Wikipedia:Unusual articles

"WP:UA" redirects here. For the Usernames for administrator attention notice board, see WP:UAA. For user access levels, see WP:UAL. For WikiProject Ukraine, see WP:UKRAINE.

Of the over six million articles in the English Wikipedia there are some articles that Wikipedians have identified as being somewhat unusual. These articles are verifiable, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something one would not 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 an article to this list, the article in question should preferably meet one or more of these criteria:

• The article is something a reasonable person would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
• The subject is a highly unusual or ironic combination of concepts, such as cosmic latte, death from laughter, etc.
• The subject is a clear anomaly—something that defies common sense, common expectations or common knowledge, such as Bir Tawil, Märket, Phineas Gage, Snow in Florida, etc.
• The subject is well-documented for unexpected notoriety or an unplanned cult following at extreme levels, such as Ampelmännchen or All your base are belong to us.
• The subject is a notorious hoax, such as the Sokal affair or Mary Toft.
• The subject might be found amusing, though serious.
• The subject is distinct amongst other similar ones.
• The article is a list or collection of articles or subjects meeting the criteria above.

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Shortcuts WP:UA WP:ODD WP:UNUSUAL WP:WEIRD WP:STRANGE

Please note Articles about things considered unusual may be accepted in Wikipedia if they otherwise fulfill the criteria for inclusion. This page is not an article, and the only criterion for inclusion is consensus that an article fits on this page. Lists of unusual things in Wikipedia mainspace (see Category:Lists of things considered unusual) should have an external reference for each entry that specifically classifies it as unusual, to avoid making it a point of view (POV) fork of original research. Still, all such lists risk being deleted for lack of a neutral definition of what counts as "unusual".

A cow with antlers atop a power line pole. Wikipedia contains other images and articles that are similarly sizzling or udderly amoosing.

This definition is not precise or absolute; some articles could still be considered unusual even if they do not fit these guidelines.

Each entry on this list should be an article on its own (not merely a section in a less unusual article) and of decent quality, and in large meeting Wikipedia's manual of style. For unusual contributions that are of greater levity, see Wikipedia:Silly Things.

In this list, a star () indicates a featured article. A plus () indicates a good article.

Africa

Just popping by.

Crouching tiger - er, lake - hidden...not quite dragon, but maybe CO
₂...

The buildings are in Spain. The ground at the bottom is in Morocco. Confused yet?

	Abuja Airplane House	An aeroplane-themed villa in the capital of Nigeria.
	Akon City	A 2000s R&B singer is planning his very own city in his native Senegal, based around his very own cryptocurrency which he calls "Akoin".
	Bir Tawil	One of the few places on Earth not claimed by any country. An American trekked there and claimed it in 2014 as the Kingdom of North Sudan so he could make his daughter a princess.
	Blue Desert	Following the Egypt–Israel peace treaty, the United Nations gave several tons of blue paint to a Belgian artist, so he could commemorate it by painting a line of boulders in the Sinai Desert blue.
	Boulders Beach	A beach on the Southern African coast, near an urban residential area, known for being home to a colony of several thousand penguins.
	Congo Pedicle	What happens when a tyrannical king decides he wants to hunt game in a swamp.
	Dallol	A region surrounding a volcano in Ethiopia, known for its alien-looking bright colours, and populated by vast salt plains and extremely hot acidic sulfur-emitting hot springs that, according to some studies, lack even the smallest microbes. There is a now-abandoned town of the same name nearby, which formerly held the record of the hottest inhabited place on Earth.
	Gaet'ale Pond	A small lake in Ethiopia that was created in 2005 after an earthquake. It's not bitter, it's just really, really salty.
	Giraffe Manor	A hotel in suburban Nairobi where you can eat alongside one of the world's most endangered giraffe subspecies.
	Hoba meteorite	The largest intact meteorite in the world.
	Jacob's Ladder	It's all very downhill from here.
	Kalakuta Republic	A compound housing Fela Kuti, his family, band musicians and recording studio, which he declared independent and used to criticize the Nigerian military junta of the 1970s. They responded by raiding it with over a thousand soldiers, setting it alight, and throwing Fela's mother out of the window.
	Kanye West	Part of the village of Kanye along with Kanye East.
	Lake Nyos	A lake in northwestern Cameroon that released gas in 1986, killing 1,746 people. One of three known gassy lakes, the others being Lake Monoun and Lake Kivu.
	Lake Retba	A lake in Senegal that is naturally pink and is one of the saltiest lakes in the world.
	Mauritania Railway	Mauritania's entire national rail network consists of a single line connecting the centre of the country's iron mining industry with the port city of Nouadhibou. Said line is also home to the world's longest and heaviest trains, filled with iron ore and as long as 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) in length.
	Oklo	The former site of the world's only natural nuclear fission reactors.
	Palácio de Ferro	A bright yellow iron building in Luanda dating back to the colonial era, that is noted for the fact that there is no record of who or why it was built - although legend has it that it was designed by Gustave Eiffel, architect of the Eiffel Tower.
	Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera	A rock on the Moroccan coast connected to the mainland by an 80-metre-wide (260 ft) tombolo; it is owned by Spain. In 2012, four Moroccan irredentists attempted to storm and take over the territory.
	Republic of Benin (1967)	One of the shortest-lived states in history, it was independent for only seven hours (07:00 to 14:00 on 19 September 1967).
	Socotra	A Yemeni island that is geographically part of Africa, and is known as "the most alien-looking place on Earth" due to its strange flora. This includes the "dragon blood tree" and a tree which produces cucumbers.
	La Tante DC10 Restaurant	A grounded McDonnell Douglas DC-10 passenger aircraft in Accra that has been converted into a giant plane-shaped restaurant.
	Tromelin Island	An island near Madagascar that is famous for being the site of a major humanitarian disaster in the 18th century.
	The Owl House	Not the acclaimed animated LGBT fantasy cartoon that aired on Disney Channel; this is an outdoor museum that was created by a reclusive outsider artist who decorated her inherited house with over 300 glass and concrete sculptures of owls, camels, peacocks, pyramids, and other forms.
	Umoja	An entire women's-only village in Kenya established in response to violence against women in Samburu tribal society.

Pre-modern

"0/10, would not buy again."

"That's a real coat of arms? Bollocks!"

Bal des Ardents	A masquerade ball in which the king and some noble dancers dress in wild man costumes and accidentally get set on fire by the king's drunk brother.
Burned house horizon	The horizon which consumed cultures in the Balkans and around the Black Sea.
Cadaver Synod	A deceased Pope was exhumed and put on trial!
Cagots	A group that were a persecuted minority in France and Spain into the 20th century, and nobody really knows why.
Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir	The progenitor of the one-star Yelp review is a gripe about poor-quality copper.
Criterion of embarrassment	You know it's true because it's too embarrassing for anyone to have made it up.
Daughter of Emperor Xiaoming of Northern Wei	A disputed first female monarch of Chinese history before Wu Zetian, whom the Empress Dowager Hu declared was a boy and was emperor for a day before being replaced by another infant.
Elagabalus	The number one Syrian teenage sun cultist polygamist possibly-transgender Roman emperor!
Erfurt latrine disaster	It's incredible how quickly someone's life can go to shit. Literally.
Henry Symeonis	The University of Oxford held a grudge against him so long they forgot why.
House of Colleoni	A former Italian noble family whose arms included three pairs of testicles.
John the Posthumous	King of France from the minute he was born to the minute he died (total: 5 days).
Kottabos	The world's first drinking game. Care to play? All you need is a bronze "lamp stand" with a tiny statuette on top and some wine.
Máel Brigte of Moray	A Pictish nobleman who somehow managed to bite a man to death despite being long-dead himself.
Nika riots	Kind of like football hooliganism, except for chariot racing, and also if it resulted in tens of thousands dead, half of Constantinople being burnt to the ground and the Emperor nearly being lynched.
Onfim	A 7 year-old medieval Russian boy whose homework tablets, complete with doodles of himself as a "wild beast", were preserved for 700 years before being excavated and becoming a primary source for life in the Novgorod Republic.
Phantom time conspiracy theory	A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Therefore, it is now 1728 rather than 2025.
Pope Benedict IX	He became pope at twenty, and later sold the papacy. He was pope three times.
Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories	Native Americans are among the Ten Lost Tribes? The Zuni are related to Japanese peasants? This and more wild theories are found here.
Publius Afranius Potitus	If you're going to say you'd trade your life for your sick emperor's, make sure he doesn't get better.
Roland The Farter	If only we were all a jump, whistle & fart away from prosperity!
Sacred Band of Thebes	An elite fighting force consisting of a hand-picked groups of 150 pairs of male lovers.
Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation	The home of the first flush toilet, as it turns out, is Punjab.
Sino-Roman relations	These empires inched progressively closer to each other in the course of the Roman expansion into the ancient Near East and of the simultaneous Han Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. Mutual awareness remained low, and firm knowledge about each other was limited.
Wise Men of Gotham	So-named after they acted like idiots so the king would go away.

