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This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a bit unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are somewhat odd, whimsical, or something you wouldn't expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. If you wish to add articles to this list, a broad consensus amongst contributors has identified two main guidelines. If the article in question meets one or both of these categories then it could possibly be deemed "unusual":
- The article is something you would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
- The article contains some form of juxtaposition that most people would find unusual. eg Killer Cockroach, Henry VIII in Space, edible computers.
Note that this is a broad definition. Some articles may still be considered "unusual" even if they don't fit the guidelines above.
For unusual contributions that are not so valuable, see Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.
A star (Vorlage:FA-star) indicates a featured article.
Places
the smallest park in the world.
| 826 Valencia | San Francisco's "only independent pirate supply store." | |
| Arbre du Ténéré | A solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth. | |
| Baarle-Nassau | A municipality of the Netherlands, including small exclaves of Belgium, which in turn comprise even smaller exclaves of the Netherlands. | |
| Baldwin Street | A short suburban road in Dunedin, New Zealand, reputedly the world's steepest street. | |
| Bielefeld-Verschwörung | Translates as "Bielefeld Conspiracy," about a city in Westphalia which, according to some, doesn't really exist... | |
| Cardrona Bra Fence | An eccentric tourist attraction in New Zealand. | |
| Centralia, Pennsylvania | A town that's been on fire since 1962. | |
| Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg | ||
| The longest place name in the United States and 6th longest in the world. | ||
| Colletto Fava | An Italian hill featuring an enormous stuffed pink bunny. | |
| DISH, Texas | A small town in Texas that changed its name to receive free digital video recorders and satellite television for ten years. | |
| Ebenezer Place, Wick | The world's shortest street | |
| Fallen Monument Park | A Russian park best known for its toppled statues. | |
| Ferdinandea | An "underwater island" off Sicily, which occasionally emerges and creates territorial disputes and was once mistaken by the US military for a submarine. | |
| Forest swastika | A gigantic Nazi swastika made of larch trees that went unnoticed for nearly sixty years. | |
| Fucking, Austria | A town in Austria whose sign keeps "disappearing." | |
| Gropecunt Lane | An old name for various streets in London where prostitutes did their business. | |
| Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump | A canadian native heritage site that according to humour columnist Dave Barry answers the phone: "Head Smashed In, may I help you?". | |
| Helengrad | A right-wing nickname for Wellington, New Zealand, derived from Prime Minister Helen Clark's apparent steel grip on her cabinet. | |
| Here | Where you are now. | |
| Hitlers' Cross [sic] | Where all good members of India's Hitler Youth go to dine. | |
| Icelandic Phallological Museum | A museum in Iceland solely devoted to the collection of penis specimens and penis-related art. | |
| Republic of Indian Stream | An area of land in northern New Hampshire, USA, that was an independent country from 1832 to 1835. | |
| Jerimoth Hill | The highest natural point in Rhode Island. Henry Richardson, a 77-year old man living in the area, has been known to threaten, insult and start fistfights with people who try to go through his property to reach it. | |
| Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch | ||
| The longest officially-recognised place name in the United Kingdom. | ||
| Lost counties, cities, and towns of Virginia | All the places that are no longer found in Virginia, USA – and a few that never were – including Walton's Mountain and Illinois County (currently the home of Chicago, Illinois). | |
| Mill Ends Park | The smallest park in the world – 452 in² (0.3 m²) – located in Portland, Oregon. | |
| Mojave phone booth | A public phone booth that stood for several years in the middle of a desert, miles away from any roads or other structures. | |
| Moresnet | A tiny European region (approx. 3.5 km²) that existed for a century as neutral territory between Germany and Belgium. | |
| Original Spanish Kitchen | A Los Angeles restaurant that suddenly and unexpectedly closed in the early 1960s, giving rise to an urban legend about the fate of its proprietors. The restaurant's contents – even as far as the place settings – remained untouched for decades. | |
| Reality Checkpoint | A lamp-post with its own name. | |
| Ryugyong Hotel | It would be the world's tallest hotel, except it has no windows, fittings, fixtures, ... | |
| Sealand | A micronation located six miles (10 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England, whose population rarely exceeds five. | |
| Sedlec Ossuary | A Christian chapel decorated by the bones of approximately 40,000 people. | |
| Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu | ||
| A small hill with a big name in New Zealand. | ||
| Tree That Owns Itself | An oak tree in Athens, Georgia that is popularly regarded as owning itself. | |
| UFO-Memorial Ängelholm | A memorial to a reputed UFO landing in Sweden. | |
| Winchester Mystery House | A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles | |
| Zzyzx, California | The location of Zzyzx Road, which alphabetically was once the last street name in the world. | |
Numbers and dates
Unusual days, chronologies and mathematics.
| -0 | Zero has a negative flavor in the worlds of computing, experimental science and statistical mechanics. |
| Vorlage:FA-star 0.999... | A recurring decimal which is exactly equal to 1 |
| Bacon number | The degree of separation between Kevin Bacon and another actor (parrotted from the Erdos number) |
| Calculator spelling | Something you may've seen at school. |
| Chrismukkah | A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C. |
| Erdos–Bacon number | Combination of the degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon and mathematician Paul Erdos |
| February 30 | Throughout history, some nations have had thirty days in February. |
| Festivus | An unusual holiday inspired by the television show Seinfeld. |
| Illegal prime | Does the US government forbid knowledge of the existence of certain prime numbers? |
| Indiana Pi Bill | A notorious attempt to legislate the value of pi |
| International Talk Like a Pirate Day | Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19. |
| Manhattanhenge | Twice every year, the setting sun aligns with Manhattan's street grid. |
| Mathematical jokes | Mathematics can be funny? |
| New Chronology (Fomenko) | An attempt to rewrite world history by Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, a Russian mathematician who claims that Jesus was the same person as Pope Gregory VII and a few others beside. |
| Numbers station | "[Two bars of The Lincolnshire Poacher play] ¡Atención! ¡Atención! One, four, seventeen, twenty-four..." |
| Objects dropped on New Year's Eve | Curious local imitations of the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year's Eve. |
| Phantom time hypothesis | A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Thus the year 2000 was actually 1703. |
| Pi Day | The day – March 14 – on which the constant p is celebrated. |
| Minkowski's question mark function | A function with an unusual notation and possessing unusual fractional properties. |
| Time Cube | Time is cubic, not linear. There are four simultaneous days in a single rotation of the Earth. Maybe. |
| Undecimber | In Java, the thirteenth month of the year. |
| Year 10,000 problem | The collective name for all potential software bugs that will emerge as the need to express years with five digits arises. |
| Year zero | Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1? |
| Zeroth | An ordinal number popular in computing and related cultures. |
See also
- Category:Integers for other numbers with curious properties.
Language
Unusual words, phrases, names, dialects and codes.
| Apples and oranges | According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought. |
| Behind the sofa | Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults. |
| Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. | A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about buffalo buffaloing buffalo. |
| Colorless green ideas sleep furiously | A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical. |
| Cadigan | Not that garment worn by your grandfather or Fred Rogers, but any of those words such as thingamajig, doohickey, whatchamacallit, ... |
| Dord | A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939. |
| The dozens | A usually good-natured African American ritual in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback. |
| Engrish | Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases. |
| ETAOIN SHRDLU | Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting. |
| Fictitious entry | Maybe you think this entry is one. |
| Faux Cyrillic | Give text some of that ?ussia? flavour. |
| Fnord | Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordianists. |
| Heavy metal umlaut | Gïvë thë lögö för yöür hëävy mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänic fëël. |
| Hyphen War | A dash between communism and independence. |
| Inherently funny word | Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle, wankel, ... |
| Intentionally blank page | The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank". |
| Latin profanity | Latin for the profane. |
| Longest word in English | Floccinaucinihilipilification, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other contenders. |
| Markovian parallax denigrate | We don't know. Neither does anyone else. Or do they? |
| Nucular | An intentional misspelling of the word nuclear to reference a common mispronunciation of the word. |
| Oink | Oinking transliterated to Swedish, Russian and Korean. |
| Phaistos Disc | Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs. |
| Pompatus | Steve Miller has much to answer for... |
| RAS syndrome | An example of RAS. |
| Shit happens | An existential observation of life's imperfections, albeit not eloquent. |
| Siamese twins in the English language | Conjoined words. |
| Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George" | An association formed to promote the elimination of referring to railway sleeping car porters by the name "George" regardless of their actual name. |
| Toynbee tiles | Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages. |
| Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? | A French phrase, meaning "Do you want to sleep with me?", popularized by the song Lady Marmalade. |
| Vorlage:FA-star Voynich manuscript | An undeciphered illustrated book written four hundred or so years ago, by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet. |
See also
- List of English words containing a Q not followed by a U
- Rules of thumb
- List of words without vowel letters
Names
People and things that have unusual names, but are otherwise unextraordinary.
