Imagine a tree standing at the front lines of World War I, seemingly ordinary but actually a cleverly disguised spy post. These fabricated trees, used for surveillance, became crucial to military strategies, allowing soldiers to gather intelligence while staying hidden in plain sight.

At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Dora Ratjen finished fourth in the women’s high jump. However, years later, it was revealed that Ratjen was not female but male and/or intersex, raising questions about gender and deception in sports.

On 14 October 1968, a routine Swiss Army artillery training exercise went wrong when five artillery shells accidentally struck the Liechtenstein ski resort of Malbun. Miraculously, the only damage was to some outdoor restaurant chairs. This was one of several incidents that raised eyebrows.

In 1961, New York City banned tattoos, making it illegal to ink anyone. But one artist, Thom deVita, wasn’t deterred. The very day the law went into effect, he quietly opened his tattoo shop in Alphabet City, then one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. His rebellious spirit would challenge the system for years.

In the 1920s, German architect Herman Sörgel proposed Atlantropa—a century-long engineering plan to lower the Mediterranean Sea and join Europe and Africa into a supercontinent. His idea involved enormous hydroelectric dams, with the largest spanning the Strait of Gibraltar.

In central Scotland, a massive rotating boat lift called the Falkirk Wheel reconnects two historic canals that were separated for decades. Opened in 2002, the 35-meter-wide structure connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, replacing a demolished flight of 11 locks removed in 1933.

During World War II, the U.S. military faced a challenge: how to teach thousands of new recruits the mechanics of firearms quickly and clearly. Their solution was unexpected—build fully functioning training weapons at twice the normal size.

At 4:48 p.m. on May 23, 1941, a deep, furious voice crackled over Nazi radios: “Hier ist Gustav Siegfried Eins. Es spricht der Chef.” The Chief, claiming to be a loyal Nazi, unleashed a scathing, profanity-filled attack on party leaders.

In 1998, two faxes arrived at the offices of Coast to Coast AM, a popular paranormal radio show hosted by Art Bell. The sender claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2036. Signing as “TimeTravel_0,” he warned of a future shaped by catastrophe: the aftermath of Y2K, a civil war in the United States, and a global nuclear conflict in 2015.

High in Ethiopia’s Lasta mountains lies Lalibela, a town famous for its extraordinary rock-cut churches. Unlike any other site in the world, these monolithic churches were not built but carved directly into the volcanic rock—creating entire structures, both inside and out, from single pieces of stone.