Dates and timekeeping

A soon-to-be bye-bye pi pie.

Don't panic – it's Towel Day.

Abolition of time zones	No more asking "So what time is it there?"
Ruth Belville	She followed her parents in the business of selling people Greenwich Mean Time.
Chrismukkah	A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C..
Cinnamon Roll Day	A day too good for this world, too pure.
Festivus	December 23: Holiday celebrated by the Costanza family on the television show Seinfeld, since appropriated by many.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day	Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19.
List of non-standard dates	Including, among other things, January 0, February 30, and May 35.
Manhattanhenge	Twice every year, the setting sun aligns with Manhattan's street grid.
Mole Day	The Avogadro constant is celebrated on October 23rd starting at exactly 6:02 am.
Pi Day	The day – March 14 – on which the constant π is celebrated.
Pocky & Pretz Day	A day in Japan celebrating long, thin biscuits. Due to their shape, it is celebrated on 11/11.
Singles' Day	One is the loneliest number. 11/11 makes an appropriate date to celebrate being single.
Square Root Day	Any date when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year (the next being 5th May 2025).
Star Wars Day	May the 4th be with you.
Steak and Blowjob Day Cake and Cunnilingus Day	Male alternative to Valentine's Day and female response to that day.
Swatch Internet Time	In 1998, Swatch tried to reshape our timing system.
Thanksgivukkah	A Thanksgiving-Hanukkah hybrid when the two overlap in November in the US; maybe your Hanukkah present can be a Thanksgiving Dinner.
Towel Day	Don't forget to bring a towel, terrible or otherwise.
Undecimber	In Java, the thirteenth month of the year.
Winterval	An attempt to erase Christmas? No, just a word for Birmingham City Council's collective festive plans, but that didn't stop the UK media from going wild.
Year 2000 problem	A possible computing problem in the 1990's that was supposed to have occurred when the 21st century and 3rd millennium arrived. Of course, that never happened.
Year 2038 problem	The computing problem that will arise due to the Unix time representation used in many computers.
Year zero	Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1?

Specific languages, dialects, and pidgins

The same diversity that created Norsk kebab created Kebabnorsk.

A whole tenth of a language. Yes, really.

Abercraf English	How an all-new variety of English has developed in a single Welsh village since World War II.
Algonquian–Basque pidgin	The linguistic fruit of the travels of Basque whalers.
Basque–Icelandic pidgin
Anāl language	Its phonemic inventory, sadly, doesn't include the voiced anal fricative.
Andalusian language movement	A group of people have attempted to promote Andalusian Spanish as a distinct language. They have successfully created an Andalusian version of Minecraft.
Antarctic English	Not spoken by penguins.
Arcaicam Esperantom	How do you make things look "old" in a constructed language? By inventing a new one!
Boontling	Bet it seems pretty crazeek to harp boont to a kimmie Brightlighter like you, huh?
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin	A pidgin formed in 20th century Western Australia from Aboriginal Australian English, Japanese, and Kupang Malay to facilitate communication between the variety of groups working on pearling boats in the Kimberley region.
Cia-Cia	A language in Indonesia that came to use the Korean script.
DoggoLingo	Hoomanz wrote thiz cool article about mai language!
Dravido-Korean languages	A discarded and mostly-forgotten hypothesis that Korean and the Dravidian languages of Southern India made up a single language family, despite being thousands of kilometres apart and sharing very little common history.
E-Prime	A form of English without the verb 'to be'.
Gyaru-moji	Every culture develops its own version of Leet, including in this case, young Japanese women.
High Tider	Some people in rural coastal areas of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland still speak a dialect derived from the English spoken over 300 years ago.
Ithkuil	Try learning this in a weekend!
Jamaican Maroon Creole	A creole language with Akan vocabulary that is spoken by Jamaican Maroons in rituals involving spiritual possession.
Kebabnorsk	The delicious-sounding ethnolect prevalent in multi-ethnic Oslo.
Leet	T3h 1@ngu/\&e 0f H@xx0rz.
Lojban	A constructed language based on predicate logic.
Mediterranean Lingua Franca	The original lingua franca. Spoken from the 11th to the 19th centuries with substratum from Venetian, Genoese, Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Greek, Sicilian, Galician, and many more.
Nicaraguan Sign Language	Nicaraguan deaf children create their own language after only being taught to lip-read Spanish, fascinate linguists.
Pandanus language	"Don't use regular words, you'll ruin the screwpine nuts." A prime example of an avoidance language.
Pirahã language	A language spoken by the Amazonian Pirahã people, and an example of a language that can be whistled. The subject of controversial claims that it proves the theory of linguistic relativity.
Pig Latin	A anguagelay amegay orfay idskay hattay eaturesfay a unfay away otay pellsay ordsway! Onay attermay fiay ou'reyay nay dultay, t'siay tillsay icenay!
Plains Indian Sign Language	Despite (mostly) not being deaf, the indigenous peoples of the North American Plains developed a sign language to use as a lingua franca.
Proto-Human language	The (completely hypothetical) genetic ancestor to all the world's languages.
Pseudo-Chinese	If you speak Japanese and want to translate something to Chinese, all you do is just remove all the kana, keep only the kanji, and say that it's written in Chinese. Simple, right?
Russenorsk	A Slavic-Scandinavian pidgin that lasted only 150 years.
Silbo Gomero	The inhabitants of La Gomera of the Canary Islands communicate across valleys by whistling in Spanish.
Solresol	A constructed language based around musical notes.
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh	The native name of the indigenous Squamish language of British Columbia, which uses the number 7 as a letter.
Toki Pona	The opposite of the previously mentioned Ithkuil. Inspired by minimalism and Taoist philosophy, this constructed language has only 137 regularly used words.
Ubykh language	A very recently extinct Circassian language with 84 phonemic consonants (a record for non-click languages), but only 2 distinct vowels.
Wenzhounese	And you thought Mandarin was hard? A Chinese dialect nicknamed "the devil's language" for its extreme divergence and difficulty.
ǃXóõ	A click language with 122 consonants spoken by groups of San people in Namibia and Botswana.
Yaminjeongeum	세종머앟늰익 읚머한 윾산.
Yerkish	An artificial language developed for use by non-human primates.

Physics

This blue-looking noise is actually pink.

"It's Professor Pauli! Quick, pack that stuff away!"

Anatoli Bugorski	What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator?
Colors of noise	Including white, pink, purple, blue...
David Hahn	A 17-year-old, known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, who irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Demon core	A two-time radioactive killer.
Deutsche Physik	Or "German physics" during the Third Reich. May have caused them to never bother trying to develop nukes.
F. D. C. Willard	The pen name of a cat who wrote academic papers in the field of cryogenics.
Fictional elements, materials, isotopes and subatomic particles	Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
Fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position	Named after a famous cereal phenomenon.
Flying ice cube	They happen to live inside the computers of scientists trying to simulate molecules.
Frog battery	A curious experiment to determine the existence of animal electricity.
Furry's theorem	*notices your quantum electrodynamics* OwO?
Impossible color	Try to see it!
Kundt's tube	A serious piece of scientific apparatus whose name has induced sniggering among English-speaking schoolchildren for over 150 years.
List of unusual units of measurement	Fortnights and nibbles, super feet and Sagans.
Mpemba effect	Hot water freezes faster than cool water, and no one is sure why. Also probably the only scientific term named after a Tanzanian schoolboy.
Oh-My-God particle	Proof that physicists have a dramatic flair.
Pauli effect	Something in the lab not working? Technical difficulties? Blame this guy.
Quantum suicide and immortality	An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube	What happens when you blow in a hole in a tube? Hot air comes out one end and cold air comes out the other. No consensus reached on why it happens yet.
Rheology of peanut butter	A serious analysis of the tastiest viscoelastic colloid.
Shower-curtain effect	Nobody knows why when you turn on the hot water in the shower, the curtain blows in.
Smoot	A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sound of fingernails scraping chalkboard	Urrrgggh!
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.