| Dick Assman | A Saskatchewan service station owner whose name garnered international attention in 1995. |
| Nicholas Barbon | No, Nicholas is not an unusual name, but there is more to it... |
| Bill Gates' flower fly | A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates. |
| Setaceous Hebrew Character | A European agricultural pest with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. |
| Strigiphilus garylarsoni | A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame. |
| Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 | |
| A name, pronounced "Albin", intended for a Swedish child by his parents in May 1996. | |
| Thursday October Christian | The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty. |
| Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft | |
| An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube. | |
| GoldenPalace.com Monkey | A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com internet casino. |
| Covered smut, False loose smut and Loose smut | You may snicker now, but if you had any one of those, I guarantee you wouldn't be laughing much. |
| Sonic hedgehog | A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog. |
| Jennifer 8. Lee | A New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight. |
| Adolf Lu Hitler Marak | A politician in an Indian state where people are commonly given names such as "Lenin R. Marak", "Stalin L. Nangmin", "Frankenstein W. Momin" and "Tony Curtis Lyngdoh". He claims to be "happy with [his] name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies". |
| Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3 | Actually, it's a polypeptide. |
| Optimus Prime | The name of a U.S. Army National Guard firefighter in Ohio. |
| Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel | |
| A candidate for the British parliament in 1981. Inspired by a Monty Python sketch, in a bizarre case of life imitating art. | |
| Zyzyxia lundellii and Zyzzyva | The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively. |
See also
Science
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Unusual articles dealing with science, medicine, anatomy, psychology, logic, physics, cosmology, and various pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories and hoaxes. For military science and technology, see military section.
| Album graecum | White dog dung, mixed with honey and used as a treatment for throat and skin problems. |
| Alien hand syndrome | An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take a life of its own. |
| Apollo moon landing hoax accusations | Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick. |
| Autofellatio/Autocunnilingus | Acts of oral self-stimulation. |
| Bloop | Does a mystery sound from the bottom of the sea indicate that the Kraken may awake...? |
| Bristol Stool Scale | Taking a close look at a toilet bowl for the sake of science. The scale was inspired by eye charts. |
| Buttered cat paradox | If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...? |
| Capgras delusion | A rare disorder where a person believes that a close acquaintance, usually a family member or spouse, has been replaced by an identical-looking imposter. |
| Colors of noise | Including white, pink, purple, blue... |
| The Complexity of Songs | About a treatise on space complexity of songs by venerable computer scientist Donald Knuth |
| Cosmic latte | The colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white. |
| Dancing mania | Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries. |
| Danger triangle of the face | This ominous-sounding term refers to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area which makes it possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain. |
| Vladimir Demikhov | Eminent Soviet biologist, and father of the canine head transplant. |
| Dibs | Dibs on the front seat! |
| Dihydrogen monoxide | A commonly-used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to erosion, drowning, acid rain, and countless other maladies. |
| Dimples of Venus | For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face. |
| Drake's Plate of Brass | A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry. |
| Elvis taxon | A taxon (species, genus, family etc.) that is believed to be extinct but is falsely claimed by someone to still exist. |
| Embryo space colonization | A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots. |
| Emerald Cockroach Wasp | A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too. |
| Exploding head syndrome | Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two. |
| Fatal hilarity | Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter? |
| Female hysteria | A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm. |
| Fictional chemical substance | Compounds and minerals that exist only in fiction. |
| Five-second rule | The belief that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds. |
| Flat Earth society | A British society that holds the belief that Earth is flat, not spherical. |
| Flynn effect | The world is steadily getting smarter. |
| Foreign accent syndrome | A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent. |
| Fregoli delusion | The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise. |
| Phineas Gage | A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience. |
| Gay bomb | A potential non-lethal chemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing, that could be dropped on enemy troops to cause "homosexual behaviour". |
| Gerbilling | An urban legend about a sexual practice purportedly observed by Richard Gere, among others. |
| Gimli Glider | Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider. |
| Guided rat | Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand." |
| David Hahn | A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts. |
| Homokaasu | "Gay gas"—mysterious chemical substance conspiracy theory. |
| Horrendous Space Kablooie | A more evocative name for the Big Bang, from the comic Calvin and Hobbes. |
| The Hum | A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations. |
| Human penis size | Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends. |
| Hypertrichosis | Also known as "Human Werewolf Syndrome". |
| Vorlage:FA-starInfinite monkey theorem | An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will produce all possible written texts. |
| ISO 3103 | The ISO standard cup of tea. |
| Lighting farts | The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence. |
| List of chemical compounds with unusual names | The name says it all. |
| Magic smoke | An alternative theory of integrated circuits: once the smoke is released they no longer work. |
| Maggot therapy | The use of fly larvae in medical practice. |
| The Mad Gasser of Mattoon | A figure said to have terrorized the town of Mattoon, Illinois in 1944. |
| Male lactation | Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it. Go ahead and try! |
| Male pregnancy | Don't expect humans to do this, but seahorses can. |
| Maple syrup urine disease | Not quite as tasty as it sounds. |
| Lina Medina | A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was 5 years old, becoming the youngest-known human mother ever. |
| Mole Day | A Day in celebration of Avogadro's number, 6.02×1023. |
| Moon for sale | Numerous schemes have been hatched to try to sell people portions of the moon. |
| Mucophagy | The consumption of mucus. |
| Mumbai "Sweet" Seawater Incident | Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle. |
| Nacirema | A little known tribe in America that... oh wait, it's "American" spelt backwards. |
| Natasha Demkina | Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision. |
| Navel lint | A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it. |
| Nose grease | Grease obtained from the surface of the human nose. |
| Nose-picking | Also known as rhinotillexis, Greek for "ewwwwwwww!!" |
| Panamax | The maximum size a ship can be and still fit through the Panama Canal. |
| Parasitic twin | A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially-formed fetus developing within the body of the other. |
| Passenger train toilets | Why passengers must be discouraged from flushing or using toilets while the train is at a station. |
| ’Pataphysics | A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. |
| Pathological science | A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field. |
| Penis panic | A colloquial term referring to a type of mass hysteria or panic where males grow fearful of removal or shrinking of the penis. |
| Photic sneeze reflex | People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light. |
| Pykrete | A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound. |
| Quantum immortality | An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever. |
| Queens Giant | A tulip tree located in northeastern Queens, New York, that is confirmed to be the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area, as well as the tallest tree in the NY metro area. As of 2005, it is over 450 years old and 134 feet tall, and was alive before the birth of Shakespeare. |
| Raining animals | When it's literally raining cats and dogs. |
| Red rain in Kerala | Did blood rain from the sky? |
| Reversed map | A reversed map of the world, against conventional projections which have north at the top. |
| Schmidt Sting Pain Index | Created by an entomologist, after having been stung by almost everything, to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale. |
| School bus yellow | A color especially formulated for use on U.S. school buses. |
| List of sex positions | A comprehensive guide featuring extensive hand-drawn illustrations. |
| The size of Wales | A new measurement invented just for the TV news. |
| Vorlage:FA-starS. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 | Not much more can be said than the title. |
| Slinky seismology | Using slinkys to demonstrate earthquakes and other seismological events. |
| Smoot | A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge. |
| Sokal Affair | A famous hoax played by physicist Alan Sokal on the postmodernist humanities academic world. |
| Target fixation | To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it. |
| Toilet-related injury | Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends. |
| Tomacco | One of the few made up words in The Simpsons that resulted in a real life application. |
| Thagomizer | A feature of stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip. |
| Thiotimoline | A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water. |
| Thumb twiddling | An activity that is done with the hands of an individual whereby the fingers are interlocked and the thumbs circle around a common focal point, usually in the middle of the distance between the two thumbs. |
| Mary Tofts | A maidservant who, according to her doctors, gave birth to at least sixteen rabbits. |
| Trepanation | A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness. |
| Triskaidekaphobia | Fear of the number 13. |
| Ulam spiral | A bored mathematician discovers an unusual numerical pattern while doodling. |
| Uncanny Valley | How to measure your emotional response to androids. |
| Unobtainium | A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess. |
| Will Rogers phenomenon | Also known as the Will Rogers paradox; the apparent paradox obtained when moving an element from one set to another set that raises the average values of both sets. |
See also
- Category:Famous body parts—Includes such show-stoppers as Albert Einstein's brain and the Holy Prepuce.
