs on the internet.
Blinkenlights DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN!
The Book of Mozilla A well-known computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of browsers.
Boss key A special key or key combination used in computer games to quickly hide the game from superiors or coworkers.
Bush hid the facts Revelations of a vast right-wing conspiracy, or just a glitch?
Carstuckgirls.com A pornographic (?) website devoted to women trying to free their cars from various obstacles.
The computers take over A science fiction scenario in which a supercomputer becomes intelligent and views humans as a threat to its safety. The computer will then try to wipe out the human race, or at least take control of it. Examples include The Terminator and The Matrix, among others.
Communist Mutants from Space A Cold War Space Invaders clone in which you do battle with the Mother Creature, driven mad by radioactive vodka.
Crapflooding A trolling act where a user fills up a chatroom with lots of unnecessary text.
Crazy Frog How one Swede's moped impression went on to earn millions as a ringtone and outsell Coldplay's Speed Of Sound four to one in Britain.
The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science A 1990 academic paper which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness.
Dogcow A glyph from an old Apple font representing a creature that makes the noise "Moof!"
Don't Buy This A rare example of truth in advertising.
elgooG Google's mirror image version, literally: all letters are displayed in reverse order.
Esoteric programming language Refers to programming languages designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as jokes, and not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming.
Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten If that's not a good enough reason why you shouldn't, I don't know what is.
FWAKs Fake FAQs for video games. Not to be confused with IAQs (Infrequently Asked Questions.)
Gibs The little bits of gore you get when someone or something in a video game explodes.
Guy Goma A bloke who was at the BBC for a job interview is instead interviewed on its news channel about the Apple Corps v. Apple Computer lawsuit.
Great Giana Sisters A game that was withdrawn from the shelves virtually as soon as it went on them.
Guru Meditation Error If you thought the blue screen of death was bad, this computer error would hamper your quest to reach Nirvana.
The Hampster Dance A web page featuring dancing hamsters set to music. The music (itself a sample) was sampled in a song, and made No4 in the United Kingdom in 1999.
Hong Kong 97 A video game where the dead Deng Xiaoping is a weapon of mass destruction.
Infrequently Asked Questions (IAQs) FAQs for fake video games. Not to be confused with FWAKs or Indoor air quality.
Internet phenomenon Its name is Legion, for it is many.
IP over Avian Carriers An internet protocol for sending data packets using homing pigeons.
JFK: Reloaded A video game released in 2004 where the player gets to assassinate president John F. Kennedy.
John Titor The name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001.
Lenna How an image of a nude Playboy model became the industry-standard digital image compression test subject.
Lolcat I iz in ur wiki, bein a article.
lp0 on fire Want to panic a Unix user? Display an error that their printer is on fire.
Mark V Shaney A fake Usenet user whose computer-generated postings were created using Markov chain techniques.
MONIAC Computer A water-based analogue computer used to model the United Kingdom economy, bringing a new meaning to the term liquidity
Numa Numa Or how a fat kid dancing to the O-Zone song Dragostea din tei in front of his computer became very popular.
Office Assistant Microsoft's anthropomorphic paperclip that pops up in Word 97.
O RLY? The sarcastic owl image that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous on the Net.
OS-tan A small Internet phenomenon where certain types of software (including various Microsoft and Linux operating systems) are depicted as young anime women.
Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors A compendium of computer games all created to allow the owner to scam his or her friends. Includes "Desert Bus": a painstakingly realistic 8 hour bus journey from Tuscon, Arizona to Las Vegas through a featureless desert in real time.
Pwn A term used by the Internet gaming subculture which means to beat or dominate an opponent.
Robotic unicycle The ongoing academic effort to teach robots to ride unicycles.
Shock site Don't look! (No, really.)
Thai Ngoc Vietnamese man who hasn't slept in 33 years. He claims to be "grumpy" due to a lack of sleep.
Tourist guy The picture of a Hungarian man and how it relates to 9/11.
Trojan room coffee pot The fascinating target of the world's first webcam: a coffee machine at the computer science department of Cambridge University.
Typographical personification Have you ever recevied a visit frm teh Typo Fairy?
Utah teapot A 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community.
Wingdings A Microsoft Windows font that has inspired multiple conspiracy theories.
How does one patch KDE2 under FreeBSD? A internet meme in the Russian internet culture, asked to various heads of state at internet press conferences (with the answers received).

See also

The World Famous Bushman
File:Ghost ride the whip.jpg
Ghost riding the whip
Superbarrio, a Real-life superhero
Sloane Square...Bond Street...Mornington Crescent!
The Aristocrats A joke considered to be both "the world's funniest" and "the world's worst." Also a 2005 documentary of the same name.
Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them! T-shirt slogan aimed towards young women, rocks aimed towards young men.
The Bus Uncle A Hong Kong resident gets into an uncomfortably tense argument with a fellow passenger - all caught on video ...
Template:GAicon George P. Burdell A fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927, and who has been continuously enrolled at the school ever since.
Can't sleep, clown will eat me A stock phrase that's become a popular joke-explanation for insomnia.
Cartoon physics An explanation of the laws of physics as they have come to be (mis)represented in cartoons.
Cuteness in Japanese culture It's not just Hello Kitty and Pikachu.
Conan the Librarian A perennial parody of Conan the Barbarian that has appeared in film, television, comics, and fan fiction.
Cosplay A Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games.
Croydon facelift A hairstyle peculiar to parts of England.
Donkey punch Allegedly a sex move involving punching one's partner in the back of the head during intercourse.
Drop bear A fictitious Australian marsupial supposedly related to the koala.
Evil clown A recent development in American popular culture in which the playful trope of the clown is rendered as disturbing through the use of dark humor and horror elements.
Evil Overlord List How to avoid the movie clichés.
Flash mob Wherein a group of people quickly meet up, perform a random action, then disappear just as quickly.
Flatulist An ancient yet oft-underappreciated profession.
Fuck for Forest Do your bit to save the rainforest — have an orgy!
Get a life No, how about you get a life?
Ghost ride One of the latest trends to be popularized by hyphy culture.
Garden Gnome Liberation Front Vive la révolution des nains!
Gurn A Western term for creating odd appearances of the face.
Happy Corner An East Asian hazing ritual.
Happy slapping Hurting someone while taking a picture of them, usually with a camera phone.
Human rainbow A huge gathering of colours.
Kayfabe In professional wrestling, the portrayal of events within the industry as real.
List of problems solved by MacGyver For example, plugging a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate.
Love padlocks A fence in southern Hungarian town Pécs where lovers clamp padlocks
Manscaping A shorthand for "landscaping" the male body, by shaving, trimming, waxing, or brushing the body hair, usually in an artful manner aimed at presenting that body in the best light possible.
Masturbate-a-thon A charity fundraiser that involves self-pleasure.
Merhan Karimi Nasseri An Iranian refugee who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 1988 until 2006.
Meta-joke A joke that refers to itself as the joke.
Metafiction Fictional fiction.
Mile High Club Soaring members.
Moe anthropomorphism In this time and age even a washing machine can be the girl of your dreams.
Mornington Crescent (game) A deceptively tricky game of navigating the London Underground - don't be caught in knip!
Muffin top A marketing mishap, many well meaning young women, and vanity came together to form this demographic.
Napoleon in popular culture Fictional characters believing they are Napoleon are often used to suggest mental ill health.
Nazi chic The approving use of Nazi-era style, imagery, and paraphernalia in clothing and popular culture.
Colleen Nestler A woman who sent "thoughts of love" to David Letterman and then tried to get New Mexico to issue a restraining order against him. Surprisingly, they granted it.
No soap radio A prank joke intended to fool one of its listeners into believing that it is a joke.
Obay A fictional mind-control drug that's at the center of a viral marketing campaign.
Pen spinning An activity in which assorted tricks are used to manipulate a pen in aesthetically pleasing ways.
Le Pétomane A French entertainer famous in Victorian times for being able to break wind at will.
Pillow fight flash mob Wherein a group of up to several hundred people suddenly congregate on an area and proceed to fight each other with pillows.
Aron Ralston One tough guy who, in order to escape from death, cut off his own arm with a dull knife after a boulder fell on it.
Real-life superhero All you need is a cape and a dream.
Rickrolling Careful: that link you're about to click on might take you to a video of Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up .
Sardarji jokes Popular jokes in India, based on stereotype of Sikhs.
Shoe flinging The practice of throwing footwear, whether for humorous or political purposes.
Size queen Slang term originally used in the gay community to refer to individuals with a preference for larger-than-average (male) genitalia, more recently applied to women with such a preference as well.
Toilet humour Humor based upon bodily functions.
Treacle mining The fictitious mining of treacle (molasses) in a raw form similar to coal.
Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch! An ad campaign that figured the best way to sell cigarettes is to show all the consumers with black eyes.
WAGs Term mostly used by the British media since the 2006 World Cup to describe the wife/girlfriend of a football player (especially one who plays for England).
Larry Walters Successfully piloted a lawn chair to 16,000 feet over Los Angeles.
War on Terror, the boardgame A boardgame satire of the real 'war on terror' that has proved so popular, it has ended up in national museums, in a TV sitcom, as part of a military training simulation and as a teaching aid in higher education institutions.
Whale tail That bit of a woman's thong that appears from underneath her trousers (usually jeans).
Wellesley College Senate bus Also known as the Fuck Truck
The World Famous Bushman A street entertainer in San Francisco who makes a living by pretending to be a bush.

