Stories

Beneath Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a brick wall in Post Alley became an unexpected tourist attraction in the 1990s. Visitors to the Market Theater started sticking used gum on the wall, often with pennies pressed into it. By 1999, officials stopped cleaning it, declaring it a local landmark.

In 1985, Firebird Software, a division of British Telecom, released a compilation of five video games for the ZX Spectrum under the ironic title Don’t Buy This. The collection was explicitly marketed as containing bad games, a tongue-in-cheek approach to warn potential buyers.

Grand Central Terminal, a New York marvel since its 1913 opening, faced uncertainty by the mid-20th century. As rail travel declined, the station’s grandeur was overshadowed by the towering Pan-Am building constructed above it in 1963. By 1975, plans for an even larger tower by architect Marcel Breuer loomed.

In 1919, a wave of botulism deaths shocked America, killing 18 people across several states. The culprit? Canned black olives, a popular delicacy. This rare bacterial contamination exposed vulnerabilities in the growing canned food industry.

In 2015, French engineer and maker Mojoptix designed a revolutionary digital sundial. Unlike traditional sundials, this invention casts shadows that display the time in digital-style numbers. It does so without electronics, relying solely on sunlight and precision engineering.

On August 17, 1891, the skies above Midland, Texas, thundered with dynamite blasts in the first government-funded rainmaking experiment. Led by Robert G. Dyrenforth, a team of enthusiasts armed with explosives, kites, and balloons set out to prove that loud concussions could force clouds to release rain.

On September 28, 1918, as World War I raged, Philadelphia hosted a grand Liberty Loan Drive parade to support the war effort. Over 200,000 people crowded Broad Street to watch a procession of soldiers, Boy Scouts, and marching bands. Unbeknownst to them, the parade would become a deadly event, spreading the Spanish Flu, a lethal virus ravaging nearby military bases.

In April 1998, Alex Chappel and journalist David C. West conceived a provocative art hoax that duped the British media. Titled “Fuckart & Pimp,” the show promised visitors a chance to buy art by Canadian artist Angela Marshall—on the condition they perform a sexual act with her.

On August 9, 1986, a massive fiberglass shark appeared head-first in the roof of a house in Headington, Oxford. Commissioned by local radio host Bill Heine, it was a striking protest against war, nuclear weapons, and political powerlessness.

In 1933, American William Dudley Pelley claimed a divine vision foretold Adolf Hitler’s rise and his own destiny as “The Chief” of the United States. Inspired, he founded the Silver Legion, or Silver Shirts, a Christian militia with Nazi-inspired ideals, complete with silver uniforms.