- List of animals displaying homosexual behavior
- List of famous rocks
- List of famous tall women
- List of fictional robots and androids
- List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
- List of polydactyl people
- List of strange units of measurement
Inventions and objects
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Unusual devices, tools, utensils, furniture, machines, and techniques.
| Aglet | The largely unacknowledged invention which revolutionised shoelaces. |
| Ampelmännchen | The East German little man on the traffic signal. |
| Brannock Device | The foot-measuring device found in shoe stores everywhere. |
| British Rail flying saucer | Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the 10:13 to Venus. |
| Canard Digérateur | Or "Digesting Duck", an automaton built to simulate a duck eating, digesting, and excretion. |
| Centennial Light | A hundred year old light bulb that has been burning nonstop for 30 years. |
| Digital sundial | Unlike an analog sundial, a clock that indicates the current time with numerals formed by the sunlight striking it. |
| Dreamachine | A device made with a light bulb and a record turntable that reportedly induces lucid dreaming. |
| Dymaxion car | A 1933 concept car with 3 wheels. It was 20 feet long, carried up to 11 passengers, could go at speeds of up to 120mph and had a steering wheel that turned the car in the opposite direction. |
| Fictional elements, isotopes and atomic particles | Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals. |
| History of perpetual motion machines | The concept has eluded and baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years. They do not exist. |
| Hollowed-out book | Why books are popular in prisons. |
| Human mail | Why buy an expensive ticket when you can go by mail? |
| Vorlage:FA-star Japanese toilet | The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights. |
| Jesus nut | The bolt on the top of a helicopter that connects it to the rotor blades. |
| Killdozer | Why it's always a bad idea to put the guy next door out of business if he has a ten-ton armor-plated bulldozer in his garage. |
| Knork | In contrast to the spork, here's a knife/fork combo. |
| Koteka | An unusual traditional garment of western New Guinea, also known as the "penis gourd". |
| Lloyds Bank turd | Possibly the largest example of fossilised human faeces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England. |
| The Mississauga Blob | A flaming object that fell from the heavens onto a back-yard picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in 1979. The mystery of its true nature drew worldwide attention and speculation. Turns out it was a frisbee. |
| Nazi UFOs | Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there. |
| Pimpmobile | A large luxury automobile that has been heavily customized in a garish, extravagant style to advertise its owner's wealth and importance. |
| Pointy hat | A distinctive feature of a wide range of people during history. |
| Rocket mail | The delivery of mail by rocket or missile, attempted by various organisations in many different countries, with varying levels of success. |
| R/P FLIP | A manned ship designed to be capsized at a 90° angle for weeks on end. |
| Shipping container architecture | The concept and art of using shipping containers to build stuff. |
| South Pointing Chariot | An ancient Chinese mechanical compass which took a millennium to reproduce. |
| Space advertising | Plans to launch giant billboards into space. |
| Spork | A cross between a spoon and a fork. |
| Spanish announcers' table | Staple prop in destructive professional wrestling bouts. |
| Tin-foil hat | Headgear that allegedly prevents a person from having their minds read or controlled. |
| Toilet roll holder | A surprisingly complex device for holding a roll of toilet paper. |
| Whizzinator | A fake penis used to beat drug tests (complete with dried urine, heater, syringe). Comes in white, tan, latino, brown, and black. |
| Xianxingzhe | A Chinese robot, according to the Japanese, that will save its country from corporate capitalism with its crotch cannon. |
See also
Computers, the Internet and games
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| AOL disk collecting | A hobby in collecting AOL software disks, infamous for its excessive distribution. |
| All your base are belong to us | An Engrish phrase that originated in the 1989 video game, Zero Wing and sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002. |
| Any key | You don't actually have to press it, so don't bother looking. You will be surprised which one it is! |
| Archimedes Plutonium | An eccentric Usenet contributor who claims that the universe is a giant plutonium atom and that he is the world's greatest scientist. |
| Badger Badger Badger | A Macromedia Flash animation consisting mainly of images of badgers doing calisthenics, a mushroom in front of a tree and a snake in the desert. |
| Bang Cartoon | A website which features satirical Flash cartoons based on the NFL. |
| Bert is Evil | A popular humour website that depicts the Muppet character in various Photoshopped images alongside Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and others. |
| Blinkenlights | DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! |
| The Book of Mozilla | A well-known computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of browsers. |
| Boss key | A special key or key combination used in computer games to quickly hide the game from superiors or coworkers. |
| Cho Aniki | Probably more homoeroticism than any other video game, featuring phallic personifications that shoot white laser beams from their heads. |
| The computers take over | A science fiction scenario in which a supercomputer becomes intelligent and views humans as a threat to its safety. The computer will then try to wipe out the human race, or at least take control of it. Examples include The Terminator and The Matrix, among others. |
| Crazy Frog | One man's moped impression that went on to earn millions as a ring tone. |
| The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science | A 1990 academic paper which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness. |
| Dogcow | A glyph from an old Apple font representing a creature that makes the noise "Moof!" |
| Don't Buy This | A rare example of truth in advertising. |
| elgooG | Google's mirror image version, literally: all letters are displayed in reverse order. |
| Esoteric programming language | Refers to programming languages designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as jokes, and not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming. |
| E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) | A notoriously poor video game made for the Atari 2600 and subsequently used in a landfill. |
| Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten | The internet meme relating to a photoshopped image. |
| FWAKs | Fake FAQs for video games. Not to be confused with IAQs (Infrequently Asked Questions.) |
| Gibs | The little bits of gore you get when someone or something in a video game explodes. |
| Glitch City | A glitch-filled city found in the first Pokémon games. |
| Goatse.cx | One of the most infamous Internet shock sites. |
| Hollywood operating system | It always works very well... except when the plot says otherwise. |
| Hong Kong 97 | A video game where the dead Deng Xiaoping is a weapon of mass destruction. |
| Infrequently Asked Questions (IAQs) | FAQs for fake video games. Not to be confused with FWAKs or Indoor air quality. |
| INTERCAL | A programming language that uses rabbit ears. |
| Internet phenomenon | Its name is Legion, for it is many. |
| IP over Avian Carriers | An internet protocol for sending data packets using homing pigeons. |
| JFK: Reloaded | A video game released in 2004 where the player gets to assassinate president John F. Kennedy. |
| John Titor | The name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001. |
| Lenna | How an image of a nude Playboy model became the industry-standard digital image compression test subject. |
| Mark V Shaney | A fake Usenet user whose computer-generated postings were created using Markov chain techniques. |
| Meow Wars | Perhaps the largest and longest-lasting flame war in the history of the Internet. |
| Minus world | A glitch in the original Super Mario Bros. game. |
| Monster infighting | Demon civil war. |
| Office Assistant | Microsoft's anthropomorphic paperclip that pops up in Word 97. |
| O RLY? | The sarcastic owl image that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous on the Net. |
| OS-tan | A small Internet phenomenon where certain types of software (including various Microsoft and Linux operating systems) are depicted as young anime women. |
| Polybius | Video game, urban legend, and deadly killer, all rolled into one. |
| Pwn | A term used by the Internet gaming subculture which means to beat or dominate an opponent. |
| Robotic unicycle | The ongoing academic effort to teach robots to ride unicycles. |
| Super Mario 128 | A mysterious Mario game supposedly in production. |
| Tourist guy | The picture of a Hungarian man and how it relates to 9/11. |
| Trojan room coffee pot | The fascinating target of the world's first webcam at the computer science department of Cambridge University. |
| Uncyclopedia | According to Wikipedia, the Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia. According to Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia is a parody of Uncyclopedia. |
| Utah teapot | A 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community). |
| Wingdings | A Microsoft Windows font that has inspired multiple conspiracy theories. |
| You are X and I claim my five pounds | A British stock phrase commonly used in online discussion forums such as Usenet. |
See also
- List of fictional electronic games
- List of video games considered the worst ever
- List of snow events in Florida
Popular culture, entertainment and the arts
 |
| The Aristocrats | A joke considered to be both "the world's funniest" and "the world's worst." Also a 2005 documentary of the same name. |
| Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them! | T-shirt slogan aimed towards young women, rocks aimed towards young men. |
| The Bus Uncle | A Hong Kong resident gets into an uncomfortably tense argument with a fellow passenger - all caught on video... |
| George P. Burdell | A fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927, and who has been continuously enrolled at the school ever since. |
| Can't sleep, clown will eat me | A stock phrase that's become a popular joke-explanation for insomnia. |
| Cartoon physics | An explanation of the laws of physics as they have come to be (mis)represented in cartoons. |
| Cuteness in Japanese culture | It's not just Hello Kitty. |
| Conan the Librarian | A perennial parody of Conan the Barbarian that has appeared in film, television, comics, and fan fiction. |
| Cosplay | A Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games. |
| Croydon facelift | A hairstyle peculiar to parts of England. |
| Donkey punch | Allegedly a sex move involving punching one's partner in the back of the head during intercourse. |
| Drop bear | A fictitious Australian marsupial supposedly related to the koala. |
| Evil clown | A recent development in American popular culture in which the playful trope of the clown is rendered as disturbing through the use of dark humor and horror elements. |
| Evil Overlord List | How to avoid the movie clichés. |
| Exploding head | A gesture, usually fatal, of extreme bewilderment or anger. |
| Fuck for Forest | Do your bit to save the rainforest — have an orgy! |
| Garden Gnome Liberation Front | Vive la révolution des nains! |
| Noël Godin | Belgian man who regularly attacks powerful figures such as Bill Gates with pies. |
| Hammerspace | An extra-dimensional storage area used to explain how cartoon or anime characters can sometimes produce objects seemingly out of thin air. |
| Happy Corner | An East Asian hazing ritual. |
| Happy slapping | Hurting someone while taking a picture of them, usually with a camera phone. |
| Human rainbow | A huge gathering of colours. |
| Interactive Urine Communicator | Star Trek technology? Not exactly. |
| Kayfabe | In professional wrestling, the portrayal of events within the industry as real.. |
| List of problems solved by MacGyver | For example, plugging a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate. |
| Love padlocks | A fence in southern Hungarian town Pécs where lovers clamp padlocks |
| Making a face | A Western term for creating odd appearances of the face. |
| Manscaping | A shorthand for "landscaping" the male body, by shaving, trimming, waxing, or brushing the body hair, usually in an artful manner aimed at presenting that body in the best light possible. |
| Masturbate-a-thon | A charity fundraiser that involves self-pleasure. |
| Merhan Karimi Nasseri | An Iranian refugee who has been living in Charles de Gaulle Airport since 1988. |
| Meta-joke | A joke that refers to itself as the joke. |
| Metafiction | Fictional fiction. |
| Metrophile | A person who loves underground railway systems. |
| Mile High Club | Soaring members. |
| Moe anthropomorphism | In this time and age even a washing machine can be the girl of your dreams. |
| Mooning | The act of exposing one's bare buttocks. |
| Muffin top | A marketing mishap, many well meaning young women, and vanity came together to form this demographic. |
| Napoleon in popular culture | Fictional characters believing they are Napoleon are often used to suggest mental ill health. |
| Colleen Nestler | A woman who sent "thoughts of love" to David Letterman and then tried to get Arizona to issue a restraining order against him. Surprisingly, they granted it. |
| No soap radio | A prank joke intended to fool one of its listeners into believing that it is a joke. |
| Pen spinning | An activity in which assorted tricks are used to manipulate a pen in aesthetically pleasing ways. |
| Le Pétomane | A French entertainer famous in Victorian times for being able to break wind at will. |
| Pillow fight flash mob | Wherein a group of up to several hundred people suddenly congregate on an area and proceed to fight each other with pillows. |
| Portable toilet tipping | Tipping over portable toilets for amusement. |
| Professional farter | Paid to be flatulent |
| Aron Ralston | One tough guy who, in order to escape from death, cut off his own arm with a dull knife after a boulder fell on it. |
| Shoe flinging | The practice of throwing footwear, whether for humorous or political purposes. |
| Size queen | Slang term originally used in the gay community to refer to individuals with a preference for larger-than-average (male) genitalia, more recently applied to women with such a preference as well. |
| Toilet humour | Humor based upon bodily functions. |
| Treacle mining | The fictitious mining of treacle (molasses) in a raw form similar to coal. |
| Walking like an Egyptian | Ancient Egyptians walked just like everyone else, but modern music hall performers and catwalk models have walked in a quite unusual fashion. |
| Larry Walters | Successfully piloted a lawn chair to 16,000 feet over Los Angeles. |
| Wellesley College Senate bus | Also known as the Fuck Truck |
| The World Famous Bushman | A street entertainer in San Francisco who makes a living by pretending to be a bush. |
Art and literature
 |
Unusual artists and authors, art and literary movements, artistic works such as sculptures, photography, and paintings, literary works such as novels and poems, fusions of the two such as comics, and other artistic and literary concepts.
| 112 Gripes about the French | A handbook produced to help American soldiers understand the French. |
| Anthropodermic bibliopegy | The practice of binding books in human skin. |
| Arseface | A comic book character from none other than DC Comics |
| Atlanta Nights | A group of science fiction authors get together and deliberately write an absolutely horrible novel in order to fool and embarrass a "vanity publisher". |
| Banksy | An artist who smuggles his works into world-class museums. |
| Battle of the Cowshed and Battle of the Windmill | Two famous battles from Animal Farm, complete with infoboxes listing casualties on both sides. |
| The Book of Heroic Failures | A book which glories in failure. Started off The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. The book was a success and thus declared a "failure as a failure". |
| Clan McDuck | A fictional family in the style of a Scottish clan, from which a great number of Walt Disney Company's comic book characters held their origin. |
| Henry Darger | Writer of a 15,000-page manuscript with along with several thousand watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story, who went to Mass several times daily. |
| Dinny the Dinosaur | A larger-than-life, 150-ton sculpture of a brontosaurus in the desert of Southern California west of Palm Springs. Dinny's companion is "Mr. Rex," a 150-ton sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. |
| Early American editions of The Hobbit | Now collectors items because of their printing differences. |
| English as She Is Spoke | A 19th-century Portuguese-English conversational guide and phrase book that is regarded as a classic of unintentional humour due to its overly literal translations. |
| Evil laugh | Muhahahahaha and the like. |
| The Eye of Argon | An infamously bad heroic fantasy novella, written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then. |
| Fallen Astronaut | a small statuette which is the only piece of art on the moon. |
| The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women | A 1558 diatribe by John Knox against Mary, Queen of Scots and Mary Tudor. |
| Gadsby | A 50,100-word long book famous for not using the letter "e". |
| Gävle goat | A giant straw Yule Goat that is the target of frequent arson attacks and vandalism. |
| Gorillas in comics | A curious abundance of gorillas in comic book plots during the Silver Age of Comics. |
| The Headington Shark | Oxford man has had a 25 foot long sculpture of a shark embedded headfirst into the roof of his unassuming house since 1986. |
| The Incredible Popeman | The name of a Colombian comic book by Rodolfo Leon Valencia being released in tribute to Pope John Paul II, reincarnating him as a superhero who uses various superpowers to battle Satan and the forces of darkness. |
| Jenny Everywhere | An open-source webcomic character. |
| Largest photographs in the world | Includes information on print and digital photos that are reputedly the world's largest. |
| Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den | A poem written by a Chinese poet in Classical Chinese. It can be comprehended and understood by all who understand the language, despite the fact that it consists entirely of the word "shi" repeated 92 times in different tones. Also known as "Shi Shì shí shi shi". |
| Marlovian theory | A theory which states that Christopher Marlowe's unnatural death was a hoax and that he continued to write and publish under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare". |
| Mexican Perforation | A French artistic movement that expresses itself in underground places. |
| Naked Came the Stranger | Journalists prove a point when their intentionally awful sex novel becomes a bestseller. |
| Saddam Hussein's novels | Crimes against literature? |
| Suicide Squid | A fictional character from a fictional comic. |
| Shakespearean authorship | Proven by circumstantial evidence, a great conspiracy which concealed the identity of the true author of "Shakespeare's" works, implying that all contemporary references to Shakespeare's authorship were fraudulent or mistaken. Can you guess who the secret author is? |
| Tillie | An odd painting of a grinning face, that used to be on the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park, New Jersey before it was demolished. |
| Le Train de Nulle Part | A French novel, 233 pages long, written without verbs. |
| List of books with the subtitle "Virtue Rewarded" |
Music
Unusual musicians, songs, instruments, styles of music, and music-related articles.
