Hoot Hatch

Astonishing Curiosities

Sources

The rule was simple and frequently inconvenient: nothing goes in that cannot be traced to a named work. Each entry is tied to a source of its own — a book with a publisher and a year, a paper with a journal, an archive, a museum, or the published documents of a standards body. Where the trail ran out, the entry came out with it, and a number of very good ones did.

Several famous stories did not survive that check. Some are false outright. Others are disputed by the people who know the material best, and in those cases the entry says so and says who disagrees, rather than passing on the tidier version. The correction is usually more interesting than the thing it corrects.

Sources are given as the names of works rather than as web addresses. Links rot within a few years. A named book, paper or archive can still be found in twenty.

All 320 of them are below, in the order the entries appear in the book. If you are holding the paperback, the entry titles here match the titles there.

1Out There

  1. The corals that counted the days

    Wells, J. W. · Coral Growth and Geochronometry, Nature, 1963

  2. The Moon has a tail and we walk through it

    Matta, M., Smith, S., Baumgardner, J., Wilson, J., Martinis, C., Mendillo, M. · The sodium tail of the Moon, Icarus, 2009

  3. Where the atmosphere actually stops

    Baliukin, I. I., Bertaux, J.-L., Quémerais, E., Izmodenov, V. V., Schmidt, W. · SWAN/SOHO Lyman-α Mapping: The Hydrogen Geocorona Extends Well Beyond the Moon, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 2019

  4. Two clouds that took fifty-seven years to prove

    Slíz-Balogh, J., Barta, A., Horváth, G. · Celestial mechanics and polarization optics of the Kordylewski dust cloud in the Earth–Moon Lagrange point L5, Part II, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2019

  5. The Moon never loops

    Aslaksen, H. · The Orbit of the Moon around the Sun is Convex!, Department of Mathematics, National University of Singapore, 2010

  6. A magazine mistake that outlived its author

    Hiscock, P. · Once in a Blue Moon, Sky & Telescope, 1999

  7. The winter the Sun came back too early

    Lehn, W. H. · The Novaya Zemlya effect: An arctic mirage, Journal of the Optical Society of America, 1979

  8. The glow behind your head

    Texas State University · Celestial Sleuth Corrects Historical Record on Gegenschein Discovery, Texas State University Newsroom, 2021

  9. The night-shining clouds arrived too soon

    Bertolin, C. and Domínguez-Castro, F. · The earliest datable noctilucent cloud observation (Parma, Italy, AD 1840), The Holocene, 2020

  10. The stripes nobody can photograph properly

    Codona, J. L. · The scintillation theory of eclipse shadow bands, Astronomy & Astrophysics, 1986

  11. Sunspots are dents in the Sun

    Wilson, A. · Observations on the Solar Spots, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1774

  12. The element that existed only during eclipses

    Edlén, B. · An Attempt to Identify the Emission Lines in the Spectrum of the Solar Corona, Arkiv för Matematik, Astronomi och Fysik, 1941

  13. The comet that crossed the Sun and disappeared

    Kronk, G. W. · Cometography: A Catalog of Comets, Volume 2, 1800–1899, Cambridge University Press, 2003

  14. Rings found by a recorder left running

    Elliot, J. L., Dunham, E., Mink, D. · The rings of Uranus, Nature, 1977

  15. Volcanoes predicted three days early

    Peale, S. J., Cassen, P., Reynolds, R. T. · Melting of Io by Tidal Dissipation, Science, 1979

  16. The moon with no length of day

    Wisdom, J., Peale, S. J., Mignard, F. · The chaotic rotation of Hyperion, Icarus, 1984

  17. Two spies in the wrong camp

    Schmadel, L. D. · Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Springer, 2012

  18. The canals were inside his eye

    Sheehan, W. and Dobbins, T. · The Spokes of Venus: An Illusion Explained, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2003

  19. The constellations are quietly going crooked

    Delporte, E. · Délimitation Scientifique des Constellations, Cambridge University Press for the International Astronomical Union, 1930

  20. How we know a rock came from Mars

    Bogard, D. D. and Johnson, P. · Martian Gases in an Antarctic Meteorite?, Science, 1983

  21. Older than the Sun by two billion years

    Heck, P. R. et al. · Lifetimes of interstellar dust from cosmic ray exposure ages of presolar silicon carbide, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020

  22. The Pole Star nearly stopped breathing

    Torres, G. · The spectroscopic orbit of Polaris and its pulsation properties, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2023

  23. The star that phoned ahead

    Hirata, K. et al. · Observation of a neutrino burst from the supernova SN1987A, Physical Review Letters, 1987

  24. The brightest thing ever seen from outside the solar system

    Palmer, D. M. et al. · A giant γ-ray flare from the magnetar SGR 1806−20, Nature, 2005

  25. The wobble that proved the Earth moves

    Bradley, J. · A Letter Giving an Account of a New Discovered Motion of the Fix'd Stars, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1728

  26. A prediction made under occupation

    van de Hulst, H. C. · Radiogolven uit het wereldruim, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Natuurkunde, 1945

  27. A star switched on a world's fair

    Ganz, C. R. · The 1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress, University of Illinois Press, 2008

  28. Astronauts see flashes with their eyes shut

    Osborne, W. Z., Pinsky, L. S., Bailey, J. V. · Apollo Light Flash Investigations, in *Biomedical Results of Apollo*, NASA SP-368, 1975

  29. The force that turned out to be heat

    Turyshev, S. G., Toth, V. T., Kinsella, G., Lee, S.-C., Lok, S. M., Ellis, J. · Support for the Thermal Origin of the Pioneer Anomaly, Physical Review Letters, 2012

  30. A message meant to be opened in 8.4 million years

    NASA Goddard Space Flight Center · LAGEOS: Message to the Future, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 1976

  31. The oldest planetary records we can still use

    Reiner, E. and Pingree, D. · Babylonian Planetary Omens, Part One: The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, Undena Publications, 1975

  32. The Moon's eighteen-year swing

    Ruggles, C. · Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, Yale University Press, 1999

2The Body You're Wearing

  1. The faint yellow bowtie hidden in the blue sky

    Haidinger, W. · Über das direkte Erkennen des polarisirten Lichts, Annalen der Physik, 1844

