User:SapphicSassmaster

Thanks for visiting SapphicSassmaster's user page! I contribute in English-speaking Wikipedia.

c:Ursus arctos arctos from the Bear Sanctuary in Synevyr National Nature Park, Zakarpattia Oblast, Ukraine.

Hey everyone! I'm Jobanpreet, but feel free to call me Jojo! I'm an undergrad finance student from India, and I’ve been a fan of Wikipedia since 2018. I absolutely love hanging out here—it’s hands down the best place on the internet!

Everyday Stuff

Quote of the Week

“

The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even one hundred defeats.

”

— Abraham Lincoln

Today's featured picture

Rhina Aguirre (20 May 1939 – 30 October 2021) was a Bolivian disability activist, politician, and sociologist. An opponent of the military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, Aguirre was an early activist in the country's human rights movement. Exiled to Ecuador by the regime of Luis García Meza, she collaborated with Leonidas Proaño's indigenous ministry and worked closely with the country's peasant and social organizations. Blinded in both eyes by toxoplasmosis, Aguirre took up the cause of disability rights, joining the Departmental Council for Disabled Persons upon her return to Bolivia. In 2009, she joined the Movement for Socialism and was elected to represent the department of Tarija in the Chamber of Senators, becoming the first blind person in Bolivian history to assume a parliamentary seat. This photograph of Aguirre was taken in 2014.

Photograph credit: Chamber of Senators; edited by Krisgabwoosh

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Petroglyphs at Comb Ridge.

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I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
— Douglas MacArthur

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Cher (born May 20, 1946) is an American singer and actress. Dubbed the "Goddess of Pop", she gained fame in 1965 as part of the folk duo Sonny & Cher, early exponents of 1960s counterculture. She became a TV star in the 1970s, with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour drawing more than 30 million viewers weekly, and topped the Billboard Hot 100 with narrative pop songs including "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" and "Half-Breed". Transitioning to film, she earned two Academy Awards nominations—for Silkwood (1983) and Moonstruck (1987), winning Best Actress for the latter—and received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Mask (1985). Her dance-pop comeback album Believe (1998) introduced the "Cher effect", a stylized use of Auto-Tune to distort vocals. Her 2002–2005 Farewell Tour grossed $250 million, the highest ever by a female artist at the time. A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Cher is the only solo artist with Billboard number-one singles in each of seven decades. (Full article...)

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HNLMS Java

... that the crew of HNLMS Java (pictured) struggled to access the sinking ship's life vests because these were locked away in a hard-to-reach compartment?
... that Gabriel Luna used a flamethrower in an episode of The Last of Us, and afterwards had recurring visions of flaming figures running towards him?
... that many North Carolina Farmers' Union members left the organization as a result of leader Henry Quincy Alexander's opposition to American entry into World War I?
... that 33 years after The New York Times called David Lynch's film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me "brain-dead" and seemingly "the worst movie ever made", it conceded that the film was now "revered"?
... that two future deans of the University of Indonesia, Margono Soekarjo and Djamaloeddin, conducted the first surgery on conjoined twins in Indonesia?
... that the nearly 200 sexual encounters Molly Kochan had while terminally ill formed the basis of the Dying for Sex podcast and subsequent TV series?
... that a gun club once allegedly parked boats in the living room of a plantation house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright?
... that Jane Remover's school counselor made sure Remover felt fine after a classmate wrote an essay about lyrics from Teen Week?
... that playwright Jason Grote was involved in releasing 10,000 crickets in New York City?

In the news

JJ

Austria, represented by JJ (pictured) with the song "Wasted Love", wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
Former president of Uruguay José Mujica dies at the age of 89.
The Socialist Party led by current prime minister Edi Rama wins an outright majority in the Albanian parliamentary election.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party announces its dissolution, ending its insurgency against Turkey.

On this day

May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908)

325 – The First Council of Nicaea (depicted), the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church, was formally opened by Constantine the Great.
794 – According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the orders of Offa of Mercia.
1714 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his Pentecost cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder at the chapel of Schloss Weimar.
1927 – With the signing of the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become Saudi Arabia.
1941 – World War II: German paratroopers began the Battle of Heraklion on the island of Crete, capturing the airfield and port in Heraklion ten days later.