Hygiene and sanitation

Toilets in Japan have some special features.

Committee to End Pay Toilets in America	A 1970s organization whose campaign was to end pay toilets in the U.S.; its newsletter was humorously titled the Free Toilet Paper.
Darlie	Formerly known as 'Darkie', racist toothpaste from Taiwan.
Fatberg	A congealed lump of fat and non-biodegradable buildup in sewer systems. A 250-metre-long, 140 tonne specimen was discovered under London in September 2017.
Female urination device	Used by women when needing or wanting to pee standing up.
Groom of the Stool	The most intimate Royal office.
Hotel toilet paper folding	Ever wondered why it was so?
Interactive urinal	A talking urinal made for advertising purposes.
iLoo	Microsoft's attempt to bring you the interwebzzz inside the portable toilet.
Jack Black	Not the actor, but the 19th century rat catcher who bred unusually colored rats and sold them as pets.
Japanese toilets	The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights.
Lloyds Bank turd	Possibly the largest example of fossilised human feces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England.
Shit flow diagram	This is the technical term.
Stainless steel soap	Metallic soap that removes odours from the hands, allegedly.
Toilet-related injuries and deaths	Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends.
Toilet papering	Art or vandalism?
Toilet paper orientation	On the pros and cons of letting toilet paper hang over or under the roll.
Whizzinator	A fake penis usually used to beat drug tests, complete with dried urine, a heater, and a syringe. Comes in white, tan, Latino, brown, and black.

Art

That's gotta hurt.

La Princesse.

New York is not the only Big Apple.

"Surely you can see that THIS is art!"

The Book of Miracles.

One of many Hellmouths.

Tipu's Tiger.

Cerne Abbas Giant.

747	A performance art piece in which the artist fired shots at a Boeing 747 flying overhead, leading him to be questioned by the FBI.
America	A fully-functioning solid gold toilet, formerly on display (and available for use) in one of New York's finest art museums.
Artist's Shit	A quite literal and humorous meta-art.
Augsburg Book of Miracles	A book dated from the 16th century full of weird religious drawings. Featuring a human–donkey–demon hybrid as one of its highlights.
Babylonokia	A clay Nokia phone with cuneiform keys. Was once misrepresented as an actual artifact.
Big things (Australia)	Giant folk art as tourist traps.
Bliss (photograph)	The most viewed photograph in all of human history is... the default wallpaper for Windows XP.
Bog Standard Gallery	It's a museum... inside a portable toilet.
Boll Weevil Monument	The only known monument built to honor an agricultural pest.
Joachim-Raphaël Boronali	The world's most artistically-tailed donkey.
Bottle Rack	A modern art piece created by Dada artist Marcel Duchamp. His sister, who mistook it for trash, threw it out.
Pierre Brassau	"That's not art; a chimp could have painted that!"
Cabazon Dinosaurs	Comprises of "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. Made by people that think dinosaurs never existed.
Cerne Abbas Giant	A very interesting hill figure in the English countryside.
Chamber of Art and Curiosities, Ambras Castle	A cabinet of curiosities created by Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria in the 16th century.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude	A pair of 20th century artists that became famous for their colossal side ecological works, such as 1972's Valley Curtain and 2012's The Floating Piers.
Cool S	A symbol of uncertain origins often used in graffiti.
Degenerate Art exhibition	When the Nazis exhibited examples of art that they didn't consider "purely German" enough, so people could hate it in person. It ended up drawing visitor numbers that regular art galleries in the country could only dream of.
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife	An 1814 Hokusai woodcut of a woman getting intimate with a pair of octopuses, sometimes described as the originator of tentacle erotica.
Droste effect	The effect of a picture appearing within itself.
Disumbrationism	A novelist who's never picked up a paintbrush before creates a false art school and submits amateurish paintings as part of it... and is successful for a while.
Earring Magic Ken	How Barbie's boyfriend, in an attempt to look cooler, became a gay icon.
Ecce Homo	An otherwise-unremarkable fresco of Jesus that was "restored" by an untrained amateur and now looks like a monkey.
Equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, Glasgow	Has been regularly topped off with a traffic cone since the 1980s.
Fire photography	The act of taking photographs of firefighting operations.
Fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square	The horse is missing.
Fremont Troll	An 18 foot, 13,000 pound concrete sculpture of a troll clutching a Volkswagen Beetle.
Fuckart & Pimp	Going all the way to own your own art.
Gävle goat	A giant straw Yuletide goat that is the target of frequent arson attacks and vandalism.
Geostationary Banana Over Texas	An Argentinian artist's plan(?) to launch a banana-shaped airship over Texas.
Hahn/Cock	A giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square.
Headington Shark	An Oxford man has had a 25-foot (7.6 m) long sculpture of a shark embedded headfirst into the roof of his unassuming house since 1986.
He-gassen	It really puts the "art" in "fart".
Hellmouth	The entrance to Hell envisaged as the gaping mouth of a huge monster, an image which first appears in Anglo-Saxon art.
Hobby tunneling	Some people just love to dig.
Howard Hallis	An artist who attempted to draw the "Picture of Everything", a massive painting containing drawings of thousands of people and items, both real and imaginary.
Megumi Igarashi	Perhaps the world's most prominent in the field of drawing and sculpting the vulva.
Jazz	An iconic 1990s disposable cup design.
Katrina refrigerator	Loot this! Free meal inside!
Knitta Please	NYC hip hop graffiti knitters.
Kryptos	A sculpture on the grounds of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency containing four encrypted messages, only three of which have been solved.
Latte art	The best art is caffeinated.
Latrinalia	The sage and insightful scribblings on your local public bathroom wall.
List of largest photographs	Includes information on print and digital photos that are reputedly the world's largest.
Musca depicta	For some reason, a lot of artists wanted you to think a fly had landed on their paintings.
Museum of Bad Art	A Museum "dedicated to the collection, preservation, and exhibition of really awful artwork".
Emil Nolde	The curious case of an artist who was an avid supporter of Nazism, yet was later featured in the country's "degenerate art" gallery (see above).
Paintings by Adolf Hitler	The dictator and perpetrator of one of the worst genocides in history was also a painter. One can only imagine a world where he got accepted into art school.
Pantone 448 C	"Drab dark brown", the least attractive colour, according to research. Used for plain tobacco packaging.
Phallic architecture	Does the Washington Monument, Ypsilanti Water Tower or Peoples Daily building remind you of something?
Pink Lady	In 1966, a woman secretly painted a 60-foot (18 m) tall portrait of a nude woman over a tunnel and sued when the county tried to take it down.
Portland International Airport carpet	A carpet design so famous that it gained a cult following.
Pricasso	A man who paints with his genitalia.
La Princesse	A 15-metre (50 ft) mechanical spider which stomped about Liverpool in 2008.
Project Graham	A work of art "symboliz[ing] the vulnerability of human bodies in [car] crashes".
Abel Ramírez Águilar	A Mexican sculptor who made a name for himself in ice and snow sculpture after winning gold at the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Le Rêve	A Picasso painting that purportedly would have sold for a record price had its owner, Steve Wynn, not accidentally poked a hole in it, and which eventually did sell for a different record price.
Roundabout dog	Seen any dog on the loose while out driving lately? Chances are it's a roundabout dog.
Sacred Cod	There's also a "Holy Mackerel", Batman.
Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism	Mine is better than yours.
Seedfeeder	An illustrator who contributed around 48 free-use drawings to Wikipedia, each being sexually-graphic drawings for articles on each (in)appropriate act. Lives up to their name, don't they?
Andres Serrano	An artist who submerged a crucifix in his own urine and photographed it. Also created album covers for Metallica by mixing his other bodily fluids.
Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel	A spin-off of the famous medieval book Pantagruel, about the adventures of a gluttonous gigantic being; in the illustrated book, we can have a clue of what that wonderful fella dreams at night. Spoiler alert: it's all hellish creatures.
Superlambanana	A statue in Liverpool that's half-lamb, half-banana.
Tennis Girl	Photo of a girl with no underwear that became so popular politicians began to cosplay it.
Thomasson	Finding the art in things that are still maintained despite being useless.
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.
Tipu's Tiger	A very... curious mechanical toy created for Indian ruler Tipu Sultan that represented his feelings for the expansionist East India Company on the Indian sub-continent.
Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise	A surreal Buddha-ified statue of Donald Trump, promoted on Taobao with the slogan "make your company great again".
Turnip Prize	The prize that satirises modern art by giving awards to low-effort collections of junk. Bonus points for titling it with a bad pun.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space	At least sixteen casts of this "unique" sculpture exist. Not to mention that the sculptor already made a few similar designs.
William Utermohlen	An artist who drew self-portraits after being diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease in 1995, and would continue these portraits for six years, until 2001.
Les UX	A French artistic movement that expresses itself in underground places.

