Articles: The World of the Strange

Short, fact-checked stories about odd but true things. Non-graphic, family-friendly, with sources listed on every one.

• The Pitch Drop Experiment: The World's Slowest Drip (Strange Science): A professor poured tar-like pitch into a funnel in 1927. Only nine drops have fallen since, and nobody has ever seen one fall.
• Hiroo Onoda: The Soldier Whose War Lasted Until 1974 (Strange History): A Japanese officer stayed at his post in the Philippine jungle for 29 years after World War II ended, until his former commander came to order him out.
• The Sailing Stones of Death Valley: How Rocks Move on Their Own (Strange Science): For decades nobody saw the rocks of Racetrack Playa move. In 2013 two cousins finally caught it happening, and the answer was thin ice.
• The Strangest Olympic Marathon: St. Louis, 1904 (Strange History): A runner rode in a car, another stopped for a nap, and the winner got a dose of poison. The 1904 Olympic marathon was chaos.
• The Day the Mona Lisa Walked Out of the Louvre (Strange Crime): In 1911 a museum worker took the Mona Lisa off the wall and left. Nobody noticed for more than a day, and the theft made her world famous.