William Fargo (b. 1818)
Gertrude Guillaume-Schack (d. 1903)
Nizamuddin Asir Adrawi (d. 2021)

More anniversaries:

Some Image Maps

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The World Anti-Slavery Convention met for the first time at Exeter Hall in London, on 12–23 June 1840.^[2] It was organised by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, largely on the initiative of the English Quaker Joseph Sturge.^[2]^[3] The exclusion of women from the convention gave a great impetus to the women's suffrage movement in the United States.^[4]

Conspiracy theories I find cool

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Lumber Cartel

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Right-wing antiglobalism

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Vril Society

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My favorite pages

Individual patients and staff

This skull's owner didn't even get a headache – but he was a changed man.

Elisabeth Anderson Sierra	Diagnosed with hyperlactation syndrome, her generous donations of excess breast milk have earned her the title of "Milk Goddess".
Jaxon Buell	A child born with only 20% of a brain. He lived for 5 years despite doctors' expectations that he would only live for 1 year.
Jeanne Calment	A Frenchwoman with the longest verified human lifespan in recorded history. She was 122 at the time of her death.
Jo Cameron	A Scottish woman who feels no physical or psychological pain due to a rare genetic mutation.
Legrand G. Capers	The only person ever to witness a woman being impregnated by a bullet.
Stubbins Ffirth	An American trainee doctor who went to unusual lengths in his quest to prove that yellow fever is not contagious.
Phineas Gage	A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long (0.91 m) tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Genie	A feral child who was neglected by her father and was locked in a room for the first 13 years of her life.
James Harrison	An Australian man whose 1,173 blood donations have saved over 2.5 million babies.
Abby and Brittany Hensel	Conjoined twins with separate heads but joined bodies.
Paul Karason	An American man known for having blue skin.
"Benjaman Kyle"	Found naked and unconscious outside a Burger King dumpster (where he derived his new alias from), he doesn't remember 20 years of his life, or how he ended up in Georgia from Colorado.
Eugene Landy	A psychologist who developed a form of 24-hour therapy and later became business partners with one of his many celebrity patients, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Hans Langseth	A guy who had the longest beard recorded in history.
Robert Liston	A 19th-century Scottish surgeon who, among other things, performed what has been described as "the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality rate".
Barry Marshall	A doctor who, against the consensus of mainstream medicine, drank a vial of bacterial culture to prove that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria rather than stress, spicy foods, and too much acid as was believed at the time. He won the Nobel Prize for it, too.
Alexis St. Martin	A 19th-century French-Canadian fur trader who survived a gunshot wound and was left with a hole in his stomach, which allowed revolutionary experiments on digestion to be conducted.
Lina Medina	A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was five years old, becoming the youngest human mother on record.
Armin Meiwes	Wanting to be eaten is one thing, but actually having it done to you is quite another.
Billy Milligan	A man with 24 personalities, popularized by the 1981 book The Minds of Billy Milligan.
Wenceslao Moguel	Accused of participating in the Mexican Revolution, he was sentenced to death, survived his execution, and lived for another 6 decades.
Blanche Monnier	A French woman who was locked in an attic for 25 years because her parents disapproved of her choice of suitor.
Mariam Nabatanzi	A Ugandan woman who had given birth to 44 children by the age of 36.
Hamilton Naki	A Black South African doctor who participated in the first heart transplant surgery and was later censored by the Apartheid regime.
Chandre Oram	A man in India with a 13-inch (33 cm) tail.
Adam Rainer	The only person known to be both a dwarf and a giant.
S.M. (patient)	A woman with the inability to feel fear due to damage to the amygdalae.
Tarrare	A Frenchman with an insatiable appetite, who made a show out of his ability to eat just about anything. Including, allegedly, a toddler.
Mary Toft	An English woman who hoaxed doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
Robert Wadlow	An American man who, at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m), was the tallest verified person in human history.