Art and literature

The Headington Shark
La Princesse

Unusual artists and authors, art and literary movements, artistic works such as sculptures, photography, and paintings, literary works such as novels and poems, fusions of the two such as comics, and other artistic and literary concepts.

112 Gripes about the French A handbook produced to help American soldiers understand the French.
Afghanis-tan Central Asian history has never been cuter. (Osama bin Laden makes an appearance as a turban-wearing stray cat.)
Anthropodermic bibliopegy The practice of binding books in human skin.
Arseface A comic book character from none other than DC Comics
Atlanta Nights A group of science fiction authors get together and deliberately write an absolutely horrible novel in order to fool and embarrass a "vanity publisher".
Banksy A graffiti artist who smuggles his works into world-class museums.
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo Name of a Japanese manga (comic) whose subject matter is as surreal as its title.
The Book of Heroic Failures A book which glorifies failure. Started off The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. The book was a success and thus declared a "failure as a failure".
Bottle Rack A modern art piece created by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp that was thrown out by his sister, who mistook it for trash.
La Bougie du Sapeur A French newspaper published every February 29th.
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest A contest to find "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels".
Clan McDuck A fictional family in the style of a Scottish clan, from which a great number of Walt Disney Company's comic book characters held their origin.
Death poem The urge to have famous last words, taken to its logical, carefully re-written extreme.
Henry Darger Writer of a 15,000-page manuscript along with several thousand watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story, who went to Mass several times daily.
Dinny the Dinosaur A larger-than-life, 150-ton sculpture of a brontosaurus in the desert of Southern California west of Palm Springs. Dinny's companion is "Mr. Rex," a 150-ton sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Early American editions of The Hobbit Now collectors items because of their printing differences.
English as She Is Spoke A 19th-century Portuguese-English conversational guide and phrase book that is regarded as a classic of unintentional humour since it was apparently the product of translating a Portuguese-French phrase book by non-English-speaking Portuguese with the help of a French-English phrase book.
Evil laugh Muhahahahaha and the like.
The Eye of Argon An infamously bad heroic fantasy novella, written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then.
Fallen Astronaut A small statuette which is the only piece of art on the moon.
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women A 1558 diatribe by John Knox against Mary, Queen of Scots and Mary Tudor.
Gadsby: Champion of Youth A 50,100-word long book famous for not using the letter "e"; the prose of the article (less headers, footnotes, infoboxes, and Wikipedia trappings) is devoid of "e"'s, another version of this article can be found here.
Gävle goat A giant straw Yule Goat that is the target of frequent arson attacks and vandalism.
Gorillas in comics A curious abundance of gorillas in comic book plots during the Silver Age of Comics.
The Headington Shark Oxford man has had a 25 foot long sculpture of a shark embedded headfirst into the roof of his unassuming house since 1986.
I, Libertine A non-existent novel that was the subject of a hoax intended to criticize the manner in which best-seller lists are determined.
The Incredible Popeman The name of a Colombian comic book by Rodolfo Leon Valencia being released in tribute to Pope John Paul II, reincarnating him as a superhero who uses various superpowers to battle Satan and the forces of darkness.
Jenny Everywhere An open-source webcomic character.
Katrina refrigerator Loot this! Free meal inside!
Knitta NY gangsta graffiti knitters.
La Princesse A 13 metre mechanical spider which stomped about Liverpool in 2008.
Largest photographs in the world Includes information on print and digital photos that are reputedly the world's largest.
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den A poem written by a Chinese poet in Classical Chinese. It can be comprehended and understood by all who understand the language, despite the fact that it consists entirely of the word "shi" repeated 92 times in different tones. Also known as "Shī Shì shí shī shǐ".
Lobby Ludd "You are ____ and I claim my five pounds".
Marlovian theory A theory which states that Christopher Marlowe's unnatural death was a hoax and that he continued to write and publish under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare".
McDonald's Sign (Pine Bluff, Arkansas) One of the few single-arched McDonald's signs left.
Mexican Perforation A French artistic movement that expresses itself in underground places.
Mr. Immortal A Marvel Comics superhero with no special powers except immortality, who has been killed in ways including crushing, burning, self-impalement on giant novelty scissors, bear trap, cannon, chainsaw, piranhas, ferrets, spear, and python, and alcohol poisoning (three times). Prone to fits of rage upon returning to life.
Naked Came the Stranger Journalists prove a point when their intentionally awful sex novel becomes a bestseller.
On Bullshit A very serious essay by Harry Frankfurt sketching a philosophical theory of, well, bullshit.
Le Rêve (painting) A Picasso painting that purportedly would have sold for a record price had its owner, Steve Wynn, not accidentally poked a hole in it.
Saddam Hussein's novels Crimes against literature?
Shakespearean authorship Proven by circumstantial evidence, a great conspiracy which concealed the identity of the true author of "Shakespeare's" works, implying that all contemporary references to Shakespeare's authorship were fraudulent or mistaken. Can you guess who the secret author is?
The Super Lamb Banana A statue in Liverpool; half-lamb, half-banana.
Tentacle erotica Human-cephalopod sexual relations, popular in hentai.
Tillie An odd painting of a grinning face, that used to be on the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park, New Jersey before it was demolished.
Le Train de Nulle Part A French novel, 233 pages long, written without verbs.