  2. Why your eyes never stop trembling

    Martinez-Conde, S., Macknik, S. & Hubel, D. · The role of fixational eye movements in visual perception, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2004

  3. The second that stretches when you look at a clock

    Yarrow, K. et al. · Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic perceptual continuity, Nature, 2001

  4. A third kind of light detector, found in 2002

    Berson, D., Dunn, F. & Takao, M. · Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock, Science, 2002

  5. The only part of you that is exactly your age

    Lynnerup, N. et al. · Radiocarbon dating of the human eye lens crystallines reveal proteins without carbon turnover throughout life, PLoS ONE, 2008

  6. The white of the eye is a broadcast

    Kobayashi, H. & Kohshima, S. · Unique morphology of the human eye, Nature, 1997

  7. Arithmetic makes the pupil open

    Hess, E. & Polt, J. · Pupil size in relation to mental activity during simple problem-solving, Science, 1964

  8. Ears play sound back out

    Kemp, D. · Stimulated acoustic emissions from within the human auditory system, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1978

  9. The ear has a motor as well as a microphone

    Zheng, J. et al. · Prestin is the motor protein of cochlear outer hair cells, Nature, 2000

  10. There are stones in your head, and you need them

    Purves, D. et al. · Neuroscience, 2nd edition, Sinauer Associates, 2001

  11. The muscles that still try to prick up your ears

    Strauss, D. et al. · Vestigial auriculomotor activity indicates the direction of auditory attention in humans, eLife, 2020

  12. Blindfolded people can follow a scent through grass

    Porter, J. et al. · Mechanisms of scent-tracking in humans, Nature Neuroscience, 2007

  13. One nostril is usually doing most of the work

    Pendolino, A. et al. · The nasal cycle: a comprehensive review, Rhinology Online, 2018

  14. No two people smell the same world

    Mainland, J. et al. · The missense of smell: functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoire, Nature Neuroscience, 2014

  15. Twenty-five ways to taste bitter, one to taste sweet

    Chandrashekar, J., Hoon, M., Ryba, N. & Zuker, C. · The receptors and cells for mammalian taste, Nature, 2006

  16. A fingertip can feel a bump thirteen nanometres high

    Skedung, L. et al. · Feeling small: exploring the tactile perception limits, Scientific Reports, 2013

  17. Wet fingers wrinkle on purpose

    Kareklas, K., Nettle, D. & Smulders, T. · Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects, Biology Letters, 2013

  18. The sense with no organ you can point to

    Sherrington, C. · The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, Yale University Press, 1906

  19. Half your brain stands watch in a strange bed

    Tamaki, M. et al. · Night watch in one brain hemisphere during sleep associated with the first-night effect in humans, Current Biology, 2016

  20. Fourteen hours of darkness splits sleep in two

    Wehr, T. · In short photoperiods, human sleep is biphasic, Journal of Sleep Research, 1992

  21. During dreams, nearly every muscle is switched off

    Siegel, J. · REM sleep, in Kryger, Roth & Dement (eds.), *Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine*, Elsevier, 2011

  22. The body clock does not run at twenty-four hours

    Czeisler, C. et al. · Stability, precision, and near-24-hour period of the human circadian pacemaker, Science, 1999

  23. How one voice beats eighty instruments

    Sundberg, J. · The Science of the Singing Voice, Northern Illinois University Press, 1987

  24. Two notes from one throat, solved by scanner

    Bergevin, C. et al. · Overtone focusing in biphonic Tuvan throat singing, eLife, 2020

  25. Nobody moves their vocal folds fast enough to speak

    van den Berg, J. · Myoelastic-aerodynamic theory of voice production, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 1958

  26. The foot is a spring that pays you back

    Ker, R. et al. · The spring in the arch of the human foot, Nature, 1987

  27. A bone that is coming back

    Berthaume, M., Di Federico, E. & Bull, A. · Fabella prevalence rate increases over 150 years, and rates of other sesamoid bones remain constant, Journal of Anatomy, 2019

  28. Bend a bone and it generates electricity

    Fukada, E. & Yasuda, I. · On the piezoelectric effect of bone, Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 1957

  29. The doctor who measured his own thumbnail for 35 years

    Bean, W. · Nail growth: thirty-five years of observation, Archives of Internal Medicine, 1980

  30. One letter of DNA decides your earwax and your armpits

    Yoshiura, K. et al. · A SNP in the ABCC11 gene is the determinant of human earwax type, Nature Genetics, 2006

  31. Fingerprints grow like ripples meeting on a beach

    Glover, J. et al. · The developmental basis of fingerprint pattern formation and variation, Cell, 2023

  32. The fastest thing your nervous system does

    Leigh, R. & Zee, D. · The Neurology of Eye Movements, Oxford University Press, 2015

3The Secret Lives of Ordinary Things

  1. The hollow in a brick that nobody can name

    Hammond, M. · Bricks and Brickmaking, Shire Publications, 1981

  2. Why you hang from a bicycle wheel

    Brandt, J. · The Bicycle Wheel, Avocet, 1981

  3. The candle that stopped needing a servant

    Faraday, M. · The Chemical History of a Candle, Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861

  4. There is no flint in a cigarette lighter

    Weeks, M.E. · Discovery of the Elements, 7th ed., Journal of Chemical Education, 1968

  5. Why an infinite mirror tunnel turns green

    Shelby, J.E. · Introduction to Glass Science and Technology, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005

  6. The window pane that was never touched by a tool

    Pilkington, L.A.B. · Review Lecture: The Float Glass Process, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 1969

  7. The bullseye pane was the bit nobody wanted

    Douglas, R.W. & Frank, S. · A History of Glassmaking, G.T. Foulis, 1972

  8. Corrugated cardboard began life inside a hat

    Twede, D. · The Origins of Paper Based Packaging, CHARM Conference Proceedings, 2005

  9. A ruler slipped, and the cardboard box was born

    Gray, C. · Streetscapes: Robert Gair, Dumbo and Brooklyn, The New York Times, 2004

  10. A monument capped with the era's costliest metal

    Binczewski, G.J. · The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument, JOM, 1995

  11. The metal that screams and then crumbles

    Greenwood, N.N. & Earnshaw, A. · Chemistry of the Elements, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997