Nervous system and behavior

Alice in Wonderland syndrome	Distortions of perception that may include one's surroundings appearing too large or too small, faint noises sounding loud, or time slowing to a trickle.
Anton syndrome	People who are blind but convinced they can see.
Bananadine	Exactly how psychedelic are those dried banana peels?
Bicameral mentality	Neuroscientific hypothesis that the human mind before the Bronze Age was split into two discrete components, a speaking mind and obeying mind.
Capgras delusion	When you're sure a friend or loved one is an impostor.
Cortical homunculus	A distorted representation of the human body based on areas of the brain dedicated to processing motor functions for different body parts.
Cotard's syndrome	Suffered by people, very much alive, who believe they're dead.
Conversion disorder	Blindness and similar disabilities caused by anxiety.
Cute aggression	The reason why people want to squeeze cute things without harm.
Dancing mania	Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Dissociative fugue	You black out and when you wake up years have passed, you're in a different city, you have a new name and have lived a different life while you were unconscious. Also known as dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity	For those allergic to Wi-Fi.
Encopresis	Voluntary or involuntary defecation in persons who are toilet trained (older than 4 years of age.)
Exploding head syndrome	Ever woken up after an hour or two of sleep thinking you've just heard a massive explosion?
Expressive aphasia	You know when you have a word on tip of your tongue but you just can't remember it? It's that, but with every word.
False memory	Forming of false memories; sometimes leads to thousands of people having the same false memory.
Foreign accent syndrome	A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion	The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Geophagia	Eat dirt, pal.
Impossible color	Supposed colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning.
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine	Like Tourette syndrome, but more Gallic.
Klüver–Bucy syndrome	One specific kind of brain damage causes hypersexuality and a desire to put random things in your mouth. Named after two doctors who gave psychotropic drugs to lobotomized monkeys.
Mariko Aoki phenomenon	A Japanese expression referring to an urge to defecate that is suddenly felt after entering bookstores.
Paris syndrome	Being clinically disappointed by Paris. Particularly common among Japanese tourists. Not to be confused with Jerusalem syndrome or Stockholm syndrome.
Rosenhan experiment	An experiment involving certifiably sane mental patients.
Somatoparaphrenia	A type of delusion in which a sufferer denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of the body.
Stendhal syndrome	A psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art or natural beauty.
Tanganyika laughter epidemic	What happens when contagious laughter becomes an actual epidemic.
Target fixation	To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Tip of the tongue	What was this article about again... Wait, I think I am just about to remember...
Truman Show delusion	Those afflicted feel they are being watched all the time by a television audience, like Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 movie The Truman Show.
Urophagia	The consumption of urine. Not always for survival reasons.
Visual release hallucinations	Millions of perfectly sane people are having freakish hallucinations – and just not admitting it.
Zero stroke	An alleged mental disorder that caused patients to write endless rows of zeroes.