See also

Music

Unusual musicians, songs, instruments, styles of music, and music-related articles.

ABC-DEF-GHI A song sung by Big Bird of Sesame Street where he tries to discern the meaning of a very long word (which is actually the alphabet). (This is not an article about the other, more popular, alphabet song.)
Animutation The practice of taking lyrics of foreign songs, "mishearing" them into English, and producing a flash video to go along with it.
As Slow As Possible A piece of music by John Cage to be performed until 2640.
Rosemary Brown A spiritualist who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her.
Curse of the ninth The superstition that any composer of symphonies, from Beethoven onwards, will die soon after writing their own Ninth Symphony.
Dark Side of the Rainbow What happens when you mix Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz?
Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester An Austrian orchestra whose musical instruments are made solely from vegetables.
Earworm A term used for an annoying song that a person cannot get out of their head.
Elvis sightings There are many who still believe.
Florence Foster Jenkins An American soprano famous for her singing ability or lack thereof.
Joyce Hatto A minor pianist who had many doctored recordings falsely attributed to her long after she stopped performing in public.
Kazumi Totaka A music composer who hides his own song in many video games.
Helikopter-Streichquartett A string quartet that must be played in four circling helicopters, the sound remixed, chopper sounds an all, for an audience on the ground.
Hitler Has Only Got One Ball Was the führer only half a man?
Industrial musical A musical production performed for the employees of a business, intended to create a feeling of being part of a team, and/or to educate and motivate the management and salespeople to improve sales and profit.
Jandek A prolific and pseudonymous singer/songwriter active since 1978 who only grants the occasional interview and has never provided any biographical information.
Katzenklavier The "Cat piano"; making music from howling cats
Keepon A music video starring a little yellow robot designed to work with autistic children
Lick me in the ass A canon by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Manualism The little-known art of playing music by squeezing air through the hands.
More cowbell I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!
Musikalisches Würfelspiel A system written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in which the musical piece is decided randomly by playing dice.
P Funk mythology An article about the whimsical universe surrounding the P Funk all stars.
Paul is dead Was Paul McCartney replaced by a lookalike in the 1960s?
Pink Floyd pigs The band's recurring props and references.
Thai Elephant Orchestra An orchestra of elephants playing specially designed instruments.
The The A A name of a band.
Tromboon An unusual instrument, with an even more unusual sound sample i .
Ugly stick The ugly stick: a real instrument in Newfoundland, part of an insult everywhere else.
Up to eleven This article is one louder.
William Shatner's musical career His rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds regularly wins radio station competitions to find the "worst music of all time".
You Suffer At a full 1.316 seconds in length, the shortest song of all time

See also

Television and film

Unusual actors, television series, movies, documentaries, and related articles.

Alternative 3 An April Fools joke by an ITV science show leads many to believe that scientists were being kidnapped to prepare for the colonization of Mars.
Atuk The only known, and most famous, cursed movie script...which, urban legend has it, was responsible for the deaths of several prominent and portly comedians and maybe a couple of their friends.
Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos Never mind Turn-On - this never even made it to the end of its only episode.
Big Dumb Object A mysterious object (usually of extraterrestrial origin) in a film that is there simply to cause a sense of wonder.
The Canadian Conspiracy A mockumentary released in 1985 that asserts that Canada is subverting the United States by taking over its media.
Conspiracy 58 A mockumentary that claimed that the 1958 World Cup was never actually held. Despite being revealed as a hoax at the end, people still believed it.
The Cure for Insomnia A movie that runs for 85 hours.
The Day the Clown Cried A notorious unreleased film about the Holocaust— hey, it's a comedy!
The Fantastic Four (film) Not the 2005 film, but one filmed in 1994 purely to secure the copyright on the characters.
Flemish Secession hoax Our regular programming is now interrupted to declare independence from Belgium.
Goofy holler Perhaps you've heard of it...
Greg Packer A man on the street, no matter which street you're talking about.
Jumping the shark Metaphor for the point at which one can speak of a TV show as having had its best days behind it.
Kishkashta An Israeli Sesame Street-style children's show, featuring a talking cactus.
Michael Larson A man who won over 100,000ドル in an American quiz show because he was able to notice a pattern in the flashing lights on the "Big Board."
Kin-yan Lee A Hong Kong actor repeatedly cast in Stephen Chow films as a nosepicking, bearded transvestite.
The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World A movie that runs for 48 hours. Despite its title it surprisingly isn't the world longest, but the vote's still out on whether it's the most meaningless...
MacGuffin It doesn't matter what it is, really, as long as it drives the plot of a movie along.
The Metric Marvels Nothing says 1970s in the U.S. more than a spinoff of Schoolhouse Rock with superheroes who teach the metric system.
Mexican standoff Suspenseful (and not Mexican in the slightest) movie situation frequently used in old spaghetti Westerns, but revived by directors such as Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, in which two or more characters have weapons aimed at each other.
Monkey Tennis Hypothetically the worst television programme it is possible to make.
Mull of Kintyre test When can a human penis be shown on British television?
Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D As if that wasn't bad enough, it spawned a sequel.
Pulgasari A Godzilla-esque film (also an allegory for unchecked capitalism) created by Kim Jong-il and a director whom he kidnapped.
The Puppy Channel This cable television channel had a simple premise: nothing but puppies, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Roundhay Garden Scene The first ever moving picture, which lasted for an epic two seconds.
Shaken, not stirred Why 007 prefers his martini shaken.
Smell-O-Vision A system designed to enhance films with odors. Used once for the 1960 film Scent of Mystery and never again.
Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome A tragic condition suffered by some young characters on soap operas.
Spaghetti trees Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
SSSSSSS Dirk Benedict and snakes. Long before the day of Samuel L. Jackson.
Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Large marshmallow mascot seen in the film Ghostbusters.
Stinking badges Something nobody needs. Possibly the most frequently quoted and misquoted line from a movie ever.
Taylor Mead's Ass A film consisting entirely 70 minutes of Taylor Mead's buttocks.
The K Foundation burn a million quid Why did the K Foundation burn a million pounds in cash?
Tomorrow's Pioneers A Palestinian children's show produced by Hamas and co-hosted by various costumed characters, including one resembling Mickey Mouse.
Turn-On An ABC comedy series that was cancelled even before the first episode had finished.
Very special episode A genre of television episodes with controversial life lessons interweaved into the storyline, popularized by Blossom
Vrillon A broadcast from another world, or someone's ingenious hoax? You decide.
Tommy Westphall How a child with autism, and Detective Munch, are responsible for more than 200 TV series.
Steve Wiebe The star of a film about him setting the world's high score. For Donkey Kong .
Wilhelm scream A stock sound effect first recorded in 1951 and used in dozens of films (including Star Wars , The Lord of the Rings and Kill Bill ).