  12. Kodak found the atomic bomb in its packaging

    Webb, J.H. · The Fogging of Photographic Film by Radioactive Contaminants in Cardboard Packaging Materials, Physical Review, 1949

  13. The dumbbells hanging from power lines

    Stockbridge, G.H. · Vibration Damper, US Patent 1,675,391, United States Patent Office, 1928

  14. A transformer hums at twice the frequency it is fed

    Heathcote, M.J. · The J & P Transformer Book, 13th ed., Newnes, 2007

  15. Britain wired its houses to save copper

    Mullins, M. · The Origin of the BS 1363 Plug and Socket-Outlet System, IEE Wiring Matters, 2006

  16. The centuries when shoes had no left or right

    Swann, J. · Shoes, Batsford, 1982

  17. Your shoelaces are destroyed by your heel, not your stride

    Daily-Diamond, C.A., Gregg, C.E. & O'Reilly, O.M. · The Roles of Impact and Inertia in the Failure of a Shoelace Knot, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 2017

  18. Blue jeans fade because the dye never went in

    Paul, R. (ed.) · Denim: Manufacture, Finishing and Applications, Woodhead Publishing, 2015

  19. White once meant go, and that was the problem

    Kichenside, G. & Williams, A. · Two Centuries of Railway Signalling, Oxford Publishing Co., 1998

  20. Road markings are paved with glass

    Procopio, L.J. · Road Markings and Traffic Paints, CoatingsTech, American Coatings Association, 2023

  21. The patent that was given away and remade world trade

    Levinson, M. · The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Princeton University Press, 2006

  22. Half of a bone china cup is cattle bone

    Dinsdale, A. · Pottery Science: Materials, Process and Products, Ellis Horwood, 1986

  23. The invention was moving the chemistry to the box

    Crass, M.F. · A History of the Match Industry, Journal of Chemical Education, 1941

  24. The cable tie came from a Boeing shop floor

    Logan, M.C. · US Patent 3,022,557, assigned to Thomas and Betts Co., United States Patent Office, 1962

  25. Stainless steel was a failed experiment in gun barrels

    Brearley, H. · Knotted String: Autobiography of a Steel-Maker, Longmans Green, 1941

  26. Every record is recorded wrong on purpose

    International Electrotechnical Commission · IEC 60098: Analogue Audio Disk Records and Reproducing Equipment, 3rd ed., 1987

  27. One English valley supplied the world's pencils

    Petroski, H. · The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990

  28. Norway's national symbol did not invent the paper clip

    Petroski, H. · The Evolution of Useful Things, Alfred A. Knopf, 1992

  29. A drinks can is thinner than this page

    Hosford, W.F. & Duncan, J.L. · The Aluminum Beverage Can, Scientific American, 1994

  30. The exit bar invented by a man who stayed home

    Encyclopedia of Indianapolis · Panic Bar, Indiana University Indianapolis

  31. The man who perforated stamps may never have perforated one

    Smithsonian National Postal Museum · Early Rotary Perforation Machine, Object Spotlight, National Postal Museum Collections

  32. The bend under your sink is eighteenth-century genius

    Wright, L. · Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water Closet, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960

4What We Say Without Knowing Why

  1. The word planted in a dictionary to catch thieves

    Alford, H. · Not a Word, The New Yorker, 2005

  2. The ghost that lived in Webster's for thirteen years

    Gove, P. B. · The History of "Dord", American Speech, 1954

  3. The word the Oxford dictionary lost behind a bookcase

    Winchester, S. · The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2003

  4. A dictionary that outlived its authors by a century

    Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, S. Hirzel Verlag, 1854–1961

  5. The first English dictionary explained 2,543 words

    Green, J. · Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made, Jonathan Cape, 1996

  6. Kangaroo does not mean I don't understand you

    Dixon, R. M. W., Ramson, W. S. & Thomas, M. · Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning, Oxford University Press, 1990

  7. Almost no old English word is an acronym

    Quinion, M. · Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths, Penguin, 2004

  8. The Dublin bet that probably never happened

    Merriam-Webster · The Questionable Origin of "Quiz", Merriam-Webster, Inc.

  9. Roman soldiers were never paid in salt

    Pliny the Elder · Natural History, Book 31, c. AD 77

  10. Shaw did not spell fish g-h-o-t-i

    Zimmer, B. · "Ghoti" before Shaw, Language Log, University of Pennsylvania, 2008

  11. Syllabus began life as a printer's error

    Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, entry "syllabus", Oxford University Press, 1989

  12. Words that lost their first letter to the word an

    Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, entries "apron", "adder", "umpire", "newt", Oxford University Press, 1989

  13. The man who coined robot was holding a paintbrush

    Čapek, K. · O slově robot, ("On the word robot"), Lidové noviny, 1933

  14. Mayday was chosen because of one airport's neighbour

    Merriam-Webster · Where Does the Word "Mayday" Come From?, Merriam-Webster, Inc.

  15. The name for a misheard lyric came from a ballad

    Wright, S. · The Death of Lady Mondegreen, Harper's Magazine, 1954

  16. Eleven and twelve are leftovers

    Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, entries "eleven" and "twelve", Oxford University Press, 1989

  17. France asked a Latin professor for a word

    Perret, J. — letter to IBM France, 16 April 1955, reproduced in · Centenaire IBM France, IBM France, 2014

  18. Nobody put spaces between words for a thousand years

    Saenger, P. · Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, Stanford University Press, 1997

  19. Irish road signs still use Cicero's shorthand

    Houston, K. · Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographical Marks, W. W. Norton, 2013

  20. The letter that quietly left the alphabet around 1800

    Updike, D. B. · Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use, Harvard University Press, 1922

  21. The punctuation mark invented by an ad man

    Speckter, M. K. · Making a New Point, or, How About That…, TYPEtalks, 1962

  22. The alphabet's order is older than the alphabet you know

    Healey, J. F. · The Early Alphabet, British Museum Press, 1990

  23. The last hieroglyphs were carved in AD 394

    Parkinson, R. · Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment, British Museum Press, 1999