Beverages

Some coffee, sir? ...... Coming right up out, sir.

Dispatch that unwanted soda in style.

1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal	That Simpsons episode about antifreeze in the wine was based on a true story.
Beer can pyramid	Or beeramid, if you prefer.
Beer goggles	Alcohol makes you more attractive (that is, if you're not the one drinking it).
Carmona Wine Urn	They say a fine wine gets better with age, but this is ridiculous. The 2000-year-old world record holder, and its merely 1700-year-old predecessor.
Speyer wine bottle
Civet coffee	Not coffee made from civets, but rather from ordinary coffee beans the civet has, well, excreted.
Cock ale	A type of ale that has a bag stuffed with a parboiled, skinned and gutted chicken later added.
Cola wars	A marketing battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Diet Coke and Mentos eruption	Diet Coke + Mentos = geyser.
Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone	Apparently a very exciting wine. Though, according to some, it's not worth the hype...
Fucking Hell	A German beer named after the Austrian village of Fucking. (It was renamed Fugging in 2021, so there goes the fun...)
Ganesha drinking milk miracle	Hindu statues drinking milk.
Grapefruit juice–drug interactions	Be careful – that delicious food item could be dangerous to prescription-drug users.
Gustav III of Sweden's coffee experiment	When a king of Sweden tried (and failed) to prove that coffee could kill.
H2NO	Why drink tap water, when you can pay to have a cool, refreshing glass of Coca-Cola or freshly chilled bottled tap water?
If-by-whiskey	A famous speech successfully both attacking and defending booze.
ISO 3103	The ISO standard cup of tea.
OpenCola	The world's first open-source beverage.
Pepsi Number Fever	Large-scale riots in the Philippines in 1992 that led to the deaths of five people. The cause? A failed PepsiCo promotional event.
Pussy	The drink's pure, it's your mind that's the problem.
Snake wine	A type of Vietnamese wine that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle.
Vaskning	Allegedly, showing off wealth in a Swedish nightclub by pouring champagne down the kitchen sink.
Vodka eyeballing	Here's looking at you, kid.

Animals in sports

Hamsters are go!

PETA wouldn't like it.

Jump rabbit, jump rabbit, jump jump jump...

Snails are go!

Buzkashi	Something like rugby, played on horseback, with a dead goat.
Conger cuddling	The "most fun a person could have with a dead fish".
Egg tapping	One holds a hard-boiled egg and taps the egg of another participant with one's own egg intending to break the other's, without breaking one's own.
Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat	Sydney's other Olympic mascot.
Ferret-legging	A stunt in which a live ferret is put down one's trousers.
Fox tossing	A popular sport in 17th and 18th century Europe that involved tossing foxes and other live animals as high as possible into the air.
Goose pulling	Hang a live goose from a rope, gallop under it on a horse and pull its head off. What could be simpler?
Hamster racing	A uniquely British response to foot and mouth disease.
Kudu dung-spitting	Games for conservationists.
Kyz kuu	Involving a man and a woman racing horses. Described as a kissing game, but the woman wins by whipping the man.
Legend of the Octopus	If you're going to an ice hockey game in Detroit, be sure to bring your octopus.
Octopus wrestling	A sport which once attracted crowds of thousands to watch free divers wrestle North Pacific Giant Octopus from the waters of the Puget Sound.
Pig Olympics	An international contest between pigs.
Rabbit show jumping	Watership up, Watership Down. Watership up, Watership Down. Watership...
Robot jockey	Robots designed to ride dromedary camels.
Snail racing	Ready, steady, slow!
Teddy bear toss	A Christmas tradition in minor league ice hockey.
Turkey bowling	So much for "don't play with your food".
Vinkensport	Finch-singing in Belgium. More competitive than you might think.
Yak racing	A spectator sport held at traditional festivals in Tibet and Mongolia, among other places.

Mystery animals and animal folklore

Looks a load of Bonnacon to me...

Pieter Dirkx's imagining of the Mongolian death worm.

That's either one fast-growing plant, or...

Bake-danuki	Uses its testicles as a weapon.
Beast of Gévaudan	A mammal(s) that went on a killing spree in southern France in the 1700s, causing significant and expensive Royal intervention.
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.
Cattle mutilation	The alleged killing and subsequent mutilation of cattle, sheep or horses by unknown perpetrators. Some say they may be aliens.
Chupacabra	A legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, generally reported in Latin America, that preys on livestock.
Cynocephaly	A kind of human-wolf hybrid where only the head is dog-like.
Dog spinning	Do Bulgarians really twizzle their domestic canines to foretell prosperity? The British Green Party thinks so, and they're not happy about it.
Drop bear	A fictitious Australian marsupial supposedly related to the koala.
Fearsome critters	North American lumberjack folklore, with Axhandle hounds and jackalopes.
Flying pig	The classic impossibility has been officially proved possible by the Internet Engineering Task Force: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine."
Gef the talking mongoose	A poltergeist-like creature which claimed to have been an 80-year-old Indian mongoose, alleged to have haunted a Manx cottage during the 1930s.
Humanzee	A hypothetical(?) human/chimpanzee hybrid.
Jersey Devil	A mythological creature said to inhabit the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Liver bird	A legendary cormorant or eagle that is the symbol of a major English city.
Living entombed animal	Tales of toads and other creatures supposedly remaining alive encased in stone.
Lluvia de Peces	It's raining fish in Honduras.
Mamlambo	One of the most interesting beasts in Zulu folklore.
Mongolian death worm	A large, bright red worm that kills using acid and electrical discharges – allegedly.
Montauk Monster	Actually a decaying raccoon... or is it?
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus	An endangered creature, whose major predator is the sasquatch. Apparently.
Phantom kangaroos	They're not just found in Australia.
Popobawa	A bat-winged monster from Zanzibar said to sodomize people during election campaigns.
Pig-faced women	A lesson never to compare a person's children to pigs when pregnant, lest you be cursed.
Rat king	Not the rodent monarch familiar from The Nutcracker, but a rare (some say nonexistent) phenomenon in which a group of rats grow up with their tails tangled in a knot.
Reptilian humanoid	A recurring theme in fiction, especially science fiction, pseudoscientific theories and conspiracy theories.
Rhinogradentia	A fictitious mammal order documented by an equally fictitious German naturalist.
Sea monk	An aquatic hallelujah.
Sidehill gouger	Fictional creatures said to inhabit the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia and the southwestern sandhills of Saskatchewan.
Spherical cow	"Consider a spherical cow in a vacuum..."
Squonk	A Pennsylvania-based creature that cries constantly because it's so ugly. The most relatable mythical animal.
Tarasque	One of the strangest mythical beasts in France.
Vegetable Lamb of Tartary	Money might not grow on trees, but maybe sheep do.
Widow's man	A strange myth that fishmen and seamen have been telling for centuries now.

Politics and government

He missed, darn it!

Who knew legislation could be so sweet?

The confusingly hirsute Charles the Bald.

All hail the Conch Republic!

I am a jelly donut?

Not a killer rabbit after all.

A senator uses an old debating trick.

Leftist love.

There's no-one as Irish as this guy.

A work by the "Kowloon emperor".