See also

Food, drink, and products

Banana-skin shoe polish
Forbidden fruit
Fried spiders on sale
Banana production in Iceland More weird than Björk? Entirely possible
Beer goggles Does drinking a certain beverage make you attracted to people you otherwise wouldn't be?
Bird's nest soup Asian delicacy.
Boneless Fish A frozen fish scaled, gutted and deboned and then glued to its original shape using a food-grade enzyme without cooking.
Cannabis foods Various foods containing cannabis.
Carmine A common food dye manufactured from insects.
Casu marzu Italian maggot cheese. Cheese designed to be eaten while it is infested with cheese fly larvae.
Chubby bunny A common (but sometimes lethal!) game played with marshmallows.
Civet coffee Not coffee made from civets, but rather from ordinary coffee beans the civet has, well, excreted.
Cola wars A marketing battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Darkie Toothpaste Racist toothpaste from Taiwan.
Deep fried Mars bar A Scottish delicacy.
Deep fried Twinkie America's answer to the above.
Diet Coke and Mentos eruption Mentos + Diet soda = geyser.
Durian King of fruits.
Flavor Graveyard Ben and Jerry's retired ice cream flavors.
Flies graveyard A delicacy in the United Kingdom.
Fried spider Exactly what it sounds like, and a regional delicacy in Cambodia.
Gay Fuel An energy drink marketed towards the gay community.
Hufu The tofu product designed to look and taste like human flesh.
If by whisky A famous speech successfully both attacking and defending hooch.
Lesbian wine Not quite what it sounds like.
Michel Lotito Known as Monsieur Mangetout, because of his strange diet.
McDonald's urban legends Is that worm meat in your Big Mac?
McWords Words created in popular culture as a result of the influence of McDonald's Restaurants, e.g. McJob or McMansion.
Monkey brain A Chinese delicacy that has been made famous through films.
OpenCola The world's first open-source beverage.
Pizza delivery The process, perils, and pop-culture paeans to getting the hot cheesy dish to your door.
Ray's Pizza But is it Famous Ray's or Original Ray's?.
Rhubarb Triangle A recipe or a dangerous area to fly through?
Sealed crustless sandwich A patented peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Snake wine A type of Vietnamese wine that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle.
Spoo The most delicious foodstuff amongst all alien species of Babylon 5
Stinky tofu Fermented soybean curd is apparently a delicacy for some people. One external link describes its scent as "a used tampon baking in the desert."
Takeru Kobayashi A slightly-built Japanese competitive eater. He has consumed 63 Nathan's Famous hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes and holds a host of eating records for other foods.
Tim Tam Slam An Australian method for drinking tea through Tim Tam biscuits.
Tomatina A gigantic food fight with a ham-topped greased pole as the start.
Turducken A de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. Only in America.
Sonya Thomas What weighs 105 pounds and eats more hot dogs in 12 minutes than most people do all summer?
Unusually-shaped vegetable "While some examples are just oddly-shaped, others are heralded for their amusing appearance, often representing a body part such as the buttocks."
Vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler Hitler believed that a vegetarian diet could both alleviate his personal health problems and spiritually renew the Aryan race.
Who ate all the pies? A chant sung by football fans in England and Scotland, aimed at supposedly overweight footballers, officials or opposing supporters.

Animals

Adwaita Possibly the oldest creature of modern times, this 255-year-old tortoise was the former pet of Robert Clive of the British East India Company.
Animals in space A definitive list on the use of animals in various space programs.
Apophallation If your genitalia get too badly tangled, it may be a good idea to carry a spare.
Jack Black (rat catcher) Queen Victoria's officially appointed rat-catcher and mole destroyer.
Bird strike An article about an often forgotten hazard in aviation.
Bovine bingo A different way to play bingo.
Bummer and Lazarus Two stray dogs that roamed the streets of San Francisco, California, in the early 1860s and were exempted from local ordinances.
Candiru A parasitic catfish from the Amazon River which swims into and inhabits the genitalia of its unfortunate victims (including humans).
Cattle mutilation The alleged killing and then subsequent mutilation of cattle, sheep or horses by unknown perpetrators (possibly aliens).
Chicken hypnotism Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not?
Chicken sexer A person who has been specially trained to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings.
Colby Nolan A housecat who was awarded an MBA degree by Trinity Southern University in 2004.
Cow magnet A plastic-coated magnet fed to cows to prevent gut damage by ingested bits of metal
Cow tipping The act of pushing over sleeping cows.
Depopulation of cockroaches in the ex-USSR countries A great ecological problem indeed.
Exploding animals Such as:
Fainting goats A breed of goat whose muscles freeze for about 10 seconds when the goat is startled.
Flying pig The classic impossibility has been officially proved possible by the Internet Engineering Task Force: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine".
Globster Blobs of organic matter found washed up on beaches, which are frequently as mysterious as they are disgusting.
Handsome Dan The various incarnations of Yale University's athletic mascot. "In personal appearance he seemed like a cross between an alligator and a horned frog...".
Hardware disease A condition in bovines caused by ingesting stray bits of metal.
Henry the Hexapus An octopus missing two arms due to an unfortunate birth defect.
Hoover the talking seal A talking seal, called, surprisingly, Hoover.
Humanzee A hypothetical(?) human/chimpanzee hybrid.
Jenny Haniver A grotesque-looking sea monster made from the corpse of a ray.
Lin Wang A Taiwanese elephant made famous for his participation in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Mary (elephant) Makes the phrase 'hung like an elephant' take on a whole new meaning...
Mike the Headless Chicken A rooster that lived for 18 months with its head cut off.
Montauk Monster Actually a decaying raccoon... or is it?
Nils Olav A King Penguin who is Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard.
Orbiting Frog Otolith A NASA frog experiment, sending two bullfrogs into space to test their sense of balance.
Oscar the Cat A hospice cat who was featured in the New England Journal of Medicine for his purported ability to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients.
Owen and Mzee Hippo and tortoise that befriended each other after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus An endangered creature, whose major predator is the sasquatch. Apparently.
Panda pornography Pornographic movies created in order to achieve sexual arousal for Giant pandas, which have been proven to be unaffected by the popular drug Viagra.
Pasilalinic-sympathetic compass The snail telegraph hoax
Penis fencing A literal battle of the sexes between some species of flatworm
Phantom kangaroos They're not just found in Australia.
Rat king Not the rodent monarch familiar from The Nutcracker , but a rare (some say nonexistent) phenomenon in which a group of rats grow up with their tails tangled in a knot.
Rhinogradentia A fictitious mammal order documented by an equally fictitious German naturalist.
River Thames whale In 2006, a Northern Bottlenose swam into London and on to the front pages of the British newspapers.
Rose A goat that was married to a Sudanese man in 2006.
Soviet space dogs That wacky Cold War!
Small shelly fauna Yes, it's a serious article
Spider webs in space Tests on how and whether spiders can make webs in zero gravity.
Stephens Island Wren Made extinct by feral cats, possibly the offspring of one pregnant female.
Supernumerary body part Having an extra body part, be it as simple as an eleventh finger or as extreme as a second head!
Tama (cat) The official station master of a railway station in Japan.
Tame Silver Fox Soviet Russia subsidizes the breeding of tame silver foxes.
Tamworth Two In 1998, two pigs escaped from an abattoir in Wiltshire and made news, both in the United Kingdom and worldwide. (Their story was turned into a TV movie in 2003.)
Tillamook Cheddar (dog) The world's most successful and widely shown animal artist.
Timothy (tortoise) A tortoise that was present during the bombardment of Sevastopol during the Crimean War in 1854 and survived until 2004.
Tirpitz (pig) A pig who survived the sinking of one warship, to become the mascot on one of the ships that had sunk his first home. Tragically he was then auctioned off and eaten.
Weasel war dance The behavior of extremely excited ferrets who are enjoying themselves too much
Wojtek (soldier bear) A soldier of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps who also happened to be a Syrian Brown Bear. He enjoyed beer and cigarettes.
Worm charming No spade? No worries! There's a better way to get hold of earthworms.