  24. A noodle dish with a character nobody could type

    The Unicode Standard, Version 13.0, Unicode Consortium, 2020

  25. China had to turn its writing into numbers

    Mullaney, T. S. · The Chinese Typewriter: A History, MIT Press, 2017

  26. Blind readers fought an eighty-year war over dots

    Koestler, F. A. · The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in the United States, David McKay, 1976

  27. A language that appeared in a schoolyard

    Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. · Children Creating Language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired a Spatial Grammar, Psychological Science, 2001

  28. Eighty-four consonants and almost no vowels

    Fenwick, R. S. H. · A Grammar of Ubykh, LINCOM Europa, 2011

  29. Michelangelo's Moses has horns for a reason

    Mellinkoff, R. · The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought, University of California Press, 1970

  30. The day machine translation was declared solved

    Hutchins, W. J. · The First Public Demonstration of Machine Translation: The Georgetown-IBM System, 7th January 1954, Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, 2004

  31. Rome managed with about eighteen first names

    Salway, B. · What's in a Name? A Survey of Roman Onomastic Practice from c. 700 B.C. to A.D. 700, Journal of Roman Studies, 1994

  32. A prime minister noticed Homer had no blue

    Gladstone, W. E. · Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Oxford University Press, 1858

5The Neighbours

  1. Who cleans up after a dead whale

    Rouse, G.W., Goffredi, S.K. & Vrijenhoek, R.C. · Osedax: Bone-Eating Marine Worms with Dwarf Males, Science, 2004

  2. Two animals that agree to become one

    Jokura, K. et al. · Rapid physiological integration of fused ctenophores, Current Biology, 2024

  3. The creature that circulates blood with its gut

    Woods, H.A. et al. · Respiratory gut peristalsis by sea spiders, Current Biology, 2017

  4. The shipworm that gave up eating wood

    Distel, D.L. et al. · Discovery of chemoautotrophic symbiosis in the giant shipworm Kuphus polythalamia (Bivalvia: Teredinidae) extends wooden-steps theory, PNAS, 2017

  5. Why some killifish behave like an advertisement

    Lafferty, K.D. & Morris, A.K. · Altered behavior of parasitized killifish increases susceptibility to predation by bird final hosts, Ecology, 1996

  6. The bee that wallpapers its nursery with petals

    Rozen, J.G. et al. · Nests, Petal Usage, Floral Preferences, and Immatures of Osmia (Ozbekosmia) avosetta, American Museum Novitates 3680, 2010

  7. Three bees that gave up on flowers

    Figueroa, L.L. et al. · Why Did the Bee Eat the Chicken? Symbiont Gain, Loss, and Retention in the Vulture Bee Microbiome, mBio, 2021

  8. What lands on a sleeping bird's eyelid

    Hilgartner, R. et al. · Malagasy birds as hosts for eye-frequenting moths, Biology Letters, 2007

  9. The fastest movement ever measured in an animal

    Larabee, F.J., Smith, A.A. & Suarez, A.V. · Snap-jaw morphology is specialized for high-speed power amplification in the Dracula ant, Mystrium camillae, Royal Society Open Science, 2018

  10. How an acacia keeps its bodyguards from leaving

    Heil, M. et al. · Partner manipulation stabilises a horizontally transmitted mutualism, Ecology Letters, 2014

  11. Termite mounds do not work as advertised

    King, H., Ocko, S. & Mahadevan, L. · Termite mounds harness diurnal temperature oscillations for ventilation, PNAS, 2015

  12. The animal that spent seven years standing still

    Balázs, G. et al. · Extreme site fidelity of the olm (Proteus anguinus) revealed by a long-term capture–mark–recapture study, Journal of Zoology, 2020

  13. The only vertebrates with colourless blood

    Ruud, J.T. · Vertebrates without Erythrocytes and Blood Pigment, Nature, 1954

  14. What garden birds do in a Hungarian cave

    Estók, P., Zsebők, S. & Siemers, B.M. · Great tits search for, capture, kill and eat hibernating bats, Biology Letters, 2010

  15. The bird that dyes itself orange

    Negro, J.J., Margalida, A., Hiraldo, F. & Heredia, R. · The function of cosmetic coloration of bearded vultures: when art imitates life, Animal Behaviour, 1999

  16. How much sleep a bird gets over the ocean

    Rattenborg, N.C. et al. · Evidence that birds sleep in mid-flight, Nature Communications, 2016

  17. Why reindeer eyes turn blue in winter

    Stokkan, K.-A. et al. · Shifting mirrors: adaptive changes in retinal reflections to winter darkness in Arctic reindeer, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2013

  18. The mammal that cools below freezing and survives

    Barnes, B.M. · Freeze Avoidance in a Mammal: Body Temperatures Below 0°C in an Arctic Hibernator, Science, 1989

  19. The oldest animal ever brought back to life

    Shatilovich, A. et al. · A novel nematode species from the Siberian permafrost shares adaptive mechanisms for cryptobiotic survival with C. elegans dauer larva, PLOS Genetics, 2023

  20. A very small plant with enormous DNA

    Fernández, P. et al. · A 160 Gbp fork fern genome shatters size record for eukaryotes, iScience, 2024

  21. A flower grown from an ice-age squirrel's larder

    Yashina, S. et al. · Regeneration of whole fertile plants from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost, PNAS, 2012

  22. The largest living thing is a lawn

    Edgeloe, J.M. et al. · Extensive polyploid clonality was a successful strategy for seagrass to expand into a newly submerged environment, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2022

  23. One plant, found once, and always male

    Jones, D.L. · Cycads of the World: Ancient Plants in Today's Landscape, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993

  24. The plant that hunts by smell

    Runyon, J.B., Mescher, M.C. & De Moraes, C.M. · Volatile Chemical Cues Guide Host Location and Host Selection by Parasitic Plants, Science, 2006

  25. The fastest thing a plant has been filmed doing

    Edwards, J., Whitaker, D., Klionsky, S. & Laskowski, M.J. · A record-breaking pollen catapult, Nature, 2005

  26. The plant that counts before it acts

    Böhm, J. et al. · The Venus Flytrap Dionaea muscipula Counts Prey-Induced Action Potentials to Induce Sodium Uptake, Current Biology, 2016

  27. A pitcher plant that advertises in ultrasound

    Schöner, M.G. et al. · Bats Are Acoustically Attracted to Mutualistic Carnivorous Plants, Current Biology, 2015