Folklore

1593 transported soldier legend	Folk legend of a soldier who fell asleep in Manila and woke up in Mexico City.
Baltic Sea anomaly	Looks like someone left their Millennium Falcon underwater.
Behind the sofa	Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults.
Bigfoot trap	Believed to be the world's only Bigfoot trap.
Brites de Almeida	A legendary 12-fingered Portuguese baker who baked a group of Castilian soldiers in her oven as part of the fight for Portuguese independence.
Cottingley Fairies	A successful photographic hoax in 1910s England which fooled Arthur Conan Doyle.
Count of St. Germain	The original Tommy Wiseau, an eighteenth century polymath who made a number of contradictory claims about his origins, including that he was 500 years old. People have also claimed he is an important theosophical figure who many have claimed to have met years after his supposed death in 1784.
Easter Bilby	How do you have an Easter Bunny in a country that has had a bad experience with rabbits? With an Easter Bilby of course!
Faxlore	Forms of folklore circulated via fax machine.
Flying ointment	A hallucinogenic ointment said to be used by witches in the Early Modern period.
Green children of Woolpit	A tale of two purportedly green children who ate nothing but beans and claimed to be from a place where the sun never shone called Saint Martin's Land.
Headless men	The most unknown, yet bizarre and intriguing, humanoid monsters in European mythology. Possibly more famous nowadays for having a cameo in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.
Headless Mule	They've got fire in place of their heads. Because regular mules are for weak people.
Heraclitus the Paradoxographer	Before there were 14-year-old Internet atheists, this guy was saying "um, ACKSYUALLY" about Greek myth.
Icelandic Elf School	Possibly the only school granting elf-spotting degrees. (Though certificates are also available from John Oliver.)
Josiah S. Carberry	An expert on cracked pots, and one of only three fictional people to have won the Ig Nobel Prize.
Kaspar Hauser	A German youth who claimed to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, and was once thought to be linked to the princely House of Baden.
Liver-Eating Johnson	A 19th-century mountain man with a penchant for revenge and the consumption of livers.
Machine elf	An entity that people claim they become aware of after having taken tryptamine based psychedelic drugs such as DMT.
Man-eating tree	Hoaxes and unsubstantiated reports in Madagascar and elsewhere.
Mapinguari	A cyclops in the Amazon rainforest.
Mari Lwyd	It's all fun and games until the horse skull comes knocking on your door.
Monkey-man of New Delhi	Reports in 2001 of a strange monkey-like creature appearing in New Delhi at night and attacking people.
Nightmarchers	One of the coolest creatures in Hawaiian folklore, a group of ghost warriors from the past that walk throughout the island, armed with oceanic weapons.
Osculum infame	To greet Satan, you had to kiss his ring... and we're not talking about jewellery here.
Panotti	And you thought you had atypically large ears.
Père Fouettard	An Alsatian/Lorrainian christmas time charcacter. He punishes naughty children not unlike a certain alpine demon by whipping them. His orgin is equally bizarre.
Phantom social workers	Mysterious claims of "social workers" seeking to abduct infants and children.
Pseudo-mythology	Myths that aren't real. (As opposed to myths that are real?)
Rods	Photographic anomalies which some think are undiscovered flying creatures or miniature UFOs.
Russian reversal	In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia edits YOU!
Spring Heeled Jack	A mysterious character said to have existed in England during the Victorian age.
Telling the bees	An alternative explanation for the declining bee population.
Tió de Nadal	A log that defecates sweets for Catalan children on Christmas eve.
Titivillus	The patron demon of scribes, responsible for many errors.
Tsukumogami	According to Japanese folklore, if you keep a household item for 100 years, it becomes alive with a spirit, and may grow a face and teeth.
Vagina dentata	The tooth, and nothing but the hole tooth.
Vampire pumpkins and watermelons	In Balkan legend, an explanation for the blood-red streaks across these fruits: that they'd been left out on a full moon night, and thus turned by vampires.
Vril	A book by the "dark and stormy night" guy that spawned rumours about German secret societies, a real master race living underground, and Nazi UFOs.
Well to Hell	A 9-mile (14 km) borehole drilled by Soviet scientists uncovers the sounds of millions of damned souls. Hot stuff.
Witch window	A superstitious practice in the State of Vermont to prevent witches from flying through open windows at night.
Yonaguni monument	Between Japan and Taiwan lies the last remnant of the sunken continent of Mu (or rather, a natural rock formation that looks interesting enough to pass as it).