See also

Plants

Arbre du Ténéré A solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth.
Moon Trees Trees planted from seeds that were taken into space by Apollo 14
Queens Giant A tulip tree located in northeastern Queens New York City, that is confirmed to be the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area, as well as the tallest tree in the NY metro area. As of 2005, it is up to 450 years old and 134 feet tall, and was alive before the birth of Shakespeare.
Rubus cockburnianus A plant in the bramble genus. Perhaps the funniest plant name in the world?
Tree That Owns Itself An oak tree in Athens, Georgia which is popularly regarded as owning itself.

See also

List of famous trees

Sports

2006 rugby union handbag controversy The All Blacks performing the Haka with handbags.
Ali Dia A player who tricked his way into Southampton, claiming he had won 12 caps for Senegal, was related to George Weah and played for Paris St Germain. In 2007, he was called the worst ever player in the top-flight by The Times .
Battle of Santiago Also known as the Chile vs Italy game in the 1962 FIFA World Cup.
Paula Barila Bolopa A swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, who - much like Eric Moussambani (see below) - competed in the Sydney Olympics. Her time in the 50m freestyle is apparently the longest in Olympic history.
Steve Bartman Chicago Cubs fan best known as a scapegoat for the Cubs' failure to advance to the World Series in 2003.
Bjørge Lillelien Norwegian sports commentator whose "your boys took a hell of a beating" comment (often erroneously credited to a "Bjorn Minge") lives on in British popular culture.
Bladderball Yale University's contribution to the world of team sports.
Bog snorkelling The noble art of competitive snorkelling through cold, noxious bog water.
Philip Boit How many other Kenyan skiiers can you name?
Matthew Brimson English cricketer made famous for a deliberate wardrobe malfunction.
Chess boxing A sport that alternates rounds of speed chess and boxing.
Competitive eating In which the main goal is the quick and vast consumption of food.
Conger cuddling The "most fun a person could have with a dead fish".
Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake An annual event held each May at Cooper's Hill near Gloucester
Curse of the Colonel Colonel Harland Sanders wreaks revenge from beyond the grave on a Japanese baseball team.
Disco Demolition Night What could go wrong with encouraging people to bring unwanted disco albums to a baseball doubleheader and blowing up the records between games?
Dwarf tossing A humorous sporting competition where well-padded dwarfs are thrown by competitors.
Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards A British sportsman famous for coming last in the 1988 Winter Olympics ski-jump competition.
Eric Moussambani A swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who, in the Sydney Olympics, took twice as long as anyone else in the 100m freestyle.
Extreme ironing A sport whereby participants take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing.
Fair catch kick A little-known way to score points in American football left over from rugby. It was last used successfully in the pro game in 1968.
Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat Sydney's other Olympic mascot.
Fierljeppen A sport from the north of the Netherlands, where the objective is to jump over a trench.
Flugtag Red Bull-sponsored event in which the objective is to fail to fly as spectacularly as possible. (At least that's what the competitors seem to be going for!)
Eddie Gaedel 3'7", 65-pound baseball player. Career on-base percentage: 1.000.
Ferret legging A sport that involves putting two live ferrets inside one's trousers with the cuffs and belt clinched firmly and no underpants worn. Current record is 5 hours 26 minutes.
Hamster racing A uniquely British response to foot and mouth disease.
Hand of God goal The most notorious goal in the history of soccer.
Henley-on-Todd Regatta A boat race that is cancelled when there is water in the river.
Human chess Enacted by costumed "pieces" on a scaled-up chessboard.
International Rutabaga Curling Championship Rutabaga curling originated in the frosty December climes of Ithaca, New York.
Jamaican Bobsled Team The real life inspiration for the film Cool Runnings
Jeffrey Maier The 12-year-old who helped the Yankees win the pennant.
Krzyzewskiville A phenomenon related to Duke University basketball.
Kudu dung spitting Games for conservationists
Barry Larkin (Olympics) The man who made the Olympic Flame pants.
Lawn mower racing Leaves the lawn in a very poor condition.
Legend of the Octopus If you're going to an ice-hockey game in Detroit, be sure to bring your octopus.
Mendoza Line Baseball's standard for underperformance.
Noodling The sport of fishing for catfish using only one's bare hands.
Octopus wrestling A sport which once attracted crowds of thousands to watch free divers wrestle North Pacific Giant Octopus from the waters of the Puget Sound.
Parkour An extreme sport originating from French urban areas. (Has featured in Casino Royale .)
Plainfield Teacher's College Their football team was un-beaten, un-tied...and non-existent.
The Play Before going onto the field for your postgame musical performance, make sure the game is over.
Rabbit show jumping Yup, really.
Rocket Racing League It does what it says on the tin.
Sark national football team Aka The Bad Lions, the only national team that failed to ever score a goal.
Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bid During the 2002 Winter Olympics, a couple of Australian comedians launched a bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics in New South Wales, Australia.
Snail racing Ready, steady, slow!
Sports-related curses A variety of excuses for bad performance
Squirrel fishing A sport of skill and patience.
Taro Tsujimoto An imaginary ice hockey player drafted because a manager was reportedly "fed up with the slow drafting process via the telephone"
Teddy bear toss A Christmas tradition in minor league ice hockey.
Ten Cent Beer Night What could go wrong with selling unlimited beer to baseball fans for 10¢ a cup?
Traditions and anecdotes associated with the Stanley Cup An ice hockey trophy with a long history of abuse, superstition, and tests of buoyancy.
Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics More than just Jamaican bobsledders
Vinkenzetting The sport of competitive finch singing in Belgium, which has dopers, cheaters, and which Thomas Hardy wrote a protest poem about.
Wife Carrying A Finnish sport that does exactly what it says (although one need not carry one's own wife)
Wooden spoon (award) A Cambridge University tradition adopted by rugby league and rugby union, the Wooden spoon is awarded to the last-placed team in a competition.
Yak racing A spectator sport held at traditional festivals in Tibet and Mongolia, among other places.
Zui Quan An ancient martial art wherein one imitates the motions of a drunkard.