  28. How a moss two centimetres tall reaches the wind

    Whitaker, D.L. & Edwards, J. · Sphagnum Moss Disperses Spores with Vortex Rings, Science, 2010

  29. The textbook definition of a lichen was wrong

    Spribille, T. et al. · Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of ascomycete macrolichens, Science, 2016

  30. The fungus that sets snares in the soil

    Chen, Y. et al. · A palisade-shaped membrane reservoir is required for rapid ring cell inflation in Drechslerella dactyloides, Nature Communications, 2023

  31. The forest internet is less proven than it sounds

    Karst, J., Jones, M.D. & Hoeksema, J.D. · Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2023

  32. The famine that keeps a bamboo's schedule

    Nag, S. · Pied Pipers in North-East India: Bamboo-flowers, Rat-famine and the Politics of Philanthropy (1881–2007), Manohar, 2008

6What's on the Plate

  1. The oldest recipes assume you already know how to cook

    Bottéro, J. · The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, University of Chicago Press, 2004

  2. The Roman sauce that came in a kosher edition

    Curtis, R.I. · Garum and Salsamenta: Production and Commerce in Materia Medica, E.J. Brill, 1991

  3. The beer purity law was really a bread law

    Hornsey, I.S. · A History of Beer and Brewing, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003

  4. Sparkling wine was written down in London first

    Merret, C. · Some Observations concerning the Ordering of Wines, Royal Society, 1662

  5. Boston sold winter to Calcutta

    Weightman, G. · The Frozen Water Trade, Hyperion, 2003

  6. The state that ordered margarine to be pink

    Collins v. New Hampshire, 171 U.S. 30, Supreme Court of the United States, 1898

  7. The first great fungicide was invented to scare off thieves

    Ayres, P.G. · Alexis Millardet: France's Forgotten Mycologist, Mycologist, 2004

  8. A fungus decided what Britain drinks

    McCook, S. · Global Rust Belt: Hemileia vastatrix and the Ecological Integration of World Coffee Production since 1850, Journal of Global History, 2006

  9. The captain who nearly froze inside his own cargo

    Critchell, J.T. & Raymond, J. · A History of the Frozen Meat Trade, Constable & Co., 1912

  10. The world's export banana was raised in Derbyshire

    Koeppel, D. · Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, Hudson Street Press, 2008

  11. The nobleman behind the sauce never existed

    Shurtleff, W. & Aoyagi, A. · History of Worcestershire Sauce (1837–2012), Soyinfo Center, 2012

  12. The browning reaction was found by a man ignoring food

    Hodge, J.E. · Dehydrated Foods: Chemistry of Browning Reactions in Model Systems, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 1953

  13. The paper that waited ninety-three years for a translation

    Ikeda, K. · New Seasonings, Chemical Senses, 2002, translated from Journal of the Chemical Society of Tokyo, 1909

  14. Florida ripened its fruit on the wrong theory

    Denny, F.E. · Hastening the Coloration of Lemons, Journal of Agricultural Research, 1924

  15. A three-year contest designed the chicken you eat

    Boyd, W. · Making Meat: Science, Technology, and American Poultry Production, Technology and Culture, 2001

  16. The summer the Soviet Union quietly bought the harvest

    Trager, J. · The Great Grain Robbery, Ballantine Books, 1975

  17. British bread was redesigned to suit British wheat

    Cauvain, S.P. & Young, L.S. · Technology of Breadmaking, Springer, 2007

  18. A bacterium with a California postcode

    Kline, L. & Sugihara, T.F. · Microorganisms of the San Francisco Sour Dough Bread Process II, Applied Microbiology, 1971

  19. Stale bread is not dry bread

    McGee, H. · On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Scribner, 2004

  20. The first genetically engineered food ingredient was cheese rennet

    Law, B.A. · Technology of Cheesemaking, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010

  21. The holes in Swiss cheese are made of hay

    Guggisberg, D. et al. · Mechanism and Control of the Eye Formation in Cheese, International Dairy Journal, 2015

  22. An Italian bank whose vault smells of cheese

    Nobel, C. · A Bank That Accepts Parmesan as Collateral, Forbes, 2015

  23. Why a corked bottle has nothing to do with crumbs

    Buser, H.-R., Zanier, C. & Tanner, H. · Identification of 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole as a Potent Compound Causing Cork Taint in Wine, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 1982

  24. Lager's second parent was hiding in Patagonia

    Libkind, D. et al. · Microbe Domestication and the Identification of the Wild Genetic Stock of Lager-Brewing Yeast, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011

  25. The world's deepest hole of its day was drilled for salt

    Vogel, H.U. · The Great Well of China, Scientific American, 1993

  26. Japan had to be talked into salmon sushi

    Jiang, J. · How the Desperate Norwegian Salmon Industry Created a Sushi Staple, NPR Planet Money, 2015

  27. The fortune cookie is a Kyoto export

    Lee, J. · The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Twelve, 2008

  28. The queen who probably never ordered that pizza

    Nowak, Z. · Folklore, Fakelore, History: Invented Tradition and the Origins of the Pizza Margherita, Food, Culture & Society, 2014

  29. Agriculture's biggest migration travels by lorry

    Lee, H., Sumner, D.A. & Champetier, A. · Pollination Markets and the Coupled Futures of Almonds and Honey Bees, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2019

  30. Dried plants in cabinets settled where potatoes came from

    Ames, M. & Spooner, D.M. · DNA from Herbarium Specimens Settles a Controversy about Origins of the European Potato, American Journal of Botany, 2008

  31. Not-from-concentrate juice is put back together

    Hamilton, A. · Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice, Yale University Press, 2009

  32. Saffron is a plant that cannot reproduce

    Nemati, Z. et al. · Phylogeny of the Saffron-Crocus Species Group, Crocus series Crocus (Iridaceae), Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2018

7Counting and Getting It Wrong

  1. The kilogram quietly stopped weighing a kilogram

    Girard, G. · The Third Periodic Verification of National Prototypes of the Kilogram (1988–1992), Metrologia, 1994

  2. The metre is a fifth of a millimetre short

    Alder, K. · The Measure of All Things, The Free Press, 2002

  3. For sixty-three years a litre was not a cubic decimetre

    Bureau International des Poids et Mesures · The International System of Units (SI Brochure), 9th edition, 2019