Business and economics

1933 double eagle	An extremely rare U.S. coin that is illegal to privately own.
2018 Samsung fat-finger error	When new Samsung Securities shareholders became 112 trillion won (1017719218.54 USD) richer.
BackpackersXpress	It's hard to see what went wrong with this proposal to fly Boeing 747s full of singing, dancing and drinking backpackers between Australia and the UK.
Bank of England £100,000,000 note	If you thought the largest UK banknote was £50, then you're VERY wrong.
Big Mac Index	Ronald McDonaldonomics.
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions	Or "BUGA-UP" for short. An Australian group of subversive artists who live up to their self-description by defacing tobacco and alcohol billboard advertisements to promote healthy living.
Bitcoin buried in Newport landfill	How far would you go to take back your money?
Boss key	A special button on an application used to quickly mask an employee's counterproductivity.
CeX	It sells.
Christmas Price Index	How much it would cost to buy (or hire) all the items in the Twelve Days of Christmas each year.
Dead cat bounce	In finance, a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock, because "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height."
Dead mall	That formerly active and popular mall that no one goes to anymore.
Elongated coin	What better souvenir than a mangled and defaced penny.
EURion constellations	Not-so-secret recognition patterns you can find on banknotes.
Fedspeak	Federal Reserve Board statements were made deliberately cryptic so no one understood them.
Financial Modeling World Cup	An esport competition of financial modelling, using Microsoft Excel.
Fixed price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959	For over 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coke in the U.S. was five cents.
Fukuppy	A branding exercise by a Japanese refrigeration company, which turned into a, well, ...
GameStop short squeeze	Internet traders meme their way into a battle for Wall Street. To the moon!
Gruen transfer	Shopping malls are designed to confuse the customer, making them more susceptible to impulse buying.
Prix Guzman	A French Academy of Sciences prize to be given to the first person to communicate with a celestial body, other than Mars (widely believed to be inhabited at the time), and receiving a response. It caught the attention of Tesla among others, but was not awarded until 1969.
Hallmark holiday	A holiday that seemingly exists primarily for commercial purposes.
Hemline index	The other reason why CEOs like women with short skirts.
Hungarian pengő	The worst inflation in history caused this currency to be replaced with another that was 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times its value.
Inflatable rat	Common tool of U.S. labor unions.
IKEA pencil	Free, popular, and even used in surgery.
Kongō Gumi	The world's oldest company that is still in operation today.
Maid café	So cuteeee.
Men's underwear index	An economic indicator popularised by Alan Greenspan.
Meme coin	Actual traded cryptocurrencies based on internet memes.
Merchant Marine of Switzerland	A landlocked country with a significant commercial fleet.
Money burning	For behaviour modification, political notoriety and a warm fireplace. (See also K Foundation Burn a Million Quid above.)
Olim L'Berlin	A Facebook page that urged Israelis to move to Germany by comparing prices of a popular Milky pudding.
Oil futures drunk-trading incident	A rather costly drunken mistake.
Operation Bernhard	A Nazi plan to cause hyperinflation in the UK by way of forged banknote dropping.
Purple squirrel	Mythical creature, a job candidate with precisely the right education, experience, and qualifications that perfectly fits a job's requirements.
Rai stones	Stone money, some of which is 3 meters (10 ft) in diameter, and weighs 4 metric tons (8,800 lb).
Gerald Ratner	Business 101: If you own an incredibly popular jewellery company, maybe don't publicly announce that your products are all cheap garbage.
Slum tourism	And if you look to your left you will see an impoverished minority neighborhood.
Swastika Laundry	A laundry service whose electric vans cheerfully displayed the notorious symbol around Dublin until the 1960s.
Tanganyika groundnut scheme	A scheme, stymied by a lack of water, to grow peanuts where none had been grown before.
Therbligs	In motion studies, the elemental motions used by a person when performing a process in the workplace. Named by and after Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (yes, the parents in Cheaper by the Dozen).
Ting Hai effect	A sudden drop in the stock market that follows whenever Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng stars in a new TV show.
Tingo Group Dozy Mmobuosi	A seemingly magical Nigerian agri-fintech company that was once valued for more than $1 billion. Actually discovered to be a personal vehicle for its founder, who's now charged with securities fraud.
Toyokawa Shinkin Bank incident	How idle chatter between three high school girls led to a 2-billion-yen bank run.
Trillion-dollar coin	A concept that was proposed as a way to bypass US debt-ceiling crisis through the minting of high-value platinum coins.
Tulip mania	The first recorded asset bubble was for Dutch tulips, which at the peak of the mania sold for 10 times a skilled artisan's income. Disputed to have ever occurred by some.
"Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!"	An ad campaign that figured the best way to sell cigarettes is to show all the consumers with black eyes.
Veblen good	Goods whose demand increases as price increases, violating the law of demand.
Why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland?	Because if you don't, your in-laws will hate you, your children won't respect you, even your therapist will judge you, according to this mocked PR campaign.
Zero-rupee note	A method of reducing bribery in India.

Law, law enforcement and crime

"Says in the Mail that these'll have to be straight now! Bloody Eurocrats..."

