Weird Facts

On December 28, 1987, Kively Papajohn returned from shopping to her apartment building in Limassol, Cyprus. Her elevator stopped at the second floor. She shouted and banged on the walls, but nobody heard her. Kively was the only person living in the entire building. The elevator was so small she couldn’t even lie down. She survived the cold by carefully rationing the fruit, vegetables, and bread in her shopping bag. By the third day, she had crouched down and became too weak to stand again. Her relatives thought she had gone to another city. Only when her niece discovered she had never arrived did rescuers begin searching. On January 2, 1988, after six days, Kively was finally found alive and taken to hospital.

In 2011, Abdi saw an open casting call in Minneapolis looking for Somali actors for a Tom Hanks movie. He had never acted before. Director Paul Greengrass eventually cast him as pirate leader Abduwali Muse in Captain Phillips. Abdi was paid $65,000 for the role in a movie with an estimated $55 million budget. After filming ended, he returned to Minneapolis and worked at his brother’s mobile-phone shop while waiting for the movie to come out. He later said he quit the shop on the day of the film’s premiere. Then everything changed. Abdi won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor and received an Oscar nomination for his first film role. During the awards campaign, reports said he was still living on a studio per diem in Los Angeles, wearing loaned clothes and getting a car only for official publicity events. And one of the movie’s most famous lines, “I’m the captain now,” was Abdi’s own improvisation. He went on to build an acting career with films including Eye in the Sky and Blade Runner 2049.

In 1992, farmer Peter Whatling lost a hammer in a field in Suffolk, England. He asked his friend Eric Lawes, a retired gardener with a metal detector, to help find it. Instead of the hammer, he uncovered Roman coins, silver spoons and gold jewelry. Realizing what he had found, he stopped digging and reported it so archaeologists could properly excavate the site. The discovery became the Hoxne Hoard: 14,865 Roman coins and around 200 precious objects, making it the largest hoard of late-Roman silver and gold ever found in Britain. British Museum. It was valued at £1.75 million. Lawes received the reward and voluntarily split it 50–50 with Whatling. They found the hammer too. Today, even that ordinary lost hammer belongs to the British Museum.

In June 1982, British Airways Flight 9 flew into an invisible cloud of volcanic ash over Indonesia. One by one, all four engines shut down. Captain Eric Moody then made an announcement that became legendary in aviation: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.” The 747 glided powerless for around 16 minutes. As it descended out of the ash cloud, the crew managed to restart the engines and eventually landed safely in Jakarta. No one on board died.

In 1989, a Soviet psychic named E. Frenkel believed he could stop moving vehicles with psychic power. He claimed he had already stopped bicycles, cars and a streetcar. Then he tried a freight train. Frenkel reportedly stepped onto the tracks near Astrakhan with his arms raised. The engineer applied the emergency brakes but could not stop in time. Frenkel was k!lled. Investigators found notes in a briefcase beside the tracks explaining his plan: “Now I’m going to stop a train.”

In July 1985, New Orleans lifeguards gathered for a pool party celebrating their first drowning-free swimming season in memory. Around 200 people attended, roughly half of them lifeguards, with four assigned to duty. As the party ended and the pool was being cleared, they found 31-year-old guest Jerome Moody at the bottom of the deep end. According to recreation department director Madlyn Richard, Moody was fully dressed and had not been swimming with the other guests. Lifeguards tried to revive him, but their efforts failed. An autopsy confirmed that he had drowned. Richard described the lifeguards as upset and called his death a tragedy.

In August 2018, Domino’s Russia offered an unusual deal: get its logo permanently tattooed on a visible part of your body and receive up to 100 free pizzas every year for 100 years. Participants had to share a photo of their tattoo online. The promotion was supposed to run until October 31, but hundreds of people joined within days. After just five days, Domino’s ended the campaign early and announced a limit of 350 participants. It warned people with later tattoo appointments to cancel, while giving those already getting inked a final deadline to submit photos. The final total was higher: Domino’s Russia reported 381 people took part, and 381 winners received free pizza certificates.

China has a nationwide video-surveillance project known in English as “Skynet.” It links cameras in public places, including roads, railway stations, and shopping areas, to help authorities monitor activity and investigate crime. China has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras overall. In parts of its surveillance network, artificial intelligence and facial recognition help identify people and track their movements. These tools can help police locate criminal suspects. The technology also raises concerns about privacy and government control. Researchers and journalists have documented surveillance being used to monitor ethnic minorities and other groups, extending its reach beyond criminal investigations.

Michael Sherman replaced his front lawn in Chino, California, with a “food forest” in 2019. His garden grows fruits and vegetables, including sweet potatoes, squash, bananas and passionfruit, to help feed his family. By September 2026, Sherman said he had received $1,250 in city fines and faced another $500 penalty. City officials said remaining overgrown vegetation needed trimming or removal. The dispute involves landscaping and visibility requirements, rather than a ban on growing food. Sherman says he has already cut plants back and wants precise instructions about which ones still break the rules and how much to trim. He told the city council that cutting back food-producing plants would reduce his harvest, and asked officials to identify the problems clearly.

People incarcerated in California’s conservation camps do a significant share of the state’s wildfire work. In 2024, their crews accounted for 42% of CAL FIRE-reported emergency response hours for hand crews. But after leaving prison, many found that years of training and real fire-line experience did not translate easily into a CAL FIRE career. A new law aims to change that. From January 2028, qualified former fire-camp members applying for Fire Fighter I positions will receive a hiring preference. Relevant camp experience will also count toward requirements for Forestry Technician jobs. The law does not reserve positions or guarantee anyone a job. Applicants must still meet CAL FIRE’s qualifications. But it creates a clearer path from fighting California’s fires while incarcerated to competing for a firefighting career after release.