| ABC-DEF-GHI | A song sung by Big Bird of Sesame Street where he tries to discern the meaning of a very long word (which is actually the alphabet). (This is not an article about the other, more popular, alphabet song.) |
| Animutation | The practice of taking lyrics of foreign songs, "mishearing" them into English, and producing a flash video to go along with it. |
| As Slow As Possible | A piece of music to be performed until 2640. |
| Dark Side of the Rainbow | What happens when you mix Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz? |
| Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester | An Austrian orchestra whose musical instruments are made solely from vegetables. |
| Earworm | A term used for an annoying song that a person cannot get out of their head. |
| Elvis sightings | There are many who still believe. |
| Florence Foster Jenkins | An American soprano famous for her singing ability or lack thereof. |
| Hitler Has Only Got One Ball | Was the führer only half a man? |
| Industrial musical | A musical production performed for the employees of a business, intended to create a feeling of being part of a team, and/or to educate and motivate the management and salespeople to improve sales and profit. |
| Jandek | A prolific and pseudonymous singer/songwriter active since 1978 who only grants the occasional interview and has never provided any biographical information. |
| Manualism | The little-known art of playing music by squeezing air through the hands. |
| Musikalisches Würfelspiel | A system written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in which the musical piece is decided randomly by playing dice. |
| P Funk mythology | An article about the whimsical universe surrounding the P Funk all stars. |
| Paul Is Dead | Was Paul McCartney replaced by a lookalike in the 1960s? |
| Pink Floyd pigs | The band's recurring props and references. |
| Tromboon | An unusual instrument, with an even more unusual . |
| William Shatner's musical career | His rendition of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds regularly wins radio station competitions to find the "worst music of all time". |
| You Suffer | At a full 1.316 seconds in length, the shortest song of all time |
| List of music genres suffixed -core | |
| List of self-referential songs | "Here's a little song I wrote..." |
| List of songs in English labeled the worst ever | |
| List of songs whose title constitutes the entire lyrics | |
| List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks | |
| List of songs about masturbation | Wink wink, nudge nudge. |
Television and film
Unusual actors, television series, movies, documentaries, and related articles.
| Alternative 3 | An April Fools joke by an ITV science show leads many to believe that scientists were being kidnapped to prepare for the colonization of Mars. |
| Amish episode | A stereotypical episode of an American or Canadian science-fiction or horror television series that centers around the Amish or people meant to represent the Amish. |
| Atuk | The only known, and most famous, cursed movie script...which, urban legend has it, was responsible for the deaths of several prominent and portly comedians and maybe a couple of their friends. |
| The Canadian Conspiracy | A mockumentary released in 1985 that asserts that Canada is subverting the United States by taking over its media. |
| The Cure for Insomnia | A movie that runs for 85 hours. |
| Jumping the shark | Metaphor for the point at which one can speak of a TV show as having had its best days behind it. |
| Michael Larson | A man who won over $100,000 in an American quiz show because he was able to notice a pattern in the flashing lights on the "Big Board" |
| Kin-yan Lee | A Hong Kong actor repeatedly cast in Stephen Chow films as a nosepicking, bearded transvestite. |
| The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World | A movie that runs for 48 hours. |
| MacGuffin | It doesn't matter what it is, really, as long as it drives the plot of a movie along. |
| The Metric Marvels | Nothing says 1970s in the U.S. more than a spinoff of Schoolhouse Rock with superheroes who teach the metric system. |
| Mexican standoff | Suspenseful (and not Mexican in the slightest) movie situation frequently used in old spaghetti Westerns, but revived by directors such as Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, in which two or more characters have weapons aimed at each other. |
| Monkey Tennis | Hypothetically the worst television programme it is possible to make. |
| Mull of Kintyre test | When can a human penis be broadcast on British television? |
| The Puppy Channel | This cable television channel had a simple premise: nothing but puppies, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. |
| Shaken, not stirred | Why 007 prefers his martini shaken. |
| Smell-O-Vision | a system designed to enhance films with odors. Used once for the 1960 film Scent of Mystery and never again. |
| Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome | a tragic condition suffered by some young characters on soap operas. |
| Spaghetti trees | place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. |
| Stay Puft Marshmallow Man | Large marshmallow mascot seen in the film Ghostbusters. |
| Stinking badges | Something nobody needs. Possibly the most frequently quoted and misquoted line from a movie ever. |
| The K Foundation burn a million quid | A documentary film of the K Foundation burning a million pounds in cash. |
| Turn-On | An ABC comedy series that was cancelled even before the first episode had finished. |
| Very special episode | a genre of television episodes with controversial life lessons interweaved into the storyline, popularized by Blossom |
| Vrillon | A broadcast from another world, or someone's ingenious hoax? You decide. |
| Tommy Westphall | How a child with autism, and Detective Munch, are responsible for more than 200 TV series. |
| Wilhelm scream | A stock sound effect first recorded in 1951 and used in dozens of films (including Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Kill Bill). |
| Culturally significant phrases from The Simpsons | |
| List of Hitchcock cameo appearances | |
| List of films by gory death scene | |
| List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck" | |
| Films considered the worst ever | |
| List of television series cancelled after one episode |
Food and drink
 |
 |
| Alice B. Toklas brownie | A "magic" cookie containing cannabis. (The article includes a link to a recipe on Wikibooks). |
| Anna Ayala | Infamous for her numerous tort lawsuits against corporations, notably the chili finger allegation against fast-food restaurant Wendy's. |
| Bird's nest soup | Asian delicacy. |
| Boneless Fish | A frozen fish scaled, gutted and deboned and then glued to its original shape using a food-grade enzyme without cooking. |
| Bread clip | A device used to hold plastic bags (usually those containing sliced bread) closed. |
| Carmine | A common food dye manufactured from insects. |
| Casu marzu | A cheese with an aging process involving the deliberate introduction of cheese fly larvae, which are only optionally removed before consumption. |
| Chubby bunny | A common (but sometimes lethal!) game played with marshmallows. |
| Civet coffee | isn't coffee made from civets, but rather from ordinary coffee beans the civet has, well, excreted. |
| Cola wars | A marketing battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. |
| Deep fried Mars bar | A Scottish delicacy. |
| Deep fried Twinkie | An American delicacy. |
| Gay Fuel | An energy drink marketed towards the gay community. |
| Flies graveyard | A delicacy in the United Kingdom. |
| Fried spider | is exactly what it sounds like and is a regional delicacy in Cambodia. |
| Hufu | The tofu product designed to look and taste like human flesh. |
| If by whisky | a famous speech successfully both attacking and defending hooch. |
| Michel Lotito | Known as Monsieur Mangetout, because of his strange diet. |
| McDonald's urban legends | Is that worm meat in your Big Mac? |
| McWords | Words created in popular culture as a result of the influence of McDonald's Restaurants, e.g. McJob or McMansion. |
| Mentos eruption | Mentos + Diet soda = geyser. |
| Monkey brain | A Chinese delicacy that has been made famous through films. |
| OpenCola | The world's first open-source beverage. |
| Pizza delivery | The process, perils, and pop-culture paeans to getting the hot cheesy dish to your door. |
| Sealed crustless sandwich | A patented peanut butter and jelly sandwich. |
| Snake wine | A type of Vietnamese wine that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle. |
| Vorlage:FA-star Spoo | the most delicious foodstuff amongst all alien species of Babylon 5 |
| Stinky tofu | Fermented soybean curd is apparently a delicacy for some people. One external link describes its scent as "a used tampon baking in the desert." |