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack	The first and largest bioterror attack in United States history involved the poisoning of salad bars with Salmonella in an attempt to sway an election in favor of the followers of an Indian mystic.
1995 San Diego tank rampage	They say that being in a tank gives you the high ground. It certainly reigns true here.
2007 Boston Mooninite panic	A guerilla marketing campaign for an animated TV series that quickly became a homeland security issue.
Sada Abe	Sensational journalism—from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Acoustic Kitty	A failed CIA experiment at using a cat for covert surveillance.
Animal trial	Historically, the law in some areas of Europe subjected animals to criminal liability for their conduct.
Attempted theft of George Washington's skull	Alas, poor George!
Baby Jesus theft	When a child is gone...
Batman rapist	Batman's back at it again, but this time it's actually a sex offender who attacked women in the city of Bath.
Bowling Green massacre	A nonexistent massacre mentioned by the Trump administration, subject to parody.
Burke and Hare murders	What is the best way to accelerate scientific progress? Killing people, of course.
Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 108	Non-suicide aircraft bombings for insurance money have been done afterwards, but certainly not for the purposes of elopement.
Chamoy Thipyaso	At 141,078 years, she holds the record for the longest prison sentence without lifetime imprisonment – and didn't even serve 1% of it.
Chewbacca defense	"Now, why would Wikipedia have an article about the Chewbacca defense? That does not make sense!"
Michael Cicconetti	A judge renowned for his strange alternative punishments.
Cicada 3301	Criminals or puzzle enthusiasts?
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94	The infamous "bendy banana law", this seemingly-dry piece of EU quality standards legislation convinced the UK media and many ordinary people that Brussels had banned bananas from being curved. One of the most infamous Euromyths.
Confraternities in Nigeria	In Nigeria, university student societies have been frequently linked to kidnapping, sexual assault and mass murder.
Crime in Antarctica	It's not the Wild West—er, South.
Crime in Vatican City	Because of its low population and large number of tourists, the statistics suggest the average citizen commits two crimes per year.
Dead Man's Statute	Enacted to prevent a witness from testifying about communications with a dead person.
Easter Act 1928	The government of the United Kingdom legally mandated a change of date for Easter Sunday to a period of seven days - and then never actually enforced it.
Emo killings in Iraq	Music fans killed for their alleged Satan worship and homosexuality.
Expert wizard amendment	New Mexico narrowly avoided requiring all psychiatrists testifying in court to put on a robe and wizard hat.
Free Bench	An unusual English legal custom permitting a widow to inherit her deceased husband's land. In one version, she would have to ride into court backwards on a black ram while reciting a nonsense verse.
Glasgow ice cream wars	In the 1980s, violent conflicts between ice-cream vendors (who also sold drugs and stolen goods) left six people dead.
Troy Leon Gregg	Escaped from death row, got killed in a bar fight that same night.
Disappearance of Johnny Gosch	In 1982, a 12 year-old went missing. As of 2023, the case is still unsolved, and Gosch's whereabouts remain a mystery. However, Gosch's mother claims that he visited her in 1997, and in 2006 she found a photo sent by an anonymous person to her front door.
Guano Islands Act	This strange piece of legislation enables citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits.
Gresham cat hostage taking incident	In 1994, a cat was taken hostage by its owner in a store. The owner would later get shot and killed by police.
Robert Hanssen	Tasked by the FBI to help rat out Soviet spies. The problem? He was one of them.
Helen Duncan	The last woman convicted under the UK's Witchcraft Act. Her favourite trick: "ectoplasm" made out of fabric and egg.
Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal	A craft store chain purchases stolen Iraqi artifacts.
Hungry judge effect	Pray your hearing doesn't come right before lunch.
'I know it when I see it'	"Not that, but something sort of like that?"
John Smeaton	Sometimes, the best way to avoid a terrorist attack is to simply kick the terrorist in the balls.
John "Half-hanged" Smith	They tried to hang him, but he survived. Later attempts to try him fizzled out until they just decided to deport him to America.
Lake Erie Walleye Trail cheating scandal	"We got weights in FISH!!!"