1803 Gatton by-election	Three candidates, two receiving zero votes after the one opposing ballot was disqualified by the borough's owner's brother in law. A rare contested by-election in one of the UK's most notorious rotten boroughs of the early 19th century - a very rare event showing how attempting to contest them was futile.
1927 Liberian general election	The most fraudulent election in recorded history, with a turnout of 1,680%.
1986 Illinois gubernatorial election	Followers of a bizarre political figure hijack an election, and force one of the main candidates into running under a different party.
2018 Makassar mayoral election	In which Munafri Arifuddin ran unopposed for mayor of Makassar, Indonesia, won more than 250,000 votes, and lost.
Above Znoneofthe	A Canadian politician who changed his name so that people would misread it as "none of the above" on the ballot (with the Z added to appear at the end of the list) and pick his name by mistake. However, he was printed on the ballots not as "Znoneofthe Above" but as "Above Znoneofthe", and his (almost) masterminded plan failed.
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act	An apparently innocuous piece of congressional legislation that became the subject of outrageous but widely believed conspiracy theories in 1956.
André Dallaire	How often do would-be assassins break into a Prime Minister's residence without resistance?
Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany	A satirical party formed in the 1980s. Some of its main objectives include balkanizing Germany, legalizing all drugs and creating so-called "fuckpooling centers".
Antanas Mockus	The surprisingly effective mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, known for civically-targeted publicity pranks.
Anti-Japaneseism	Advocates for self-inflicted genocide.
Anti-PowerPoint Party	Fighting the overuse of Microsoft PowerPoint in offices since 2011.
Bald–hairy	Russian leadership has alternated between bald and hairy leaders since 1825.
Banned in Boston	Boston now has a reputation as a liberal city, but it wasn't always so...
Barack Obama "Joker" poster	You wanna know how I got these scars?
Alejandro Cao de Benós	A Spanish man who is the only non-Korean person to officially work for the North Korean government. Benós is also featured in some documentaries about North Korea, such as The Propaganda Game and The Mole: Undercover in North Korea.
Biotic Baking Brigade	Pie-throwing anarchists.
Boris Skossyreff	Belarusian adventurer, who tried to seize the monarchy of Andorra and called himself Boris I of Andorra.
British Israelism	A long discredited form of British nationalism, by way of the idea that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel made their way to Britain.
Brown Dog affair	Political scandal that resulted in police protection for the statue of a dog.
Bunga bunga	Nobody knew what it meant, until one Italian politician made it mean "kinky sex".
Bushism	Any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of former United States President George W. Bush.
Byron (Low Tax) Looper	Not only did he give himself a parenthetical middle name, he tried to win an election by simply murdering his opponent. It didn't quite work out.
Candy Desk	A desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate has been kept filled with candy since 1968.
Charles the Bald	A 9th century emperor of the Carolingian Empire who is depicted in artwork as having a full head of hair.
Chernomyrdinka	Russia can do Bushisms too.
Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office	An official government position in the United Kingdom.
Count Binface	An intergalatic warlord and British political candidate (formerly Lord Buckethead).
Celso Daniel	A city mayor in Brazil who was, allegedly, assassinated in 2002 by criminals, but many people say that he was murdered for political reasons. Within five years, seven witnesses were found dead. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
Congressional office lottery	The process that determines when representatives in the House can pick their rooms, host to such rituals as playing Frank Sinatra songs and Jedi mind tricks.
Crusade of Romanianism	1930s Romania saw possibly the world's only political movement which attempted to synthesize fascism with libertarian socialism.
David Rice Atchison	Possibly President for a day, only finding out after his "term" had ended.
Deez Nuts (satirist)	A satirical candidate who ran for president during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and polled 10% at his best. In the polls, he had defeated other notable candidates such as Harambe, Beast Mode, Darrell Castle (this one is real), and nearly Jill Stein.
Division of Batman	A former electoral district in Melbourne, Australia. And no, it wasn't named after the superhero.
Democracy sausage	Part of Australia's tradition of holding a fundraising sausage sizzle at polling places on election day. Not connected to the observation about similarities between how laws and sausages are made.
"Dewey Defeats Truman"	When Thomas E. Dewey was falsely thought to have defeated Harry S. Truman in the 1948 election.
Dizzy Gillespie 1964 presidential campaign	Had it succeeded, it would have created a dream cabinet including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Ray Charles; the White House would be renamed to the Blues House.
Donald Duck Party	A non-existent political party, at occasions among the top ten parties in Swedish parliamentary elections.
Dunwich	Another rotten borough which had almost entirely fallen into the sea over two centuries before it was abolished. Not to be confused with the other Dunwich...
Ed Miliband bacon sandwich photograph	The biggest enemy of British politician - and then Leader of the Opposition - Ed Miliband? A simple bacon sandwich.
Eddie Eagle	Not the British ski-jumping pioneer, but the NRA's firearm safety mascot. For kids!
Wolfgang Engels	A 19-year old civilian employee of the National People's Army who smashed through the Berlin Wall with a stolen APC.
Euromyth	Paranoid and imaginative speculations about the bureaucratic excesses of the European Union.
Executive Order 14168	The executive order that (accidentally) made everyone in the US female.
Four Pests campaign	Mao Zedong's campaign to eliminate all sparrows in China. Helped (in some small way, at least) cause the Great Chinese Famine.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference	The bizarre scene when Trump's presidential campaign hosted a presser not at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia... but at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Philadelphia.
Fuddle duddle	A Canadian political incident involving most unparliamentary language.
Gaysper	When Spain's major far-right party accidentally created an LGBT+ icon.
George H. W. Bush broccoli comments	The president's strategy for winning the baby vote.
George W. Bush shoe-throwing incident	An incident where Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw a pair of shoes at George W. Bush on December 14th, 2008 during a press conference.
German Apples Front	A campaign to purify the German... fruit crop.
Glee Club	Predating the American television series by some decades, one British political party hosts this evening of entertainment in which participants are encouraged to sing rude songs making fun of politicians past and present, both in the party and in more general politics.
Greek Ecologists	A Green party which uses nudity in its political campaigns.
Günter Schabowski	A Freudian slip of this East German official started the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
H'Angus	A monkey football mascot who was elected mayor of Hartlepool, England, with a platform of "free bananas for all schoolchildren".
Harcourt interpolation	The editor of this page then said he felt inclined for a bit of fucking.
Harold Holt	He goes swimming, and then missing.
Helengrad	A nonexistent communist dystopia that supposedly gripped Wellington, New Zealand between 1999 and 2008.
Huh Kyung-young	A perennial South Korean political candidate who owns a palace filled with portraits of himself, claims to be able to levitate and teleport, and that he has an IQ of 430. Got 0.8% of the vote for President in 2022.
Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party	The best satirical party in Hungary.
Ich bin ein Berliner	President Kennedy did not call himself a jelly donut in front of a German audience.
Ilona Staller	A Hungarian porn star elected to the Italian Parliament.
Incidents of objects being thrown at politicians	In various countries, objects have been thrown at politicians for reasons varying from comedic to harmful with objects from pies to grenades.
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.
Jimmy Carter Peanut Statue	A statue of a grinning peanut in honor of Jimmy Carter.
Jón Gnarr	An Icelandic comedian who started the satirical Best Party, and became the mayor of Reykjavík.
John Turmel	With a record of no wins and 100 losses in campaigns since 1979, he's probably the world's least-successful would-be politician.
Dennis Hof	An American pimp who owned several legal brothels in Nevada and won the Nevada 36th district election in 2018... While he was dead.
Justin Humphrey	An American politician who made a bill that would make it illegal to be a furry in Oklahoma schools and promoted an official Bigfoot hunting season, among others.