| Takeru Kobayashi | A slightly-built Japanese competitive eater. He has consumed 53 1/2 Nathan's Famous hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes (the world record) and holds a host of other eating records. |
| Tea Sucking | An Australian method for drinking tea through biscuits. |
| Turducken | A de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. |
| Sonya Thomas | What weighs 105 pounds and eats more hot dogs in 12 minutes than most people do all summer? |
| Vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler | some may find it abnormal for such a cruel dictator, but Hitler is widely believed to have been a vegetarian. However, some remain doubtful. |
| Where's the beef? | A stock phrase synonymous with "Where's the substance?", popularized by senior citizen Clara Peller starting in 1984. |
| Who ate all the pies? | A chant sung by football fans in England and Scotland, aimed at supposedly overweight footballers, officials or opposing supporters. |
| List of misleading food names | Such as Welsh rabbit or Bombay duck. |
Animals
| Adwaita | Possibly the oldest creature of modern times, this 255-year-old tortoise was the former pet of Robert Clive of the British East India Company. |
| Animals in space | A definitive list on the use of animals in various space programs. |
| Apophallation | If your genitalia get too badly tangled, it may be a good idea to carry a spare. |
| Jack Black (rat catcher) | Queen Victoria's officially appointed rat-catcher and mole destroyer. |
| Bovine bingo | A different way to play bingo. |
| Cattle mutilation | The alleged killing and then subsequent mutilation of cattle, sheep or horses by unknown perpetrators (possibly aliens). |
| Chicken hypnotism | Have you ever wanted to hypnotize a chicken? If not, why not? |
| Chicken sexer | A person who has been specially trained to determine the sex of chicken hatchlings. |
| Chuman | a hypothetical human/chimpanzee hybrid. |
| Cindy the Dolphin | Bottlenose Dolphin who (unofficially) married a 41-year-old woman in 2005. |
| Colby Nolan | A housecat who was awarded an MBA degree by Trinity Southern University in 2004. |
| Cow magnet | A plastic-coated magnet fed to cows to prevent gut damage by ingested bits of metal |
| Cow tipping | The act of pushing over sleeping cows. |
| Exploding animals | Such as:
|
| Fainting goats | A breed of goat whose muscles freeze for about 10 seconds when the goat is startled. |
| Hardware disease | A condition in bovines caused by ingesting stray bits of metal. |
| Lin Wang | A Taiwanese elephant made famous for his participation in the Second Sino-Japanese War. |
| Mike the Headless Chicken | A rooster that lived for 18 months with its head cut off. |
| Nils Olav | A King Penguin who is Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Norwegian Guard. |
| Oliver the Chimp | Could Oliver possibly be a human/chimp hybrid? |
| Orbiting Frog Otolith | A NASA frog experiment, sending two bullfrogs into space to test their sense of balance. |
| Owen and Mzee | Hippo and tortoise that befriended each other after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. |
| Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus | An endangered creature, whose major predator is the sasquatch. Apparently. |
| Penis fencing | A literal battle of the sexes between some species of flatworm |
| Phantom kangaroos | They're not just found in Australia. |
| Rhinogradentia | A fictitious mammal order documented by an equally fictitious German naturalist. |
| Russian space dogs | That wacky Cold War! |
| Small shelly fauna | Yes, it's a serious article |
| Stephens Island Wren | Made extinct by one individual and one only: Tibbles, the lighthouse-keeper's pet cat. |
| Sumatran Rat-Monkey | An odd looking fictional creature that made career in the show business. |
| Supernumerary body part | Having an extra body part, be it as simple as an eleventh finger or as extreme as a second head! |
| Timothy (tortoise) | A tortoise that was present during the bombardment of Sevastopol during the Crimean War in 1854 and did not die until 2004. |
| Weasel war dance | The behavior of extremely excited ferrets who are enjoying themselves too much |
| List of U.S. state dinosaurs |
Sports
| 2006 rugby union handbag controversy | The All Blacks performing the Haka with handbags. |
| Steve Bartman | Chicago Cubs fan best known as a scapegoat for the Cubs' failure to advance to the World Series in 2003. |
| Bjørge Lillelien | Norwegian sports commentator whose "your boys took a hell of a beating" comment lives on in British popular culture. |
| Bog snorkelling | The noble art of competitive snorkelling through cold, noxious bog water. |
| Matthew Brimson | English cricketer made famous for a deliberate wardrobe malfunction. |
| Chess boxing | A sport that alternates rounds of speed chess and boxing. |
| Competitive eating | In which the main goal is the quick and vast consumption of food. |
| Conger cuddling | The "most fun a person could have with a dead fish". |
| Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake | An annual event held each May at Cooper's Hill near Gloucester |
| Curse of Billy Penn | A curse allegedly affecting Philadelphia's professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams. |
| Dwarf tossing | A humorous sporting competition where well-padded dwarfs are thrown by competitors. |
| Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards | A British sportsman famous for coming last in the 1988 Winter Olympics ski-jump competition. |
| Extreme ironing | A sport whereby participants take an ironing board to a remote location and iron a few items of clothing. |
| Fierljeppen | A sport from the north of the Netherlands, where the objective is to jump over a trench. |
| Flugtag | Red Bull-sponsored event in which the objective is to fail to fly as spectacularly as possible. (At least that's what the competitors seem to be going for!) |
| Eddie Gaedel | 3'7", 65-pound baseball player. Career on-base percentage: 1.000. |
| Hand of God goal | The most notorious goal in the history of soccer. |
| Hamster racing | A uniquely British response to foot and mouth disease. |
| International Rutabaga Curling Championship | Rutabaga curling originated in the frosty December climes of Ithaca, New York. |
| Jamaican Bobsled Team | the real life inspiration for the film Cool Runnings |
| Jeffrey Maier | The 12-year-old who helped the Yankees win the pennant. |
| Krzyzewskiville | A phenomena related to Duke University basketball. |
| Mendoza Line | Baseball's standard for underperformance. |
| Parkour | An extreme sport originating from French urban areas. |
| Rabbit show jumping | yup, really. |
| Rocket Racing League | It does what it says on the tin. |
| Squirrel fishing | A sport of skill and patience |
| The Play | Before going onto the field for your postgame musical performance, make sure the game is over. |
| Tropical nations at the Winter Olympics | |
| Wife Carrying | A Finnish sport that does exactly what it says (although one need not carry one's own wife) |
| Wooden spoon (award) | A Cambridge University tradition adopted by rugby and rugby league, the Wooden spoon is awarded to the last-placed team in a competition. |
| Zui Quan | an ancient Martial art wherein one imitates the motions of a drunkard. |
Folklore
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| Axhandle hound | One of the many creatures in lumberjack folklore |
| Bird people | The widely recurring motif in legends and fiction of birds who are people, or people who are birds. |
| Bonnacon | A mythical ox which flings burning dung at its enemies from its rear and horn. |
| Dog spinning | Do Bulgarians really twizzle their domestic canines to foretell prosperity? The UK Green Party thinks so, and they're not happy about it. |
| Energy Vampire | A "vampiric" individual that supposedly drains the life-force of other human beings. |
| Flying ointment | A hallucinogenic ointment said to be used by witches in the Early Modern period. |
| Jackalope | A cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope. |
| Liver bird | a legendary cormorant or eagle that is the symbol of a major English city. |
| Liver-Eating Johnson | A 19th-century mountain man with a penchant for revenge and the consumption of livers. |
| Machine Elves | The entities that people claim they become aware of after having taken tryptamine based psychedelic drugs such as DMT. |
| Man-eating tree | a cryptophytological anomaly claimed to have been seen by early travellers to Madagascar. |
| Mermaid Problem | If you fall in love with a mermaid, how do you consummate your love? |
| Monkey-man of New Delhi | Reports in 2001 of a strange monkey-like creature appearing in New Delhi at night and attacking people. |
| Pickled dragon | A hoax of a hoax of a pickled dragon. |
| Popo Bawa | A bat-winged monster from Zanzibar that sodomizes people in election times. |