  4. The United States has been metric since 1893

    Barbrow, L.E. & Judson, L.V. · Weights and Measures Standards of the United States: A Brief History, National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 447, 1976

  5. The foot that was retired at the end of 2022

    National Institute of Standards and Technology & National Geodetic Survey · Deprecation of the United States Survey Foot, Federal Register notice, 2019

  6. Sixty-six feet that measured a continent

    Linklater, A. · Measuring America, Walker & Company, 2002

  7. Carob seeds were never all the same weight

    Turnbull, L.A., Santamaria, L., Martorell, T., Rallo, J. & Hector, A. · Seed size variability: from carob to carats, Biology Letters, 2006

  8. A ship's tonnage has nothing to do with weight

    Lane, F.C. · Tonnages, Medieval and Modern, The Economic History Review, 1964

  9. The decibel started life as a mile of cable

    Martin, W.H. · Decibel — The Name for the Transmission Unit, Bell System Technical Journal, 1929

  10. The hundred that meant a hundred and twenty

    Goodare, J. · The Long Hundred in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1993

  11. The day Britain changed the size of a billion

    Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Commons, Written Answers, 20 December 1974

  12. The oldest zero, and the argument about its age

    Plofker, K., Keller, A., Hayashi, T., Montelle, C. & Wujastyk, D. · The Bakhshali Manuscript: A Response to the Bodleian Library's Radiocarbon Dating, History of Science in South Asia, 2017

  13. The year that lasted four hundred and forty-five days

    Feeney, D. · Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History, University of California Press, 2007

  14. Nobody marched for their eleven days

    Poole, R. · Time's Alteration: Calendar Reform in Early Modern England, UCL Press, 1998

  15. Why the British tax year starts on 6 April

    Blackburn, B. & Holford-Strevens, L. · The Oxford Companion to the Year, Oxford University Press, 1999

  16. The country that abolished the week

    Zerubavel, E. · The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week, The Free Press, 1985

  17. Ten hours in a day, briefly

    Shaw, M. · Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV, The Boydell Press, 2011

  18. The last leap second has already been scheduled

    Bureau International des Poids et Mesures · Resolution 4 of the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures, 2022

  19. The woman who sold the time

    Rooney, D. · Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady, National Maritime Museum, 2008

  20. The Netherlands ran twenty minutes ahead of everybody

    Ogle, V. · The Global Transformation of Time, 1870–1950, Harvard University Press, 2015

  21. Every spreadsheet believes 1900 was a leap year

    Microsoft · Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year, Microsoft Support documentation

  22. A third of a second, six hundred metres

    United States General Accounting Office · Patriot Missile Defense: Software Problem Led to System Failure at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, GAO/IMTEC-92-26, 1992

  23. The stock index that leaked twenty-five points a month

    Quinn, K. · Ever Had Problems Rounding Off Figures? This Stock Exchange Has, The Wall Street Journal, 8 November 1983

  24. The assistant dismissed for having a slower brain

    Schaffer, S. · Astronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation, Science in Context, 1988

  25. Five missing entries in a table of two thousand

    Edelman, A. · The Mathematics of the Pentium Division Bug, SIAM Review, 1997

  26. The bias that vanished when you looked closer

    Bickel, P.J., Hammel, E.A. & O'Connell, J.W. · Sex Bias in Graduate Admissions: Data from Berkeley, Science, 1975

  27. The bombs that only looked aimed

    Clarke, R.D. · An Application of the Poisson Distribution, Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 1946

  28. A lottery that came out of the box in order

    Fienberg, S.E. · Randomization and Social Affairs: The 1970 Draft Lottery, Science, 1971

  29. The worn pages in a book of logarithms

    Newcomb, S. · Note on the Frequency of Use of the Different Digits in Natural Numbers, American Journal of Mathematics, 1881

  30. Nobody had an average body

    Daniels, G.S. · The "Average Man"?, Technical Note WCRD 53-7, Wright Air Development Center, United States Air Force, 1952

  31. A wind scale that measured sailcloth

    Huler, S. · Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry, Crown, 2004

  32. Nobody has used the Richter scale for decades

    Hanks, T.C. & Kanamori, H. · A Moment Magnitude Scale, Journal of Geophysical Research, 1979

8The Long Way Round

  1. The prize that was awarded and never paid

    Aftalion, F. · A History of the International Chemical Industry, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991

  2. The steel that cracked until a forgotten man fixed it

    Barraclough, K.C. · Steelmaking: 1850–1900, The Institute of Metals, 1990

  3. A broken thermometer and the end of the indigo fields

    Travis, A.S. · The Rainbow Makers: The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe, Lehigh University Press, 1993

  4. Nickel that travels as a gas

    Mond, L., Langer, C. & Quincke, F. · Action of Carbon Monoxide on Nickel, Journal of the Chemical Society, Transactions, 1890

  5. The alloy that hardened over a weekend

    Polmear, I.J. · Light Alloys: From Traditional Alloys to Nanocrystals, 4th ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006

  6. The impurity that stopped light bulbs sagging

    Bright, A.A. · The Electric-Lamp Industry: Technological Change and Economic Development from 1800 to 1947, Macmillan, 1949

  7. The court decided the inventor was the man who failed

    Friedel, R. · Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983

  8. Half a per cent that hid a whole element

    Rayleigh, Lord & Ramsay, W. · Argon, a New Constituent of the Atmosphere, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 1895

  9. Dating the Earth meant first cleaning the room

    Patterson, C.C. · Age of Meteorites and the Earth, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 1956

  10. The chemist who suggested fission and was laughed at

    Noddack, I. · Über das Element 93, Zeitschrift für Angewandte Chemie, 1934

  11. The element Japan discovered and mislabelled

    Yoshihara, H.K. · Discovery of a New Element 'Nipponium': Re-evaluation of Pioneering Works of Masataka Ogawa and His Son Eijiro Ogawa, Spectrochimica Acta Part B, 2004

  12. The first light-emitting diode belonged to a technician

    Zheludev, N. · The Life and Times of the LED — A 100-year History, Nature Photonics, 2007