Kasongo Ilunga	A man who spent several months of 2007 as the Minister for Foreign Trade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – even though he wasn't a real person.
Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary	If you ever find yourself an alien in the Klavern and someone asks "AYAK?", remember to answer "AKIA". It's all "CABARK".
Lyndon LaRouche	What does the Glass-Steagall Act, concert pitch, and a hypothetical Eurasian Land Bridge have in common? According to him, Elizabeth II's attempts to suppress "the truth" about them.
Legislative violence	Where politicians actively fight for what they believe in.
Liz Truss lettuce	The vegetable that outlasted a British prime minister.
Lord Bloody Wog Rolo	Australian political personality and founder of the British Ultra Loyalist League Serving Historical Interests Today (B.U.L.L.…).
Luke Lea	Former American Senator who tried to kidnap the exiled former Kaiser of Germany in 1919. The plan failed when the Kaiser refused to allow him to visit. He ended up stealing a bronze ashtray instead.
List of Kim Jong Il's titles	Because just being the "Great Leader" wasn't enough.
List of politically motivated renamings	Freedom fries and liberty cabbage!
List of short-tenure Donald Trump political appointments	"You're fired!" (almost as quickly as you were hired)
Marxist–Leninist Party of the Netherlands	A fake Maoist political party set up by the BVD in order to spy on the Chinese government. Fooled Zhou Enlai, and may have helped facilitate Richard Nixon's tour of China.
Mitsuo Matayoshi	Perennial candidate. Self-proclaimed God. Repeatedly told opponents to kill themselves.
McGillicuddy Serious Party	A satirical political party in New Zealand.
Mel Carnahan	In 2000, he was elected to the United States Senate, despite dying in a plane crash 3 weeks before election day.
Merkel-Raute	More than one German leader has been known for a distinctive hand gesture.
Mini-dokuritsukoku	That time when hundreds of local communities and businesses in Japan declared "independence".
Moha	The online cult of former Chinese President, Jiang Zemin.
Nagriamel	A libertarian, welfarist, traditionalist, cargo cultist Ni-Vanuatu political movement that was once led by a man named "Moses" with 23 wives and briefly tried to secede. Still represented in the Parliament of Vanuatu, making it perhaps the world's strangest non-satirical party with actual influence.
Name changes due to the Islamic State	Companies thought it would be a great idea to name their project "Isis" until...
National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation	A yearly event when the US president pardons two turkeys instead of letting them get eaten for Thanksgiving.
New shoes on budget day	One of Canada's less grand political traditions.
Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda	Mexican eccentric who repeatedly ran for president, lost, and claimed he'd won. Sound familiar?
NHK Party	The Japanese anti-TV licensing fees party with nine names since 2020, two feuding leaders, and a habit of picking YouTubers as candidates, that is somehow still represented in the National Diet.
Niuas Nobles' constituency	An electoral constituency consisting of just three voters, who elect one of their number to one of the twenty-six seats in the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.
Nobody for President	Vote for Nobody! Nobody will listen to their campaign promises!
Non-human electoral candidate	Why be ruled by some monkey, RINO or pig when you can get a real chimp, rhino or pig into office?
Norway Debate	A series of adjournment debates over three days, one of which ended with the House of Commons nearly voting against the question 'that this House do now adjourn'. Highlights include former Prime Minister David Lloyd George comparing future Prime Minister Winston Churchill to an air raid shelter.
Nuisance candidate	In the Philippines, political candidates can be disqualified for bringing the election into disrepute or mockery, having a name which confuses voters or not actually intending to run for office.
Official Monster Raving Loony Party Screaming Lord Sutch Catmando	Among other policies, this British political party advocates the banning of semicolons as "no-one knows how to use them". Its original leader still holds a British record by standing in 40 elections and losing all of them. Also, it was run for a while by a cat.
Old Sarum	A notorious UK rotten borough which elected 2 MPs, despite having an electorate of 11, none of whom actually lived there.
Gabriele Paolini	His sole aim in life: to get condoms on TV.
Panda diplomacy	Turns out that the best Chinese diplomats are pandas.
Parliamentary snuff box	The only place where you can legally get free tobacco in the UK is the House of Commons.
Pascual Racuyal	A Filipino presidential aspirant who promised to build plastic roads and govern the Philippines "via satellite".
Patrol 36	The most famous group of Neo-Nazi Israelis.
Pedro Lascuráin	President of Mexico for 45 minutes.
People's Revolutionary Government (Grenada)	The only Marxist-Leninist constitutional monarchy in history with Elizabeth II as monarch.
Pink Pistols	They're here, they're queer – and they're armed to the teeth.
Polish Beer-Lovers' Party	One of the major political powers in Poland in the early 1990s.
Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. presidential election	I was searching for waffles, not John Kerry.
¿Por qué no te callas?	It's not often a head of state tells another head of state to shut up at an official summit.
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act	An act of Congress specifically made to ban a specific popular Chinese social media app, that only succeeded in banning said specific Chinese social media app for 12 hours. In those 12 hours, Americans were flocking to another Chinese social media app.
Puedo prometer y prometo	Spain's first political joke after the end of the Franco era.
Putin khuylo!	Or "Putin is a dickhead", in Ukrainian.
Ratfucking	What the Watergate conspirators did. (Not bestiality, if that's what you're thinking.)
Redskins Rule	When Washington's NFL team won, the party of the current president retained the presidency; when they lost, the opposition party won.
Resignation from the House of Commons of the United Kingdom	Illegal since 1624.
Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978)	A British Trotskyist cult party that went right-libertarian post-Cold War, discovered genocide denial, accused ITN of faking footage, and got sued out of existence.
Rhinoceros Party	A former political party in Canada, which often promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.
Richard Nixon mask	One of the United States' most popular masks.
Russian political jokes	In Soviet Russia, the article reads you.
Shanghai Fugu Agreement	A completely fictitious international treaty accepted by the German state of Hesse in 1985.
Shawinigan Handshake	A tense Prime Minister puts a chokehold on a protestor.
Shi Pei Pu	A male Chinese opera singer-turned-spy who seduced French diplomat Bernard Boursicot for 20 years by pretending to be a woman, even "having" a child with him.
Sister Boom Boom	A drag queen who dressed as a nun and ran for the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco.
Socialist fraternal kiss	When two socialist leaders are very close...
Socialist Patients' Collective	An organization that charged that diseases were caused by capitalism.
Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957	You've got to really care about white supremacy to talk for 24 hours straight. (Happily, it didn't stop the Civil Rights Act from passing.)
Taiwan Communist Party	The founder of the party claimed he had no knowledge of communist theory and only picked the name to garner interest.
The Wizard of New Zealand	The Prime Minister of New Zealand gave a friend the title of "Wizard of New Zealand."
"There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama"	A 2008 song celebrating the Irish heritage of then-candidate for President of the United States Barack Obama.
Tía Pikachu	A Chilean preschool teacher who wore an inflatable Pikachu costume in the country's 2019 protests, who was later elected to a board to rewrite the country's constitution.
Tsang Tsou-choi	From the 1970s to his death, he claimed to be the "Kowloon emperor".
Wilson Tucker	The power of group voting tickets brought a man living in America to Australian regional office despite only having gained 98 votes.
Unabomber for President	1996 saw a presidential campaign for an infamous domestic terrorist serving eight life sentences in a supermax prison.
Union of the Centrist Center	Actually centre-right.
Vermin Supreme	A presidential candidate with a boot on his head, who carries around a large toothbrush and pledges that, if elected, he will give every U.S. citizen a pony.
Waitangi dildo incident	Once upon a time in New Zealand, Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce was attacked with a dildo.
White House horseshoe pit	Where George H. W. Bush won an epic duel of horseshoes 21-0 in five minutes.
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan	A spoof scientific study by J.G. Ballard which compares the face of Ronald Reagan to an erect penis. Was circulated at the 1980 RNC as a prank.
You have two cows	A political satire comparing different political ideologies with cows, for some reason.