| Reptilian humanoid | A recurring theme in fiction, especially science fiction, pseudoscientific theories, and conspiracy theories. |
| Sidehill Gouger | Fictional creatures said to inhabit the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and the southwestern sandhills of Saskatchewan - spoken of to confuse the gullible. |
| Vorlage:FA-star Spring Heeled Jack | A mysterious character said to have existed in England during the Victorian age. |
| Sweater curse | Think your loved one will be pleased if you knit them a sweater? Think again. |
| Tanuki | A creature from Japanese folklore most known for its huge testicles. |
| Tsukumogami | According to Japanese folklore, if you keep your straw sandals--or any other household items--around for 100 years, they may become 'alive and aware,' and develop eyes and sharp teeth. |
| Turtles all the way down | A myth about the nature of the universe, or perhaps a myth about a myth about the nature of the universe. |
| Vampire pumpkins and watermelons | A folk legend from the Balkan peninsula of south-eastern Europe based upon the idea that any inanimate object left outside during the night of a full moon will become a vampire. |
| Vril | A belief that aliens controlled Nazi Germany and helped Hitler and others to escape to the South Pole when the war was lost. |
Politics, economy and law
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| 51st state | A phrase used to describe potential additions to the United States of America. It is often used satirically to deride any nation that is considered to be "too friendly" with America. |
| Animal trial | Historically, the law in some areas of Europe subjected animals to criminal liability for their conduct. |
| Acoustic Kitty | failed CIA experiment at using a cat for covert surveillance. |
| Animals as electoral candidates | Why be ruled by some monkey when you can get a real chimp, rhino, or pig into office? |
| Bagism | A social ideology created by the Beatle, John Lennon, and his wife, Yoko Ono, which involves wearing a bag over one's entire body to promote peace and equality. |
| Big Mac index | economics of the Big Mac. |
| Biotic Baking Brigade | Pie-throwing anarchists. |
| Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions | Or BUGA-UP for short. An Australian group of subversive artists who live up to their self-description by defacing tobacco and alcohol billboard advertisements in order to promote healthy living. |
| Cheese-eating surrender monkeys | Look out Lafayette! |
| Chewbacca Defense | A satirical term for any legal strategy that seeks to overwhelm its audience with nonsensical arguments. |
| Ding Hai Effect | A sudden drop in the stock market that follows whenever Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng stars in a new TV show. |
| EURion constellation | secret recognition codes you can find on more and more banknotes |
| Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet | What else would you call a Canadian politician? |
| Free Bench | An unusual manorial legal custom from England whereby a remarried widow could inherit her deceased husband's land only if she rode into court backwards on a black ram and recited a nonsense verse. |
| Giant sucking sound | Unusual phrase coined by Ross Perot. |
| H'Angus | A monkey football mascot who was elected mayor of Hartlepool with a platform of "free bananas for all schoolchildren". |
| I Am Not Canadian | A parody of the Canadian television commercial, I Am Canadian, devised by a Toronto radio station and focusing upon French speakers from Quebec. |
| Ich bin ein Berliner | President Kennedy did not actually call himself a jelly donut in front of a German audience. |
| Jakob Maria Mierscheid | a fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 1979, originally introduced in the 1920s by Weimar Social Democrats to avoid paying restaurant bills. Discovered the Mierscheid Law. |
| Jesusland map | a satirical map of North America by political ideology. |
| Legislative violence | where politicians actively fight for what they believe in. |
| Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle | A television show produced by the communist government of North Korea intended to educate the public on good and bad hairstyles. |
| Memoirs v. Massachusetts | A U.S. Supreme Court case concerning whether the 1749 book Fanny Hill was entitled to First Amendment protection. One of the dissenting opinions contained an extensive discussion of the supposedly pornographic content. |
| McGillicuddy Serious Party | A satirical political party in New Zealand. |
| McMartin preschool trial | The most expensive trial in U.S. history, a sexual abuse trial in which hundreds of children made bizarre allegations of flying and killing giraffes, orgies at car washes, flying in hot-air balloons, and being flushed down toilets into secret underground rooms where they were abused. |
| Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia | Can a city require a business license for a talking cat, and does the cat have free-speech rights? |
| A moron in a hurry | A phrase used in legal cases to refer to the likelihood of confusion between two trademarks |
| Nebraska admiral | The landlocked U.S. state of Nebraska and its "Great Navy" |
| Nix v. Hedden | The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit. |
| Richard Nixon mask | one of the most popular masks in the U.S. |
| Joshua A. Norton | Emperor Norton I, the man who claimed to be "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" in 1859. |
| Official Monster Raving Loony Party | A British political party which does exactly what it says on the tin. |
| Pink Pistols | They're here, they're queer, and they're armed to the teeth. |
| Polish Beer-Lovers' Party | One of major political powers in Poland in early 1990s. |
| Pruneyard Shopping Center | The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of the people of California to protest in private shopping centers. |
| Rhinoceros Party of Canada | A registered political party in Canada, which often promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public. |
| Russian Reversal | In Soviet Russia Wikipedia articles write you! |
| Jonathon Sharkey | A self-proclaimed vampire who is a Minnesota governorship candidate in 2006. |
| Sea Shepherd | A non-governmental organization that uses pirate-like tactics to enforce environmental international law |
| Sentinelese | An autonomous stone-age human tribe which completely avoids contact with the outside world. |
| Shanghai Fugu Agreement | A completely fictitious international treaty accepted by the German state of Hesse in 1985. |
| Vorlage:FA-star Stephen Colbert's performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner | the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. |
| Shouting fire in a crowded theater | Phrase related to freedom of speech. |
| Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence | An organization of mostly gay men who dress as nuns, often on rollerskates. |
| Stambovsky v. Ackley | Also known as the Ghostbusters case, the court ruled that a house in Nyack, New York was legally haunted by ghosts. |
| Tsang Tsou Choi | He claimed to be the “Kowloon emperor” since 1970s. |
| The Smurfs and communism | Draws parallels between Marxism and the Smurfs, a former television cartoon show. |
| State Police of Crawford and Erie Counties | The "other" State Police. |
| Tanganyika groundnut scheme | A brilliant scheme by the British Government to grow peanuts where there were none before (for good reason). |
| Toy Biz v. United States | Are the X-Men humans under U.S. law? |
| United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff | Who has jurisdiction over Satan? |
| Witch Prohibition Act | Enacted in 1999 in Orissa |
| You forgot Poland | A paraphrased comment from President George W. Bush of the United States, made during the first presidential election debate on September 30, 2004. |
| You have two cows | The beginning phrase for a series of political joke definitions. |
| List of China administrative divisions by highest point | |
| List of fictional U.S. Presidents | |
| List of frivolous political parties | |
| List of nicknames used by George W. Bush | From "Boy Genius" to "Turd Blossom", and that's just for one top advisor, depending on his mood. |
| List of political flops | |
| List of political catch phrases | |
| List of scandals with "-gate" suffix |
Religion and spirituality
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| Axinomancy | Foretelling the future by looking at an axe or hatchet. |
| Ben Hana | A Wellington, New Zealand homeless man who worships the Maori sun God Ra (not to be confused with the ancient Egyptian sun God of the same name) |
| Bible errata | A typesetter's complaint finds justification in Psalm 119. |
| Cadaver Synod | In 897, Pope Stephen VI dug up the body of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, dressed the body in papal vestments and seated him on a throne while Pope Stephen read charges against him and conducted a trial. |