Folklore

Spring Heeled Jack
Axhandle hound One of the many creatures in lumberjack folklore
Bird people The widely recurring motif in legends and fiction of birds who are people, or people who are birds.
Bonnacon A mythical ox which flings burning dung at its enemies from its rear and horn.
Dog spinning Do Bulgarians really twizzle their domestic canines to foretell prosperity? The UK Green Party thinks so, and they're not happy about it.
Flying ointment A hallucinogenic ointment said to be used by witches in the Early Modern period.
Gef the talking mongoose A poltergeist-like creature which claimed to have been an 80-year-old Indian mongoose, alleged to have haunted a Manx cottage during the 1930s.
Global Orgasm Make love, not war... all over the world!
Lluvia de Peces It's raining fish in Honduras.
Jackalope A cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope.
Jersey Devil A mythological creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens (New Jersey).
Liver bird A legendary cormorant or eagle that is the symbol of a major English city.
Liver-Eating Johnson A 19th-century mountain man with a penchant for revenge and the consumption of livers.
Machine elf An entity that people claim they become aware of after having taken tryptamine based psychedelic drugs such as DMT.
Man-eating tree A cryptophytological anomaly claimed to have been seen by early travellers to Madagascar.
Mermaid Problem If you fall in love with a mermaid, how do you consummate your love?
Monkey-man of New Delhi Reports in 2001 of a strange monkey-like creature appearing in New Delhi at night and attacking people.
Phantom Social Workers Mysterious claims of "social workers" seeking to abduct infants and children.
Pickled dragon A hoax of a hoax of a pickled dragon.
Pole, Hungarian, two good friends A two-nation proverb often cited, usually while drinking, in both Poland and Hungary.
Popobawa A bat-winged monster from Zanzibar that sodomizes people in election times.
Reptilian humanoid A recurring theme in fiction, especially science fiction, pseudoscientific theories, and conspiracy theories.
Rod (cryptozoology) Photographic anomalies which some think are undiscovered flying creatures or miniature UFOs.
Sidehill Gouger Fictional creatures said to inhabit the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and the southwestern sandhills of Saskatchewan - spoken of to confuse the gullible.
Spring Heeled Jack A mysterious character said to have existed in England during the Victorian age.
Sweater curse Think your loved one will be pleased if you knit them a sweater? Think again.
Tanuki A creature from Japanese folklore best known for its huge testicles.
Tsukumogami According to Japanese folklore, if you keep your straw sandals--or any other household items--around for 100 years, they may become 'alive and aware,' and develop eyes and sharp teeth.
Turtles all the way down A myth about the nature of the universe, or perhaps a myth about a myth about the nature of the universe.
Vampire pumpkins and watermelons A folk legend from the Balkan peninsula of south-eastern Europe based upon the idea that any inanimate object left outside during the night of a full moon will become a vampire.
Vril A belief that aliens controlled Nazi Germany and helped Hitler and others to escape to the South Pole when the war was lost.
Well to Hell A 9-mile deep tunnel drilled by Soviet scientist with the supposed sounds of millions of damned souls.