Christianity

The rear of a bona fide Catalan decoration.

A representation of Kolob (reference numeral 1).

"Thou shalt commit adultery." So says the Bible.

Adam-God doctrine	A previous belief held by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that said Adam was a space alien who became God on his death.
Alexamenos graffito	Possibly the oldest depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus was made by a boy mocking his Christian peer by depicting the Messiah with a donkey for a head.
The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters	Started by Peter the Great, and consisted mostly of drinking and partying.
As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly	An oldie but a goodie from the Bible.
Jim Bakker	Televangelist founds a Christian theme park so successful that it competes with Disneyland, gets arrested for fraud and loses his park, then promptly returns to televangelism upon release. Also admitted to never fully reading the Bible until his imprisonment, and to getting information on it from Lyndon LaRouche.
Banquet of Chestnuts	Enough to make even the most committed and diehard Roman Catholic agree that the church was in a pretty poor state at the time of the Reformation.
Bible errata	A typesetter's complaint finds justification in Psalm 119.
Carlo Acutis	Gamers don't die, they get canonized... Eventually.
Cadaver Synod	In 897, Pope Stephen VI had the body of the former Pope that appointed him, Pope Formosus exhumed, dressed in papal vestments and then seated on a throne while he read charges against it and conducted a trial.
Caganer	A traditional Catalan statue, similar to a garden gnome, that depicts a person defecating. Often included in Catalan nativity scenes or other Christmas decorations.
Christmas in Nazi Germany	The Nazi Party reinvented Christmas by removing a certain baby boy raised in the Jewish faith.
Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God	A fundamentalist Mormon group with a surprisingly large body count.
Chute na santa incident	An infamous kicking of a saint. Apparently done to one-up a rival TV network's previous blasphemous broadcasting.
Clare of Assisi	Because she claimed to have seen and heard Mass on the walls when she was ill, she was made the patron saint of television in 1958, despite dying 674 years before television was invented.
Criticism of Mother Teresa	Seriously? Yep, seriously. Her detractors include Christopher Hitchens, Tariq Ali and devout Hindus.
David Berg	A Christian cult leader that was so perverse, even Jim Jones mocked his sexual fixations.
Harold Davidson	A 1930s Church of England clergyman, known as "The Prostitutes' Padre", who was defrocked and later died after being mauled by a toothless lion.
Ejaculatory prayer	A short and impulsive prayer not—as the name may suggest—a prayer related to ejaculation.
Ruben Enaje	A former construction worker from the Philippines who has been voluntarily crucified 36 times as of 2025.
Ezekiel 23	One of the odder visions from God: a piece of Rule 34 with Samaria and Jerusalem portrayed as women who sleep around.
Feast of the Ass	No... this isn't about that ass. It's an old tradition where a girl and a child on a donkey go to church together, with the donkey sitting beside the altar during the sermon.
Flirty Fishing	Sharing the Gospel through prostitution.
Freedomites	A Canadian religious cult that bombed and set fire to public buildings. All while nude.
Gambling on papal elections	How much you wanna bet he's going to be Catholic?
General Butt Naked	A former Liberian warlord who found Christ and now preaches to the communities he committed atrocities against would be pretty odd even if he weren't called... that.
Great Disappointment	Hundreds of people were convinced the world would end on a very specific date. Turns out they were wrong. Ahem.
Hell house	A type of Christian horror house to make children more pious.
Holy Prepuce	One of several relics purported to be associated with Jesus. Also known as The Holy Foreskin. (See also Circumcision of Jesus.)
Jesus H. Christ	Does it stand for Henry?
Kolob	God's home planet, so say the Mormons.
List of people claimed to be Jesus	Christ has risen...again...and again.
LOLCat Bible Translation Project	In teh beginnin, Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez an da urfs n stuffz...
Luce	Don't mess with this jubilee mascot! She has the power of God and anime on her side!
Mental health of Jesus	It's always "How can I see the Son of God?" and never "is he okay?".
Miracle of the Sun	70,000 people in Portugal gather to witness a miracle and are treated to an inexplicable solar event.
Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God	Suicide cult or mass murder? You decide.
Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible	The Bible refers to lost books – even pagan ones – much more than you'd think.
Omphalos hypothesis	The answer to all the evidence against creationism – maybe the Earth was created to look like it was billions of years old!
Phallic saint	Figures of holy people, but a hundred times more hung.
Pope Joan	Medieval documents cite the existence of a female pope – proof of a Vatican cover up or a blasphemous slur?
Pope John numbering	There have been 21 legitimate Popes John, but there have been two known as John XXIII.
Pope Michael	Elected Pope in 1990 (by six people, including his parents) as a conclavist opponent to the current Pope, while not even an ordained priest.
Pornocracy	A near-60-year period, also known as Saeculum obscurum or the "Rule of the Harlots", where the Popes were controlled by the women of a corrupt noble family.
Prophecy of the Popes	According to this document, the Pope is the one who will bring about the fall of Rome. Most aren't convinced.
Rod of Iron Ministries	The cult of the AR-15, which holds ceremonies where firearms are blessed and whose leader wears a crown of bullets.
Rumspringa	Amish Gone Wild.
Saint Guinefort	A Saint who was also a dog. Not to be confused with this Saint, who was also a dog, Sort of, or the Saint whose name is a breed of dog
Secret Gospel of Mark	An incredibly elaborate forgery, or proof Jesus was gay?
Self-crucifixion of Mattio Lovat	An Italian attempts to crucify himself in public settings. Two times. And prevented by passerby in both attempts.
Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tonga	One of only a few territories (others notably including Samoa and Kiribati) where the famously Saturday-observing church observes the Sabbath on Sunday.
Skoptsy	"Holy" emasculation, started by a man who claimed to be a deceased emperor.
John Murray Spear	This guy thought Frankenstien was a how-to guide, and created Robo-Jesus.
St. James-Bond Church	No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and saviour!
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera	Was Jesus' father buried in Germany?
Unfulfilled Christian religious predictions	Doomsdays that didn't.
Wicked Bible	A 1631 reprint of the King James Bible, which rendered commandment number 7 as "Thou shalt commit adultery".
Zipporah at the inn	God apparently tries (and fails) to kill Moses.

Animals in the military

For Gallantry – if you're an animal...

...such as Sergeant Stubby here, World War I's most decorated war dog.

Corporal Jackie	A baboon owned by a draftee who didn't want to leave him behind, he ended the First World War as a South African corporal, having picked up several injuries and a habit of saluting superior officers.
Dickin Medal	Only awarded to animals.
Moose cavalry	The supposed moose cavalries of Sweden and Russia.
Sergeant Stubby	The only dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat.
United States Camel Corps	Full-blooded Arabian mount, imported!
Wojtek	Arguably the most extraordinary soldier of all time.

Death

Execution by elephant.

All aboard the Necropolis line – at least, those that can.

Don't panic – you're in a safety coffin.

Vultures enjoying a sky burial.

One moment he was here, the next...