| Caganer | A traditional Catalan statue (similar to a garden gnome) that depicts a person defecating, often used in Christmas decorations. |
| Cargo cult | A belief system, often from Melanesia, concerned with obtaining Western manufactured goods. |
| Flying Spaghetti Monsterism | Satirical religion created to make fun of Intelligent Design |
| Harold Davidson | 'the prostitute's padre' from 1930s London, who was defrocked and died when he was mauled by a lion. |
| Hell Bank Notes | the Chinese afterlife is apparently subject to hyperinflation. |
| Holy Prepuce | One of several relics purported to be associated with Jesus. Also known as The Holy Foreskin. |
| Homosexuality and Voodoo | Surely a troll, you say? No! A perfectly legitimate article! |
| Invisible Pink Unicorn | A satire aimed at theistic beliefs. The satire consists of a goddess in the form of a unicorn that is paradoxically both invisible and pink. |
| Jedi census phenomenon | A phenomenon in which 390,000 British citizens listed their religion as Jedi Knight on a 2001 census form, which made Jedi Knight the fourth-largest religion in England and Wales. |
| Jesus H. Christ | Does it stand for Henry? |
| The Miracle of the Sun | 70,000 people in Portugal gather to witness a miracle and are treated to an inexplicable solar event |
| Vorlage:FA-starOmnipotence Paradox | Can God create a rock so big that even He can't lift it? |
| Pope Michael | Elected Pope in 1990 by a group of Conclavist or post-Sedevacantist Catholics to fill the vacancy they consider to have been caused by the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. |
| Religious pareidolia | about the phenomenon of the appearance of religious images in corn chips, cinnamon rolls and the like. |
| Pornocracy | The period of the papacy in the early 10th century, beginning with Pope Sergius III from 904 and ending with the death of Pope John XII in 963. During this period, the popes were under the influence of corrupt women (though not necessarily prostitutes), especially Theodora and her daughter, Marozia. This period is also called the "Rule of the Harlots." |
| Vorlage:FA-star Space opera in Scientology doctrine | L. Ron Hubbard's history of the universe, including alien Invader Forces, "little orange-colored bombs that would talk" and brainwashing episodes in "a railway carriage quite like a British railway coach with compartments." |
| Unfulfilled historical predictions by Christians | A record of events that were prophesized by leaders in the Christian church which never came to pass. |
| Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar | A 17th-century Irish bishop claimed to know the exact day, date and time of creation. |
| Vorlage:FA-star Xenu | An ancient interstellar dictator who unleashed a genocide which created Christianity and psychiatry and is "calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it." |
| List of sexually active popes | |
| List of names for the Biblical nameless |
Military
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| 3rd Dental Battalion | Even Marines have to keep their teeth clean. |
| Anglo-Zanzibar War | The world's shortest war. The sultan of Zanzibar capitulated after forty-five minutes. |
| Anti-tank dog | failed Soviet weapon of the Second World War. |
| Antonov A-40 | The "flying tank", an experimental Soviet tank with wings and tailboom, meant to glide into the battlefield, ready for combat. Trials were unsuccessful. |
| Bat bomb | World War II plan to bomb Japan with bats carrying tiny Incendiary bombs. |
| Battle of Tanga | World War I battle where 8,000 British troops were defeated by a German-led force of 1,100 Askari's - aided by swarms of angry bees. |
| Bicycle infantry | Soldiers have occasionally been trained to use the bicycle for military purposes. |
| Boot Monument | In celebration of Benedict Arnold's foot. |
| Chicken powered nuclear bomb | The role of the domestic chicken in nuclear warfare. |
| Fire balloon | In 1944, the Japanese launched a sinister aerial offensive over America — not with party balloons, but balloons of war. |
| Football war | A 6 day war fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 ignited by a game of football (soccer). |
| Human torpedo | Human torpedoes or manned torpedoes were secret naval weapons of World War II. |
| Miss Russian Army | A beauty contest, minus the swimsuit competition, added the automatic weapons drills. |
| Montauk Project | Real military science experiment or urban legend? Maybe the civilians who were in full view of the military base will be able to tell you. |
| NORAD Santa tracking program | A tradition with the American and Canadian military to track Santa for children. |
| Pig War | a war between the United States and the British Empire that almost erupted over one dead pig. |
| Project Habbakuk | A British plan to construct an aircraft carrier out of ice (pykrete). |
| Project Pigeon | bombs guided by pigeon pecks. |
| Sacred Band of Thebes | An ancient Greek army consisting of homosexual couples. |
| Sergeant Stubby | The only dog to be promoted to Sergeant. |
| Siachen Glacier | The world's highest battlefield, with very predictable terrain. |
| Sticky bomb | The most unpopular weapon the British soldier has ever been asked to use. |
| Stanislav Petrov | potentially averted a nuclear war. |
| Tachanka | Twentieth century chariot used in combat. |
| Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War | A "war" that lasted 335 years without a single shot being fired. |
| Vorlage:FA-starToledo War | A war between the State of Ohio and the Michigan Territory that resulted in one injury and over a century of bitterness. |
| Truelove Eyre | A man who supposedly saved William the Conqueror's life during the Battle of Hastings. |
| Tsar Tank | A Imperial Russian tank designed as a tricycle with nine-metre wheels. |
| UFO sightings in Iraq (in 2003) | Something else for Iraqis to worry about |
| Vorlage:FA-star U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program | a U.S. Navy program which studies the military use of Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions. |
| Who me? | A top secret stench weapon designed to be unobtrusively sprayed on German officers by French Resistance members. |
| War Plan Red | U.S. war plans from the 1930s to invade Canada in the unlikely event of war with the United Kingdom. Also see the counterpart war plan Defence Scheme No. 1 (the Canadian war plan to invade the United States). |
| List of military disasters | |
| List of wars extended by diplomatic irregularity |
Death
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Unusual ways to die, and unusual post-mortem occurrences.
| Boston molasses disaster | Twenty-one people die in 1919 when a huge tank at a confectionery factory bursts, sending a wave of molasses down the streets of Boston. |
| Chess-related deaths | People killed while playing chess. |
| Crushing by elephant | An unusual form of capital punishment used throughout history. See also history of elephants in Europe. |
| Death erection | For those who die in the vertical position, an erection caused by the pooling to lower parts of the body. |
| Defenestration | The time-honoured tradition of throwing people out of windows. |
| Fan death | A persistent urban legend in South Korea, where the media, and even many medical professionals, regularly report on people dying because of having left a fan on in a closed room. |
| Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead | An early catch phrase used on Saturday Night Live, based upon the dictator's lengthy death. |
| Jack the Stripper | The other unidentified serial killer named Jack. |
| Lal Bihari | "I'm not quite dead!" |
| Maschalismos | The act of mutilating the dead to prevent them from rising again. |
| Nevada-tan | The bizarre combination of Japanese schoolgirls, boxcutters and online memes. |
| Poe Toaster | A mysterious figure who pays an annual tribute to American author Edgar Allan Poe. |
| Safety coffin | Coffins manufactured so that their tenants do not always end up dead. |
| Space burial | Around 150 people have had their remains interred in space. |
| Spontaneous human combustion | The sudden burning of a person's body without any apparent source of ignition. |
| Video-Enhanced Grave Marker | Graves with video screens and speakers on them. |
| List of premature obituaries | |
| List of unusual deaths |
Questions
Wikipedia is not afraid to tackle the tough questions:
| Where's the beef? | It's 10 P.M. Do you know where your cows are? |
| Why did the chicken cross the road? | People have asked this for centuries. |
| The chicken or the egg | Which came first? |
| The "how many angels?" question | "How many angels can dance on the top of a pin?" |
| Koan#The sound of one hand | "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" |