Politics, economy and law

Norton I, Emperor of the United States
Legislative violence: One senator uses an old debating trick.
51st state A phrase used to describe potential additions to the United States of America. It is often used satirically to deride any nation that is considered to be "too friendly" with America.
Animal trial Historically, the law in some areas of Europe subjected animals to criminal liability for their conduct.
Acoustic Kitty A failed CIA experiment at using a cat for covert surveillance.
Alien abduction insurance The title says it all.
Animals as electoral candidates Why be ruled by some monkey when you can get a real chimp, rhino, or pig into office?
Bagism A social ideology created by the Beatle, John Lennon, and his wife, Yoko Ono, which involves wearing a bag over one's entire body to promote peace and equality.
Beard Liberation Front a British interest group which campaigns in support of beards and opposes discrimination against those who wear them.
Big Mac Index Big Mac Economics.
Biotic Baking Brigade Pie-throwing anarchists.
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions Or BUGA-UP for short. An Australian group of subversive artists who live up to their self-description by defacing tobacco and alcohol billboard advertisements in order to promote healthy living.
Cheese-eating surrender monkeys Term created by Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons , which was used in 2003 by America to refer to the French, after the latter refused to back Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Conch Republic As a protest against the federal government, Key West declared independence in a tongue-in-cheek secession from the nation, declared war on the U.S., then surrendered one minute later and applied for one billion dollars in foreign aid.
Đorđe Martinović How the insertion of a beer bottle into the rectum of a Serbian farmer caused a major ethnic and political controversy in Serbia in 1985 and contributed to the collapse of Yugoslavia.
Dewey, Cheatem & Howe A fictional law firm that takes advantage of its clients.
Ding Hai Effect A sudden drop in the stock market that follows whenever Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng stars in a new TV show.
EURion constellation Secret recognition codes you can find on more and more banknotes
Euromyth Paranoid and imaginative speculations about the bureaucratic excesses of the European Union.
Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet What else would you call a Canadian politician?
Flatulence tax When you keep a lot of cattle, you're contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect ... aren't you?
Free Bench An unusual manorial legal custom from England whereby a remarried widow could inherit her deceased husband's land only if she rode into court backwards on a black ram and recited a nonsense verse.
George W. Bush pretzel incident The result of a meeting between the most powerful man on the planet and a snack food.
Giant sucking sound Unusual phrase coined by Ross Perot.
Guerrilla gardening That'll teach 'em good!
Guilty not proven A controversial Scots law verdict for those neither guilty nor innocent.
Handedness of Presidents of the United States A statistically surprising proportion of recent U.S. presidents were lefties.
H'Angus A monkey football mascot who was elected mayor of Hartlepool, England with a platform of "free bananas for all schoolchildren".
I Am Not Canadian A parody of the Canadian television commercial, I Am Canadian, devised by a Toronto radio station and focusing upon French speakers from Quebec.
Ich bin ein Berliner President Kennedy did not actually call himself a jelly donut in front of a German audience.
Ilona Staller Hungarian porn star elected to the Italian Parliament
Jakob Maria Mierscheid A fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 1979, originally introduced in the 1920s by Weimar Social Democrats to avoid paying restaurant bills. Discovered the Mierscheid Law.
Jesusland map A satirical map of North America by political ideology.
Jimmy Carter rabbit incident Former President Jimmy Carter's scrape with a killer rabbit.
Kasongo Ilunga Elected Minister of Foreign Trade for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, no-one knows whether Ilunga exists or not.
Pedro Lascuráin A President for less than an hour
Legislative violence Where politicians actively fight for what they believe in.
Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc. Would you expect to be able to swap 7 million points (worth 700,000ドル) for a Harrier jump jet (worth 22ドル million)? This man did, and took Pepsi to court when they failed to supply him one. Unsurprisingly (to everyone except Leonard), he lost.
Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle A television show produced by the communist government of North Korea intended to educate the public on good and bad hairstyles.
Memoirs v. Massachusetts A U.S. Supreme Court case concerning whether the 1749 book Fanny Hill was entitled to First Amendment protection. One of the dissenting opinions contained an extensive discussion of the supposedly pornographic content.
McGillicuddy Serious Party A satirical political party in New Zealand.
McMartin preschool trial The most expensive trial in U.S. history, a sexual abuse trial in which hundreds of children made bizarre allegations of flying and killing giraffes, orgies at car washes, flying in hot-air balloons, and being flushed down toilets into secret underground rooms where they were abused.
Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia Can a city require a business license for a talking cat, and does the cat have free-speech rights?
The Ministry of Silly Walks A parody illustrating government excesses
Montreal-Philippines cutlery controversy A 7-year-old boy's eating habits became an international incident
A moron in a hurry A phrase used in legal cases to refer to the likelihood of confusion between two trademarks
Nebraska admiral The landlocked U.S. state of Nebraska and its "Great Navy"
New shoes on budget day One of Canada's less grand political traditions
Nix v. Hedden The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.
Old Deluder Satan Law How 17th century Massachusetts sought to rid itself of the Prince of Darkness
Old Sarum (UK Parliament constituency) A notorious rotten borough in Great Britain which, before 1832, was entitled to elect 2 members of Parliament even though it had only 11 voters and no residents.
¿Por qué no te callas? "Why don't you [just] shut up?", as a King of Spain suggested to a President of Venezuela.
Richard Nixon mask One of the most popular masks in the U.S.
Joshua A. Norton Emperor Norton I, the man who claimed to be "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" in 1859.
Official Monster Raving Loony Party A British political party which does exactly what it says on the tin.
Pink Pistols They're here, they're queer, and they're armed to the teeth.
Polish Beer-Lovers' Party One of major political powers in Poland in early 1990s.
Pruneyard Shopping Center The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of the people of California to protest in private shopping centers.
Resignation from the British House of Commons This has been technically illegal since 1623.
Rhinoceros Party of Canada A registered political party in Canada, which often promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.
Russian Reversal In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia articles write you!
Jonathon Sharkey A self-proclaimed vampire who was a Minnesota governorship candidate in 2006.
Sea Shepherd A non-governmental organization that uses pirate-like tactics to enforce environmental international law
Sentinelese An autonomous stone-age human tribe which completely avoids contact with the outside world.
Shanghai Fugu Agreement A completely fictitious international treaty accepted by the German state of Hesse in 1985.
Small penis rule A technique used by authors to avoid libel lawsuits.
Stephen Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner The featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater Phrase related to freedom of speech.
Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence An organization of mostly gay men who dress as nuns, often on rollerskates.
Stambovsky v. Ackley Also known as the Ghostbusters case, the court ruled that a house in Nyack, New York was legally haunted by ghosts.
Swastika Laundry A laundry service whose electric vans cheerfully displayed the notorious symbol all around Dublin until at least the 1960s.
Tsang Tsou Choi He claimed to be the "Kowloon emperor" since 1970s.
State of Louisiana v. Frisard A man is liable for child support even if he does not have sexual intercourse with the child's mother.
State Police of Crawford and Erie Counties The "other" State Police.
Tanganyika groundnut scheme A brilliant scheme by the British Government to grow peanuts where there were none before (for good reason).
Keron Thomas He posed as a motorman on the New York City Subway, successfully operating a train for three and a half hours at the age of sixteen in 1993.
Toy Biz v. United States Are the X-Men humans under U.S. law?
United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff Who has jurisdiction over Satan?
You have two cows The beginning phrase for a series of political joke definitions.
Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda Mexican eccentric who participated in the presidential elections no less than ten times. He always lost but claimed to be the victor, and considered himself to be the country's president for several decades.
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, is a movement that calls for the voluntary extinction of the human race.

See also

Religion and spirituality

Artist's impression of one of Xenu's space planes
Axinomancy Foretelling the future by looking at an axe or hatchet.
Ben Hana A Wellington, New Zealand homeless man who worships the Maori sun God Ra (not to be confused with the ancient Egyptian sun God of the same name)
Bible errata A typesetter's complaint finds justification in Psalm 119.
Cadaver Synod In 897, Pope Stephen VI dug up the body of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, dressed the body in papal vestments and seated him on a throne while Pope Stephen read charges against him and conducted a trial.
Caganer A traditional Catalan statue (similar to a garden gnome) that depicts a person defecating, often used in Christmas decorations.
Cargo cult A belief system, often from Melanesia, concerned with obtaining Western manufactured goods.
Flying Spaghetti Monster A satirical religion created to make fun of Intelligent Design. Its supernatural creator is a monster which resembles spaghetti and meatballs.
Harold Davidson 'The prostitute's padre' from 1930s London, who was defrocked, and died when he was mauled by a lion.
Hell Bank Notes The Chinese afterlife is apparently subject to hyperinflation.
Holy Prepuce One of several relics purported to be associated with Jesus. Also known as The Holy Foreskin.
Homosexuality and Voodoo Surely a troll, you say? No! A perfectly legitimate article!
Invisible Pink Unicorn A satire aimed at theistic beliefs. The satire consists of a goddess in the form of a unicorn that is paradoxically both invisible and pink.
Islamic toilet etiquette The large number of rules to be followed by Muslims when relieving themselves.
Jedi census phenomenon A phenomenon in which 390,000 British citizens listed their religion as Jedi Knight on a 2001 census form, which made Jedi Knight the fourth-largest religion in England and Wales.
Jesus H. Christ Does it stand for Henry?
List of messiah claimants See above.
The Miracle of the Sun 70,000 people in Portugal gather to witness a miracle and are treated to an inexplicable solar event
Open source religion And we're not talking about the Church of Emacs either.
Pope Joan Are medieval documents citing the existence of a female pope proof of a Vatican cover up or a blasphemous slur?
Prince Philip Movement A religious movement on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu which holds that Queen Elizabeth II's husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is a divine being.
Pope Michael Elected Pope in 1990 by a group of Conclavist or post-Sedevacantist Catholics to fill the vacancy they consider to have been caused by the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958.
Pornocracy The period of the papacy in the early 10th century, beginning with Pope Sergius III from 904 and ending with the death of Pope John XII in 963. During this period, the popes were under the influence of corrupt women (though not necessarily prostitutes), especially Theodora and her daughter, Marozia. This period is also called the "Rule of the Harlots."
Reincarnation Application Must be filed by all living Buddha within the People's Republic of China, before they are allowed to reincarnate.
Religion in Antarctica There's more of it than you might suspect, including five churches.
Religious pareidolia The phenomenon of the appearance of religious images in corn chips, cinnamon rolls and the like.
Rumspringa Amish Gone Wild.
St. Priapus Church A religion based on the worship of the phallus.
Space opera in Scientology scripture L. Ron Hubbard's history of the universe, including alien Invader Forces, "little orange-colored bombs that would talk" and brainwashing episodes in "a railway carriage quite like a British railway coach with compartments."
Unfulfilled religious prophecies Selective memory strikes again.
Universe people Specific cult in Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar A 17th-century Irish bishop claimed to know the exact day, date and time of creation.
Winterval A word created as an alternative name for all the holidays at the end of a calendar year. It came to prominence after Birmingham City Council (the English city) used it in 1998 in place of Christmas.
John Wycliffe A 14th-century religious reformer who was burned as a heretic- 31 years after he died.
Xenu An ancient interstellar dictator who unleashed a genocide which created Christianity and psychiatry and whose story is "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it."
Zipporah at the inn God apparently tries (and fails) to kill Moses.