Atacama skeleton	Remains found in Chile that caused much speculation about ancient aliens for 10 years, until they were discovered to just be of a foetus.
Badge Man	Unknown figure reportedly visible atop the grassy knoll in the Moorman photo of the Kennedy assassination.
Black Volga	The car that makes people disappear in the Eastern Bloc. Its equivalent on the other side of the Iron Curtain is the black helicopter.
Mercy Brown vampire incident	One of the best documented cases of vampire investigation.
Richard Chase	The only way to stop the Nazi-controlled UFOs from poisoning your macaroni and cheese is to inject yourself with animal blood and eat human brains.
Coffin birth	When a pregnant woman dies, the decomposition of her body can result in a gas build-up that causes the fetus inside her to be expelled.
Collyer brothers	When packratting was taken to a tragic extreme.
The Dawn of the Black Hearts	Black metal musician takes staged photograph of his recently deceased bandmate, photograph outlives him despite being destroyed.
Death by coconut	You can die if a coconut falls on your coconut.
Death by GPS	"In a quarter mile, turn right onto Afterlife Way."
Death during consensual sex	These two are not related to each other. Usually.
Death erection
Death from laughter	Don't laugh – it's happened.
Death by misadventure	Death probably due after one saying "Hold my beer, and watch this!"
Death by vending machine	A penny wise and several hundred pounds foolish.
Death Master File	No, it's not a Bond villain's kill list. It's just the SSA keeping track of everyone who dies in the United States. Wait...
Defenestration	The time-honoured tradition of throwing people out of windows.
Disappearance of Frederick Valentich	An Australian pilot disappeared in the ocean, having seen a strange object above his aircraft. No trace of either his body or the aircraft have been found.
Dyatlov Pass Incident	A group of Russian hikers attempt to escape an unknown horror on "Death Mountain."
Euthanasia Coaster	A roller coaster intended to kill its passengers.
Execution by elephant	An unusual form of capital punishment used throughout history. (See also History of elephants in Europe.)
Fan death	A persistent urban legend in South Korea, where the media – and even medical professionals – regularly report on people dying because they left a fan running 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.
Ghost bike	Bicycle rider in memoriam.
Green Boots	A climber who became a landmark on Everest even after freezing to death.
Hammersmith nude murders	Murders that involved the other unidentified serial killer named Jack, with the title "the Stripper".
The Hands of Che Guevara	Documentary about the search for the severed hands of the Latin American guerrilla fighter Ernesto Che Guevara, who was captured and executed by Bolivian Special Forces in October 1967.
Hell money	Apparently, the Chinese afterlife is subject to hyperinflation.
Sogen Kato	Believed to be the oldest living man in Tokyo... until the discovery of his 30-year-old mummified corpse.
Kennedy curse	Apparently John F. Kennedy was not the only Kennedy to meet an early demise-far from it.
Kick the bucket	A heated argument lies behind the origin of this idiom.
Lampshades made from human skin	They probably wouldn't even be that good at diffusing light.
Ricardo López	An obsessed fan who attempted to kill Icelandic singer Björk by a letter bomb rigged with sulfuric acid.
Henry Lee Lucas	Claimed to be the most prolific serial killer in history, confessing to over 600 murders. Later recanted almost all of them.
Children of Llullaillaco	Two incredibly well preserved cadavers of two Incan children found next to the Argentina–Chile border.
List of expressions related to death	"Go home in a box", "go bung", "hop the stick", ...
List of people who died on the toilet	You could say they died on the throne.
List of entertainers who died during a performance	"And for my last act...I shall die and not come back to life!"
List of postal killings	"Don't let Walter Hobbs deceive you; this life is not all shiny bins and fun", ...
List of selfie-related injuries and deaths	Extreme cases of people being unaware of their surroundings.
Lead Masks Case	Two electricians tried to contact aliens with psychedelic drugs and masks made out of lead. They died shortly after.
London Necropolis railway station	Single tickets only, unless you're a mourner or other visitor.
Lord Uxbridge's leg	The grisly afterlife of a leg lost during the Battle of Waterloo, formerly owned by Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey.
Maschalismos	The act of mutilating the dead to prevent them from rising again.
Michael Malloy	Like Rasputin, but homeless, drunk, and Irish.
Elmer McCurdy	A dead criminal whose mummified body was bought by carnies and used as a prop for decades, its later owners not even knowing the corpse was real.
Ken McElroy	"Nobody saw nothing" taken to its logical extreme.
Micromort	A quantitative death risk equivalent to one in a million.
Mordred	Mordred is back for revenge—watch out!
Murder of Vivianne Ruiz	The first recorded "Jane Doe" in Australia, and a murder with enough twists and turns to be a legal drama. The case for the defence (unsuccessfully) contended that a bloody fingerprint found on a newspaper shoved down the victim's throat was actually tomato juice.
Herbert Mullin	Haven't had any earthquakes recently? Thank this man.
Oliver Cromwell's head	This English political leader's head has an interesting journey after its owner is posthumously executed, more so than the one he cut off himself.
Richard Paul Pavlick	Plotted to kill then president-elect John F. Kennedy via suicide bombing, but delayed it upon seeing Kennedy with his family.
Poe Toaster	Not a kitchen appliance, but a mysterious figure who paid an annual tribute to American author Edgar Allan Poe.
Post-mortem photography	Back in the early days of photography it was common to take pictures of recently deceased loved ones, propped up to look as if they were alive.
Death of Gloria Ramirez	One of the most bizarre unsolved deaths ever documented. The media nicknamed her the "Toxic Lady".
Refrigerator death	A cool way to die.
Republican marriage	A form of execution in which a naked man and woman are tied together and drowned. (What did you think it was?)
Rookwood Cemetery railway line	A former railway line that served a cemetery near Sydney.
Safety coffin	Coffins manufactured just in case their tenant is not actually dead before being buried.
Salish Sea human foot discoveries	Dismembered feet keep washing up.
Frane Selak	Dubbed the luckiest/unluckiest man to exist, cheated death seven times and also managed to win the lottery!
Sky burial	It's not really a form of burial. Also known as jhator which means "giving alms to the birds."
Richard Snell	White supremacist and murderer, coincidentally executed on the same day as another, much larger act of white supremacist murder.
Sokushinbutsu	A practice of self-mummification among Buddhist monks.
Space burial	Around 150 people have had their remains interred in space. Or would that be ex-terred?
Spontaneous human combustion	The sudden burning of a person's body without any apparent source of ignition.
Suicide booth	A common feature in the world of tomorrow.
Suicide of Sunil Tripathi	"The perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing was... a student who'd already been dead for a month! We did it, Reddit!"
Tamam Shud case	A dead man is found on an Australian beach with no identification and a bizarre fragment of a book in his pocket. To this day, his identity and cause of death are still unconfirmed.
Carl Tanzler	A radiographer who became obsessed with a dead TB patient, had her exhumed, and lived with her corpse for 7 years.
Toilet-related injuries and deaths	As if constipation wasn't enough.
Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People	A group of Indians suffering more from theft than cardiac failure. Its founder managed to run for political office despite having been declared dead for over a decade.
Lal Bihari
Video-Enhanced Grave Marker	Graves with video screens and speakers on them.
Joyce Vincent	A woman who sat dead in her home with the TV and heater running and Christmas presents on her lap for three years until her corpse was found.
Wikipedia coverage of death	It's more than just a rush to change every "is" to "was".
Xin Zhui	A remarkably preserved Chinese mummy from 163 B.C. with all features and soft tissue still intact.

See also

• List of premature obituaries
• List of unusual deaths

Questions

"Get thee onto that pin!"

Wikipedia is not afraid to tackle the tough questions:

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?	A proverbial question of theology.
If a tree falls in a forest	Philosophy meets the logging industry.
Meaning of life	Why are we here?
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?	Have you ever wondered that? No? Apparently this is one of the most important contemporary philosophical questions.
Where's the beef?	In 1984, people thought this was really funny for some reason.
Why did the chicken cross the road?	People have asked this for over 150 years.

Lists

List of American and British defectors in the Korean War	Yes, somehow yes?
List of animals awarded human credentials	Animals getting so-called diplomas from diploma mills.
List of barefooters	No shirt, no shoes, no service?
List of bow tie wearers	Nerds not included.
List of catgirls and catboys	This one had an edit war over whether or not Hermione Granger should be added.
List of common misconceptions	A gold mine of strangeness.
Lists of Danish football transfers 2008–09	Keep in mind that this is not just a list, this is a list of lists.
List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events	But in the end, nothing happened.
List of foreign-born samurai in Japan	That's right.
List of garlic festivals	Even one festival devoted entirely to garlic of all things is strange enough.
List of helicopter prison escapes	Yes, you read that right.
List of incidents at Disney parks	Donald Duck's anger issues are far from being your main concern at a Disney attraction.
List of inventors killed by their own invention	Including everyone from Marie Curie to Thomas Midgley Jr.
List of largest hourglasses	Wikipedia probably wasted as much time on this pointless list as it takes for one of these to run out.
List of lists of lists	A list of all lists of lists -- and yes, it contains itself.
List of non-water floods	Beep beep, massive waves of melted butter, wine, and chocolate coming through!
List of paraphilias	Just too many to list.
List of people imprisoned for editing Wikipedia	Yes, this has actually happened.
List of people who have been considered deities	People from emperors to John Coltrane have been considered deities.
List of people who have been pied	A pie to the face, usually as the result of differing political views.
List of people who have lived in airports	Quite a few, in reality.
List of potato museums	How are there enough to warrant a list?
List of scholarly publishing stings	Instances of people submitting fake or nonsense scholarly articles to expose an academic journal as a predatory publisher.
List of sexually active popes	A surprisingly long list for a supposedly celibate role.
List of shoe-throwing incidents	The recurring trend of high-ranking people being attacked with shoes.
List of wrong anthems incidents	Everything from playing the wrong country's anthem to playing Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca".

Wikipedia meta-pages

Category:Wikipedia humor	There are too many pages in this category to all list here, this page lists a few highlights.
Wikipedia:Discussions for discussion	Great venue for grating big discussions.
Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy	All links lead to Philosophy.
Wikipedia:Why is BFDI not on Wikipedia?	An entire essay dedicated to explaining how one particular topic fails to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria, why its title was blacklisted and why even drafts have been salted.