  13. A cracked rod of silicon ran on sunlight

    Riordan, M. & Hoddeson, L. · Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, W.W. Norton, 1997

  14. Twenty-seven years of drilling for something that was not there

    Hoyt, W.G. · Coon Mountain Controversies: Meteor Crater and the Development of Impact Theory, University of Arizona Press, 1987

  15. The deepest hole found the opposite of what was expected

    Kozlovsky, Y.A. (ed.) · The Superdeep Well of the Kola Peninsula, Springer-Verlag, 1987

  16. The computer threw the ozone hole away

    Farman, J.C., Gardiner, B.G. & Shanklin, J.D. · Large Losses of Total Ozone in Antarctica Reveal Seasonal ClOx/NOx Interaction, Nature, 1985

  17. They found a new ecosystem and had no biologist aboard

    Ballard, R.D. · The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration, Princeton University Press, 2000

  18. The cable that died of being shouted at

    Gordon, J.S. · A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable, Walker & Company, 2002

  19. The physics textbooks got the famous bridge wrong

    Billah, K.Y. & Scanlan, R.H. · Resonance, Tacoma Narrows Bridge Failure, and Undergraduate Physics Textbooks, American Journal of Physics, 1991

  20. The crack did not start at a passenger window

    Withey, P.A. · Fatigue Failure of the de Havilland Comet I, Engineering Failure Analysis, 1997

  21. The railway that ran on vacuum and leather

    Buchanan, R.A. · Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Hambledon and London, 2002

  22. The airship built by a novelist's arithmetic

    Shute, N. · Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, Heinemann, 1954

  23. The bad wire is still inside the bridge

    McCullough, D. · The Great Bridge, Simon & Schuster, 1972

  24. Ten men, forty-five machines and the end of a craft

    Coad, J. · The Portsmouth Block Mills: Bentham, Brunel and the Start of the Royal Navy's Industrial Revolution, English Heritage, 2005

  25. One entrant at the Rainhill trials was a horse

    Rolt, L.T.C. · George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution, Longmans, 1960

  26. The Wright Flyer spent twenty years in London

    Crouch, T.D. · The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright, W.W. Norton, 1989

  27. The safety lamp that made mining more dangerous

    Report from the Select Committee on Accidents in Mines, House of Commons, 1835

  28. The auditor who kept American lighthouses dim

    Levitt, T. · A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Birth of the Modern Lighthouse, W.W. Norton, 2013

  29. A jar of moths rearranged the world's crops

    Keogh, L. · The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, University of Chicago Press, 2020

  30. She had to prove in court that she could think

    Macdonald, A.L. · Feminine Ingenuity: Women and Invention in America, Ballantine Books, 1992

  31. A voice from 1860 that nobody could hear until 2008

    Feaster, P. · Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio, 980–1980, Dust-to-Digital, 2012

  32. Murphy was real, and he was complaining about an assistant

    Spark, N.T. · A History of Murphy's Law, Periscope Film, 2006

9Lines on the Map

  1. A mountain range that existed only on paper

    Bassett, T. J. & Porter, P. W. · "From the Best Authorities": The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa, The Journal of African History, 1991

  2. The island that took 136 years to disappear

    Seton, M., Williams, S. & Zahirovic, S. · Obituary: Sandy Island (1876–2012), Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, 2013

  3. California spent two centuries as an island

    Polk, D. J. · The Island of California: A History of the Myth, Arthur H. Clark Company, 1991

  4. The medieval map painted with modern white

    Brown, K. L. & Clark, R. J. H. · Analysis of Pigmentary Materials on the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation by Raman Microprobe Spectroscopy, Analytical Chemistry, 2002

  5. A thousand copies printed, one survivor

    Library of Congress · The Waldseemüller Maps, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

  6. Only one old map says here be dragons

    Van Duzer, C. · Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, The British Library, 2013

  7. Contour lines were invented for a riverbed

    Thrower, N. J. W. · Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, University of Chicago Press, 1996

  8. Mercator never explained how he did it

    Snyder, J. P. · Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections, University of Chicago Press, 1993

  9. A Roman map shaped like a roll of tape

    Talbert, R. J. A. · Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered, Cambridge University Press, 2010

  10. The Chinese map that sat unread for 350 years

    Brook, T. · Mr Selden's Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer, Profile Books, 2013

  11. The town invented to catch copycats

    Monmonier, M. · How to Lie with Maps, University of Chicago Press, 1991

  12. The country that published deliberately wrong maps

    Postnikov, A. V. · Maps for Ordinary Consumers versus Maps for the Military: Double Standards of Map Accuracy in Soviet Cartography, 1917–1991, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 2002

  13. The border bent around a misplaced lighthouse

    Exchange of Notes between Finland and Sweden concerning the boundary on the skerry of Märket, 14 June 1985, United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea

  14. The place four states meet is in the wrong place

    New Mexico v. Colorado, 267 U.S. 30, Supreme Court of the United States, 1925

  15. The 684 acres that belonged to nobody

    Danson, E. · Drawing the Line: How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America, John Wiley & Sons, 2001

  16. An Indian field inside Bangladesh inside India inside Bangladesh

    Whyte, B. R. · Waiting for the Esquimo: An Historical and Documentary Study of the Cooch Behar Enclaves of India and Bangladesh, University of Melbourne, 2002

  17. The country that existed because of a zinc mine

    Dröge, P. · Moresnet: Opkomst en ondergang van een vergeten buurlandje, Uitgeverij Spectrum, 2016

  18. A railway line that cut five pieces off Germany

    Vinokurov, E. · A Theory of Enclaves, Lexington Books, 2007

  19. A piece of Minnesota reachable only through Canada

    Carroll, F. M. · A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783–1842, University of Toronto Press, 2001

  20. The remotest place on land is not where it was

    Garcia-Castellanos, D. & Lombardo, U. · Poles of Inaccessibility: A Calculation Algorithm for the Remotest Places on Earth, Scottish Geographical Journal, 2007

  21. A river moved and took 600 acres with it

    Convention between the United States of America and the United Mexican States for the Solution of the Problem of the Chamizal, signed at Mexico City, 1963

