1. Fake death: In 2007, the American forged Corey Taylor his own death in an attempt to get out of his phone plan. It didn’t work
2. Mailbox in the sea: Off the coast of the town of Susami, Japan, is the world’s deepest mailbox! Located 10 meters below sea level, it holds up to 200 letters on the busiest days
3. Long words: The fear of long words has a very appropriate and bizarre name: Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliphobia
4. The rights of the cow: Because cows are sacred in India, they also have their own official list of rights
5. Cat’s claw: In the 1700s, German scholar Athanasius Kircher “invented” a so-called cat piano, which drove a nail into a cat’s tail when a key was pressed
6. Flavored onions: The average lifespan of a taste bud is 10 days
7. Darts: Most dartboards today are made from sisal, but in the past, horse hair was used
8. Deer in a submarine: Under World War 2 the crew of the submarine HMS Trident had a deer named Pollyanna on board for 6 weeks. The deer was a gift from the Russians
9. Chewing pattern: Camels chewing in 8s
10. Fruit flies: Some fruit flies are genetically resistant to alcohol exposure (but only those flies that have an inactive version of the gene that scientists have – tellingly – chosen to call ‘happy hour‘)

The cat piano was a musical instrument consisting of a piano and some cats. It was designed by the scholar Athanasius Kircher in 18th century Germany and worked by driving a nail into the tail of a cat, which then howled, creating “music”

Strange deaths

• Draco was an Athenian lawgiver who died in 620 BC. He was suffocated by the many gifts (cloaks and hats) thrown at him by the grateful citizens in the theater of Egina
• Aeschylus was a famous Athenian tragedian poet who died in 455 BC. He was killed by a tortoise released by an eagle who mistook his head for a stone (some birds use stones to “pierce” tortoises). The death is made no less strange by the fact that Aeschylus was trying to avoid his prophecy of death – being killed by a falling object – by staying outdoors
• Qin Shi Huang China’s first emperor (known for his terracotta army) died in 210 BC after swallowing several pills of mercury that he believed would give him eternal life
• St. Lawrence was a treasurer and deacon in Rome, and died in 258 AD. He was roasted alive on a gigantic grate and the poet Prudentius says that St. Lawrence joked with his torturers and said: “Turn me over – I’ve had enough on this side” while lying on the rack
• Hans Steininger was the mayor of Brunau (in what was then Bavaria and is now Austria) died in 1567 after falling over his beard and breaking his neck. Steininger probably had the longest beard in the world at the time
• Swedish King Adolf Frederik died in 1771 from digestive problems after eating a royal meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and 14 Shrovetide buns in warm milk (his favorite dessert)
• Clement Vallandigham was an American lawyer and politician who died in 1871. During a trial defending an accused murderer, Vallandigham accidentally shot himself while trying to demonstrate how the victim could have possibly shot himself
• Harry Houdini – the famous magician – died in 1926 after multiple punches to the stomach from a student named Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead. Houdini had previously shown during his performances that he could take heavy punches to the stomach. Whitehead questioned this and started throwing punches while Houdini lay – unprepared – on a couch with a broken ankle. Houdini died a few days later from peritonitis as a result of a ruptured appendix, which is attributed to the many punches
• Basil Brown was an English healthy eating advocate who died in 1974 after drinking nearly 40 liters of carrot juice over a 10-day period. The juice gave him an overdose of vitamin A and severe liver damage, which was the cause of his death
• Kurt Gödel was an Austrian/American mathematician who died of starvation in 1978 while his wife was hospitalized. Gödel suffered from extreme paranoia and refused to eat food prepared by anyone other than his wife
• Garry Hoy was a Canadian lawyer who died in 1993 while trying to show a group of visitors to the Toronto-Dominion Center business complex that the glass in the windows wouldn’t shatter. To illustrate his point, he threw himself at a window – a stunt he had performed many times before – but this time the glass slipped out of the window frame and Hoy fell 24 storeys to his death
• Takuya Nagaya was a 23-year-old young man from Japan who in 2013 started writhing on the floor like a snake and talking about becoming a snake. His mother interpreted this as possession by a snake demon and called her husband. For the next 2 days, the husband tried to exorcise the demon by beating Takuya – which resulted in Takuya’s death
• Oscar Otero Aguilar died at the age of 21 in 2014 in Mexico City after accidentally shooting himself in the head with a loaded gun while taking a selfie

Fact: Susami, Japan is home to the deepest mailbox in the world; it is located 10 meters below sea level and receives up to 200 letters daily