Stories

Albert Stevens, a house painter from Ohio, was admitted to the University of California Hospital in San Francisco in 1945 with what doctors mistakenly believed was terminal cancer.

In December 1944, Japanese intelligence officer Hirō Onoda was sent to Lubang Island, Philippines with orders to conduct guerrilla warfare and avoid capture.

A narrow door at the Alcobaça Monastery’s refectory has been widely shared online as an “anti-gluttony door.” The story claims that monks had to pass through it to get their food, and those who were too large would go hungry.

On June 14, 1325, at age 21, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta left Tangier, Morocco, to perform the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. His original journey was meant to last about 16 months, but instead, he spent the next 30 years traveling across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, covering an estimated 117,000 km (73,000 mi)—far more than Marco Polo or Zheng He.

In 2008, Denver-based experimental duo Bull of Heaven began releasing compositions of extraordinary durations. Their piece 118: The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space spans over two months.

The Katzenklavier, or “cat piano,” was described in the 17th century by German scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was an instrument that arranged live cats in a row, each placed in a box with their tails stretched under a keyboard.

When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, her attendants discovered an unusual ring on her finger. It was a locket ring, small but intricately designed with rubies and diamonds forming the letter “E.” The ring had remained with her for decades, never removed, even in her final days.

On a clear March day in 1921, a U.S. Army Air Service plane took off from Washington, D.C., carrying pilot and passenger Henry A. Renz Jr. A veteran of World War I, Renz had mysteriously lost his voice eight months earlier.

On August 21, 1944, as the Allies advanced toward Paris, American pilot William Overstreet Jr. of the 357th Fighter Group found himself in a high-speed chase with a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 over Nazi-occupied France. Overstreet, flying a P-51 Mustang, pursued the enemy aircraft as it attempted to escape over the French capital.

In the mid-19th century, crinolines became a must-have fashion item. Women across Europe and North America wore these wide, cage-like petticoats made of steel hoops and stiffened fabric to achieve the fashionable bell-shaped silhouette.