Jake Gray shared his home in Cairns, Australia, with a huge huntsman spider named Charlotte. In 2020, he said he had watched her grow for about a year and even hoped she would grow bigger. Gray said his family tolerated huntsman spiders because they ate cockroaches. These spiders also feed on other insects and small animals, making them useful hunters around homes. His family chose the name Charlotte to help his children, Jack and Bella, feel less afraid of their unusual housemate. Gray said she appeared from time to time, and he once saw her eating an Asian house gecko.

They traveled to Ireland to mourn their grandfather and ended up helping save two lives. On July 22, 2019, brothers Walter, Eoghan and Declan Butler, along with their brother-in-law Alex Thomson, were at Portmarnock Beach near Dublin when a six-year-old girl drifted out to sea on an inflatable. The experienced swimmers rushed to help. Three reached the girl offshore, while Walter, a US Coast Guard member, helped bring her ashore as they returned. Eoghan and Declan then rescued her father, who had entered the water trying to reach her. The girl received hospital treatment and returned home safely. Her father later said his daughter would not be alive without them. A grieving family had given another family a second chance.

At Oxford University’s Clarendon Laboratory, an electric bell has operated almost continuously since it was set up in 1840. Two batteries called “dry piles” power a tiny metal ball, about four millimeters wide, that moves between two bells and strikes them repeatedly. The device uses extremely little electricity, helping its batteries last so long. Their exact internal contents remain uncertain, although scientists have ideas based on similar batteries from that period. Opening them could end this remarkable experiment, so investigating their contents may have to wait until the batteries run out or the mechanism fails. Known as the Oxford Electric Bell, it has produced an estimated 10 billion rings, muffled behind glass in its display cabinet.

A British teenager developed permanent vision loss after years of eating an extremely limited diet. He mainly ate fries, Pringles, white bread, ham and sausages, avoiding foods because of their textures. Although his weight was normal, tests revealed deficiencies in vitamin B12, vitamin D, copper, and selenium. He first visited a doctor at 14 because he felt tired. By 17, his eyesight had worsened. Doctors diagnosed nutritional optic neuropathy: damage to the nerves that carry visual information from the eyes to the brain. He developed blind spots in the center of his vision. Treatment could not reverse the damage. The case showed that normal weight does not always mean someone is getting enough nutrients.

One penny might seem almost worthless, but watch what happens when you start with that amount and double the total every day. Starting with $0.01 on Day 1, you would have just $5.12 on Day 10. By Day 20, that amount would reach $5,242.88. Then the jumps become huge: $671,088.64 on Day 27 and an incredible $1,342,177.28 on Day 28. It is a mathematical example, not a realistic investment promise, but it shows how small beginnings can lead to surprisingly large numbers.

After an argument with his wife, a Florida man allegedly found an unusual place to stay: a stranger’s empty house. On June 9, 2025, deputies were called to a home in Davenport after a neighbor noticed lights switching on and off. The owner was away and had asked the neighbor to watch the property. Inside, deputies said they found a man known as Joe cooking and filling a bathtub. He allegedly admitted he had no permission to enter and did not know the owner. He said he had stayed there for four days because he did not want to return home after the argument. The 44-year-old was arrested and faced charges including unarmed burglary, petty theft, and domestic battery.

Shi Ming treated patients at a hospital while building a second career her parents knew little about: professional fighting. The Chinese athlete graduated from medical university in Kunming and became a licensed doctor. Alongside her hospital work, she trained and competed in mixed martial arts. She said her parents believed she practised traditional martial arts and did not know about her MMA career. On November 23, 2024, aged 30, she knocked out Feng Xiaocan with a head kick in the third round in Macau. The victory made her the first women’s Road to UFC strawweight tournament winner and earned her a UFC contract. After winning, she expressed concern for her opponent and said she hoped she was okay.

In September 2026, that idea finally became real. Together California opened in Palmdale after roughly 18 years of planning and development. The village includes 12 family homes, two studio apartments and a community center. Full-time, professionally trained foster parents will live there with children, allowing sibling groups to stay under the same roof whenever possible. Bale did not build it alone. His wife, Sibi Bale, Dr. Eric Esrailian, Tim McCormick, donors, and local government partners all helped turn the project into reality. The first children were expected to begin arriving in October. Bale spent years playing heroes on screen. This time, the goal was simpler: For children already losing the home they knew, try not to make them lose their brothers and sisters too.

Two solar farms in Minnesota became places where insects could thrive while generating electricity. Researchers planted native grasses and wildflowers across former farmland and studied managed plots from 2018 to 2022. Over those five growing seasons, the number of flowering plant species increased sevenfold, native bee numbers rose more than twentyfold, and total insect numbers tripled. Nearby soybean flowers also received more bee visits than those farther from the planted habitat, suggesting benefits could extend beyond the solar sites. The findings show how managed solar farms can support wildlife alongside energy production. The increases came from monitored plots with extra plantings and different management, so they should not be treated as measurements of every part of the two farms.

On December 4, 1958, Robert Timm and John Cook took off from Las Vegas in a modified Cessna 172. They would not land again until February 7, 1959. For 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes and five seconds, the pair lived inside the aircraft, taking turns flying and sleeping. To refuel, they flew low over a desert road, matching the speed of a truck below. A hose carried fuel up to the plane. Food, water and supplies were passed aboard. The flight promoted the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas. They finally landed after the engine began losing power. Guinness still lists their achievement as the longest time flying an aircraft: more than two months in the air without a single landing.