  22. The largest piece of land nobody claims

    The Antarctic Treaty, Washington, 1959

  23. The Swedish town being moved out from under itself

    Nilsson, B. · Ideology, Environment and Forced Relocation: Kiruna — a Town on the Move, European Urban and Regional Studies, 2010

  24. A state named after a word that never existed

    Stewart, G. R. · Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States, Random House, 1945

  25. The Nullarbor is Latin, not Aboriginal

    Reed, A. W. · Place Names of Australia, Reed Books, 1973

  26. Britain's longest place name was a marketing scheme

    Owen, H. W. & Morgan, R. · Dictionary of the Place-Names of Wales, Gomer Press, 2007

  27. American place names are not allowed apostrophes

    U.S. Board on Geographic Names · Principles, Policies, and Procedures: Domestic Geographic Names, U.S. Geological Survey

  28. The prime meridian is 102 metres from Greenwich

    Malys, S., Seago, J. H., Pavlis, N. K., Seidelmann, P. K. & Kaplan, G. H. · Why the Greenwich Meridian Moved, Journal of Geodesy, 2015

  29. A chain of triangles from Norway to the Danube

    UNESCO World Heritage Centre · Struve Geodetic Arc, UNESCO, 2005

  30. The oldest federal monuments are lumps of sandstone

    Bedini, S. A. · The Life of Benjamin Banneker: The First African-American Man of Science, Maryland Historical Society, 1999

  31. The deepest point on land lies under ice

    Morlighem, M. et al. · Deep Glacial Troughs and Stabilizing Ridges Unveiled Beneath the Margins of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Nature Geoscience, 2020

  32. The city that refused to name its streets

    MARCHIVUM, Stadtarchiv Mannheim · Straßennamen sucht man vergebens, Stadt Mannheim, 2020

10Rules and Beautiful Absurdities

  1. The bill nobody has ever wanted to pass

    UK Parliament · Erskine May: Parliamentary Practice, 25th edition, LexisNexis, 2019

  2. Trial by combat was legal in England until 1819

    Ashford v Thornton, (1818), Court of King's Bench; Appeal of Murder etc. Act 1819 (59 Geo. 3, c. 46)

  3. Grounding the ball used to be worth nothing

    Collins, T. · A Social History of English Rugby Union, Routledge, 2009

  4. Members of Parliament are forbidden to resign

    House of Commons Library · Resignation from the House of Commons, Standard Note SN/PC/01215

  5. The cart that killed you belonged to God

    Pervukhin, A. · Deodands: A Study in the Creation of Common Law Rules, American Journal of Legal History, 2005

  6. The machine that chose Athens' juries

    Dow, S. · Aristotle, the Kleroteria, and the Courts, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 1939

  7. Seventeen men were licensed to break the rule for life

    James, B. · The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Free Press, 2001

  8. Kneel, shout, and the building work stops

    Royal Court of Jersey · The Clameur de Haro, guidance of the Judicial Greffe

  9. Speeches that were never spoken

    U.S. Government Publishing Office · Congressional Record, daily edition, publication note on words spoken and words inserted

  10. Golf has eighteen holes because four were too short

    Browning, R. · A History of Golf: The Royal and Ancient Game, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1955

  11. The election that ended with the roof coming off

    Baumgartner, F.J. · Behind Locked Doors: A History of the Papal Elections, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

  12. The rule that assumes an eighty-year-old will have a baby

    Gray, J.C. · The Rule Against Perpetuities, Little, Brown & Company, 1886

  13. The vote that empties the chamber

    Deutscher Bundestag · Geschäftsordnung des Deutschen Bundestages, §51

  14. A court decided that the X-Men are not human

    Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States, United States Court of International Trade, decided 3 January 2003

  15. The Test match abandoned because of a boat

    Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, 1940 edition, report of South Africa v England, Durban, March 1939

  16. The rent that is still paid in horseshoes

    HM Courts and Tribunals Service · The Ceremony of Quit Rents, Office of the King's Remembrancer

  17. The veto you exercise by saying nothing

    International Court of Justice · Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa), Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports, 1971

  18. The chess rule that let some checkmates escape

    Hooper, D. & Whyld, K. · The Oxford Companion to Chess, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1992

  19. The court that woke up after two hundred years

    Manchester Corporation v Manchester Palace of Varieties Ltd, [1955] 1 All ER 387

  20. The passport for people with no country

    League of Nations · Arrangement of 5 July 1922 relating to the Issue of Certificates of Identity to Russian Refugees, League of Nations Treaty Series

  21. Laws that must be read aloud outdoors or they expire

    Kermode, D.G. · Offshore Island Politics: The Constitutional and Political Development of the Isle of Man in the Twentieth Century, Liverpool University Press, 2001

  22. The trial that turned on going stale

    United Biscuits (UK) Ltd v Commissioners of Customs and Excise, VAT Tribunal decision, 1991

  23. Four small associations can veto the rules of football

    The International Football Association Board · Statutes, and *Laws of the Game*, IFAB, Zurich

  24. Venice spent ten rounds of chance choosing a doge

    Mowbray, M. & Gollmann, D. · Electing the Doge of Venice: Analysis of a 13th Century Protocol, IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium, 2007

  25. Britain's laws are bound in goatskin

    UK House of Commons Commission · decision on the recording of Acts of Parliament on vellum, 2017

  26. Why the fastest marathon times do not count

    World Athletics · Competition and Technical Rules, section on road race records and course criteria

  27. The last post office in America served by mule

    United States Postal Service · official account of mail delivery by mule train to Supai, Arizona

  28. Scotland's third verdict, and how it happened by accident

    Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025, Acts of the Scottish Parliament ·

  29. The champion who challenged anyone who objected

    Round, J.H. · The King's Serjeants and Officers of State, with their Coronation Services, James Nisbet & Co., 1911

  30. An anonymous student joke that courts still cite

    The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 123, pp. 1474–1481, 1975

  31. A tariff on chicken that still shapes American roads

    United States Presidential Proclamation 3564, 4 December 1963, and subsequent U.S. Customs and Border Protection classification rulings ·

  32. The ravens are a Victorian invention

    Sax, B. · City of Ravens: London, the Tower and its Famous Birds, Duckworth Overlook, 2011

The book

Astonishing Curiosities

320 facts you haven't heard before, and the stories behind them — every one traced to the work it came from.

About the book