See also

Military

Antonov A-40 flying tank.
3rd Dental Battalion Even Marines have to keep their teeth clean.
Anglo-Zanzibar War The world's shortest war. The sultan of Zanzibar capitulated after forty-five minutes.
Anti-tank dog Failed Soviet weapon of the Second World War.
Antonov A-40 The "flying tank", an experimental Soviet tank with wings and tailboom, meant to glide into the battlefield, ready for combat. Trials were unsuccessful.
Bat bomb World War II plan to bomb Japan with bats carrying tiny incendiary bombs.
Battle of Tanga World War I battle where 8,000 British troops were defeated by a German-led force of 1,100 Askaris - aided by swarms of angry bees.
Bazooka Vespa Placing France at the cutting edge of weapons system design.
Bicycle infantry Soldiers have occasionally been trained to use the bicycle for military purposes.
Boot Monument In celebration of Benedict Arnold's foot.
Chicken powered nuclear bomb The role of the domestic chicken in nuclear warfare.
Jack Churchill A British soldier who fought through World War II armed with a bow, arrows and a claymore.
Emu war A military operation undertaken in Western Australia against hordes of emus.
Fag bomb During the US invasion of Afghanistan...
Fire balloon In 1944, the Japanese launched a sinister aerial offensive over America — not with party balloons, but balloons of war.
Football war A 6 day war fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 ignited by a game of football (soccer).
Maudie Hopkins The last Confederate war widow (deceased 2008).
Human torpedo Human torpedoes or manned torpedoes were secret naval weapons of World War II.
Line-crossing ceremony An initiation rite performed in the navy when a ship crosses the equator.
Miss Russian Army A beauty contest, minus the swimsuit competition, added the automatic weapons drills.
Montauk Project Real military science experiment or urban legend? Maybe the civilians who were in full view of the military base will be able to tell you.
NORAD Santa tracking program A tradition with the American and Canadian military to track Santa for children.
Hiroo Onoda A Japanese soldier who hid out in the Philippines during World War II, refusing to surrender until 1974.
Pennamite-Yankee War The thirty years of fighting between the ancient enemies, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Philadelphia Experiment An alleged experiment in 1943 involving electromagnetic technology to render vessels invisible.
Pig War A war between the United States and the British Empire that almost erupted over one dead pig.
Project Habbakuk A British plan to construct an aircraft carrier out of ice (pykrete).
Project Pigeon Bombs guided by pigeon pecks.
Sacred Band of Thebes An ancient Greek army consisting of homosexual couples.
Sergeant Stubby The only dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat.
Siachen Glacier The world's highest battlefield, with very predictable terrain.
Sticky bomb The most unpopular weapon the British soldier has ever been asked to use.
Stanislav Petrov Potentially averted a nuclear war.
Tachanka Twentieth century chariot used in combat.
Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War A "war" that lasted 335 years without a single shot being fired, between The Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly.
Toledo War A war between the State of Ohio and the Michigan Territory that resulted in one injury and over a century of bitterness.
Truelove Eyre A man who supposedly saved William the Conqueror's life during the Battle of Hastings.
Tsar Tank A Imperial Russian tank designed as a tricycle with nine-metre wheels.
UFO sightings in Iraq (in 2003) Something else for Iraqis to worry about
United States military chocolate Originally designed to taste "little better than a boiled potato." Not much has changed.
U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program A U.S. Navy program which studies the military use of Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions.
Who me? A top secret stench weapon designed to be unobtrusively sprayed on German officers by French Resistance members.
War of Jenkins' Ear A nine year war, started when Captain Robert Jenkins complained that Spanish Coastguard had cut off his ear.
War Plan Red U.S. war plans from the 1930s to invade Canada in the unlikely event of war with the United Kingdom. Also see the counterpart war plan Defence Scheme No. 1 (the Canadian war plan to invade the United States).

See also

Death

Crushing by elephant
Safety coffin

Unusual ways to die, and unusual post-mortem occurrences.

Boston molasses disaster Twenty-one people die in 1919 when a huge tank at a confectionery factory bursts, sending a wave of molasses down the streets of Boston.
Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008 Dismembered feet keep washing up on the shores of British Columbia.
Chess-related deaths People killed while playing chess.
Collyer brothers When packratting was taken to a tragic extreme.
Crushing by elephant An unusual form of capital punishment used throughout history. See also history of elephants in Europe.
Death erection For those who die in the vertical position, an erection caused by the blood pooling to lower parts of the body.
Defenestration The time-honoured tradition of throwing people out of windows.
Fan death A persistent urban legend in South Korea, where the media, and even many medical professionals, regularly report on people dying because of having left a fan on in a closed room.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead An early catch phrase used on Saturday Night Live , based upon the dictator's lengthy death.
Jack the Stripper The other unidentified serial killer named Jack.
Lal Bihari "I'm not quite dead!"
Lord Uxbridge's leg The grisly afterlife of a leg lost during the Battle of Waterloo, formerly owned by Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey.
Maschalismos The act of mutilating the dead to prevent them from rising again.
Poe Toaster A mysterious figure who pays an annual tribute to American author Edgar Allan Poe.
Rasputin's penis Supposedly removed from its owner's body after his death.
Republican marriage A form of execution in which a naked man and woman are tied together and drowned. (What did you think it was?)
Safety coffin Coffins manufactured just in case their tenant is not actually dead before being buried.
Space burial Around 150 people have had their remains interred in space. Or would that be ex-terred?
Spontaneous human combustion The sudden burning of a person's body without any apparent source of ignition.
Toilet-related injury As if constipation wasn't enough.
Valentich Disappearance An Australian pilot disappeared in the ocean, having seen a strange object above his aircraft. No trace of either his body or the aircraft have been found.
Video-Enhanced Grave Marker Graves with video screens and speakers on them.

See also

Questions

Wikipedia is not afraid to tackle the tough questions:

The chicken or the egg Which came first?
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? A proverbial question of theology.
Where's the beef? In 1984, people thought this was really funny for some reason.
Why did the chicken cross the road? People have asked this for over 150 years.
If a tree falls in a forest Philosophy meets the logging industry.

Wikipedia:Featured Pictures contains some unusual images.

(These contain unusual articles which might not be listed here)

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