I should warn you, you’re about to waste a lot of time learning useless trivia. Wikipedia contributors have compiled a list of “unusual articles”—really just articles about unusual things—and the list alone is over 27,000 words long. We’ve collected over eighty of our favorites.
Phobophobia: Fear of having a phobia
Vasili Arkhipov: One of several people who saved the world from nuclear holocaust
Calculator spelling: BOOB hELL
Rai stones: “coins” that weigh four tons each
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins: the best-titled court decision in maritime law
Cadaver Synod: that time the Pope dug up his predecessor’s corpse and put it on trial
Red rain in Kerala: that time it seemed to rain blood in South India
Jenny Everywhere: an open-source webcomic character
The Turk: The original Mechanical Turk, an 18th century chess-playing machine that was secretly run by a man hiding inside it
Plant arithmetic: plants that can count
Oliver Cromwell’s head: the world travels of the head of England’s Republican dictator
Muggle Quidditch: the decaf espresso of sports
Gadsby: one of several novels that avoids using the letter e
Collapse of Smile: the story of how the Beach Boys failed to complete an album
Le Pétomane: the performer who could fart at will
Antiqua-Fraktur dispute: an argument over which font was more “German.” People taking sides included Otto von Bismarck, Goethe’s mom, and Hitler.
Koro: the delusion that one’s genitals are shrinking
List of animals with fraudulent diplomas: pets used by their owners to catch diploma mills
List of unusual units of measurement: units like the Sagan, the microfortnight, and “the mass of a bag of cement”
Candy Desk: the U.S. Senate’s desk full of candy
Gombe Chimpanzee War: a four-year civil war between twenty chimpanzees
Baseball metaphors for sex: a collection of familiar metaphors that feel kind of embarrassing once you see them all in one place
List of people who died on the toilet: mostly kings
Nazi UFOs: supposed Nazi spacecraft, including the original foo fighters
Dump months: the two worst times of year to see a new movie
Gate Tower Building: a Japanese skyscraper with a highway running through the middle
Great Disappointment: the most famous time the Rapture didn’t happen
Unfulfilled Christian religious predictions: and all the others
Pizza farm: educational farms that grow all the ingredients needed for pizza
Chillwave: a real music genre invented in a sarcastic blog post, which eventually inspired YouTube’s greatest collection of study music
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo: a real, if useless, sentence
Numbers station: shortwave radio stations where people recite numbers and no one knows exactly why
Anti-tank dog: dogs trained to carry bombs to tanks, but not always trained to leave the bombs :(
Khanzir: the only pig in Afghanistan
Three Wolf Moon: a famous t-shirt
Leck mich im Arsch: a piece by Mozart best translated as “Kiss My Ass”
Garden hermit: the 18th century fad of hiring a guy to live in a shack on your land
Mary Toft: the 18th century English woman who convinced doctors she’d given birth to rabbits
Kottabos: history’s first drinking game
Islamic toilet etiquette: a lot of religious rules about going to the bathroom
Mollie’s Nipple: seven peaks in Utah, all named the same thing by the same horny explorer
Phantom Time Hypothesis: discredited historical theory that the Early Middle Ages were made up
Pathological science: discredited scientific theories that won’t die
Continental drip: a joke about plate tectonics
Trimethylaminuria: a metabolic disorder that makes people smell like fish
Pedro Lascuráin: president of Mexico for about an hour in 1913
Pig-faced women: a much longer article than you’d think
Hiroo Onoda: the Japanese soldier who didn’t quit World War II until 1974
If a tree falls in a forest: a question with surprisingly deep philosophical and scientific implications
Fedspeak: intentionally cryptic statements about monetary policy
Great Stink: a summer-long stench emanating from the polluted Thames River in 1858, so bad that it inspired the creation of a new sewage system for London
Rough music: punishment by parade
Great Molasses Flood: a deadly wave of molasses, reaching 25 feet high and spreading at 35 miles per hour, in 1919 Boston
K Foundation Burn a Million Quid: the filmed burning of one million pounds cash
Jesus H. Christ: How the Lord got his middle initial
Safety coffin: the coffin for people worried about being buried alive
Jamaican bobsled team: Sanka, you dead?
Festivus: the Seinfeld holiday that kind of became a real holiday
Baby Jesus theft: a crime of nativity
Illegal prime: the numbers the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know
Ghoti: a way to spell “fish”
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: a comedy horror movie also known as NOTDOT
Guano Islands Act: the U.S. law that lets citizens claim islands that contain bat droppings
The Game: something you just lost
Dazzle camouflage: wacky striped paint jobs used on ships during World War I
Bald–hairy: the alternating baldness of Russian leaders since 1825
Cosmic latte: the average color of the universe
Bristol stool scale: what your poop says about your health
Whizzinator: a sex toy used for cheating on drug tests
Rockism and poptimism: competing strains of contemporary music criticism
Dihydrogen monoxide hoax: the truth about a potentially deadly chemical you ingest every day
Ithaa: the first underwater restaurant
Atari video game burial: the disposal of 700,000 game cartridges in a landfill, including famous flop E.T.
Fictitious entry: a real encyclopedia entry about fake encyclopedia entries
Utah teapot: the Wilhelm scream of 3d modeling
Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah: You already know the tune.
If-by-whiskey: the rhetorical technique that keeps everyone happy
Kosher locust: bugs that the Chosen can eat
Ferret-legging: the sport of trapping live ferrets in your pants
War Plan Red: America’s secret plan for fighting Britain...in the 1930s
Getting to Philosophy: a game you can play on Wikipedia
For more, read the full list, or try Wikipedia’s Silly Things, notable “Did You Know?” entries, and lists of hoaxes. Or move over to TV Tropes.
What do you think so far?
