Jayendra Patil 
Canneto di Caronia had always been quiet. For years, it seemed as if nothing of great interest would ever occur there. This small coastal village, nestled between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Sicily’s heartland, would soon enough see an event transpire in one of its homes on the eve of Christmas in 2003 that made it … Read more
In the late 19th century, people suffering from painful joints could travel to a small Australian whaling town for a treatment that sounds almost impossible today. They were not visiting a hospital or a specialist clinic. They were waiting for a whale. The strange treatment became associated with Eden on Twofold Bay in New South … Read more
On March 3, 1876, something deeply strange happened near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky. Pieces of what appeared to be fresh meat began falling from a clear sky around the farm of Allen and Mrs. Crouch. The shower lasted only a few minutes, but it left an area roughly 100 yards long and 50 … Read more
Most people think of an island as something nature creates over thousands or millions of years. Richart Sowa had a different idea. What if land could be assembled instead? In the late 1990s, the British artist began turning discarded plastic bottles into the foundation of something that looked almost impossible: a floating island where a … Read more
Imagine someone opens a freezer and finds one of history’s most famous ancient bodies, and then realises something is still alive. That is the strange discovery researchers made while studying Ötzi the Iceman, the remarkably preserved mummy found in the Alps in 1991. Researchers were not only looking for microorganisms around his remains. They also … Read more
To most people, a small blue sippy cup would be something they could replace in a few minutes. For Marc Carter’s family, however, finding another one became an international search. His son Ben, who was 14 at the time, had severe autism and had been using a particular two-handled Tommee Tippee cup since he was … Read more
Poon Lim started his journey on a small wooden raft in the middle of the Atlantic. He might not have imagined it would end up with him for 133 days. His ship, the British merchant vessel SS Ben Lomond had been hit by a German U-boat on November 23, 1942. Lim survived through the sinking. … Read more
Imagine eating a mushroom that seems like normal fresh food from forest, and hours later you start to feel odd. Then you notice the room is not empty. Tiny people are all around, moving and whispering as if they have always been there. They may appear to march beneath doors, climb furniture, move along walls … Read more
Most stories about Bobbie the Wonder Dog focus on one astonishing number: 2,551 miles. In 1923, the Scotch collie mix disappeared from his family during a trip to Wolcott, Indiana, and six months later he somehow turned up back home in Silverton, Oregon. But the most fascinating part of Bobbie’s story may not be the … Read more
When Swedish musician and YouTuber Mattias Krantz decided to teach an octopus to play piano, the obvious challenge seemed to be teaching music to an animal with eight arms. But that was not actually the hardest part. The real problem was that almost everything about a conventional piano was designed for a human. The octopus, … Read more