Learned Hand	Thanks to his name, this American judge could've part-timed as a superhero—"The Learned Hand of the Law" has a nice ring to it. Given his impact on tax law, his birth name of Billings Learned Hand is even more apropos.
Jay Leiderman	The lawyer that represented Anonymous.
Lesbian rule	Not the replacement for the Patriarchy, but an archaic term meaning legal flexibility (and originally a building tool from Lesbos).
Ley de fugas	Prisoners were allowed to escape, as an excuse to kill them for trying to escape.
Viola Liuzzo	One of the FBI's darkest criminal cases.
Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano	A Guatemalan attorney who arranged his own death and blamed it on the President, seeking justice for his murdered girlfriend.
Massachusetts School Laws	How 17th-century Massachusetts sought to rid itself of the Prince of Darkness.
Matrix defense	A claim that the defendant committed a crime under the belief of being inside a simulated reality. The defense has been successful more than once.
Gary McKinnon	How a UFO enthusiast with Asperger syndrome was able to hack into the US government's computers.
A moron in a hurry	Used in passing-off law, this is the sort of fictional person who would look at a knockoff product and think it's the real thing for long enough to buy it.
Mug shot of Donald Trump	How a photo of the 45th president of the U.S. getting arrested (and released shortly after) became a source of comedy on the internet.
My Way killings	There's one song you shouldn't sing in a Filipino karaoke bar.
Ninja of Heisei	An elderly Japanese man who successfully committed over 250 burglaries while disguised in a ninja outfit.
Not proven	A controversial Scots law verdict for those neither guilty nor innocent.
Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi	In 1983, a teenage girl went missing in the Vatican and the search for her whereabouts became a major controversy. In 2023, the religious state opened for the first time an official investigation on the matter.
Onion Futures Act	Why you can't buy any onion futures, but you can for corn, oats, rice, aluminum, crude oil, wood, etc.
Operation Flagship	Do not trust the San Diego Chicken.
Perry Mason moment	"Mr. Menendez, did you know Big 5 stopped selling pistols in 1986?"
Phantom of Heilbronn	A DNA-traced serial killer, also known as the "Woman without a face", who turned out to be nonexistent.
Phantom social workers	They make children disappear.
Prenda Law	A law firm that blackmailed people for allegedly downloading pornography; the firm was described by one court as a "porno-trolling collective".
Prohibition of dying	There are really some places where death is illegal. (Although it is unknown what happens to anyone who breaks this law.)
Regulation of flamethrowers in the United States	No permit needed in 48 states.
Rough sex murder defense	It is what it is.
Mitchell Rupe	The man who was too fat to hang.
Salmon Act 1986	A UK law, designed to curb illegal fishing, which creates the humorously-named crime of "handling salmon in suspicious circumstances".
Sand theft	What do you mean I can't take the sand home?
Shaggy defense	Caught committing a crime, but don't know what to do? Say it wasn't you.
Small penis rule	A technique used by authors to avoid libel lawsuits.
Steve Comisar	America's #1 solar-powered dryer salesman.
Suspensory Act 1914	An act whose sole purpose was to postpone the coming into force of two other acts.
Tennessee login law	Laws against password sharing are older than you think, but have always been this unpopular.
Keron Thomas	In 1993, aged sixteen, he posed as a motorman on the New York City Subway and managed to operate a scheduled passenger train for over three hours.
Andre Thomas	Serial killer who tore out his eyes and consumed them in order to prevent the government from reading his mind.
Twinkie defense	When you don't want to go to jail.
Ugly law	A type of U.S. city ordinance banning anyone "diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" from being in public.
United Airlines Flight 976	The worst case of air rage ever? Or just a very bad case of traveler's diarrhea?
Angie Sanclemente Valencia	A former lingerie model alleged to have run one of the largest drug cartels in the world.
Clement Vallandigham	A lawyer who proved his client had not killed a man, but the victim had shot himself... by shooting himself dead.
Whipping Tom	The name given to multiple London sex attackers. One of them, upon seeing an unaccompanied woman, would grab her, lift her dress, and slap her buttocks repeatedly before fleeing. He would sometimes accompany his attacks by shouting "Spanko!"
Wet feet, dry feet policy	America seems to not like wet feet.

Legal cases

2008 French mistaken virginity case	France's most bizarre lawsuit: an angry man takes legal action against his newly married wife for not being a virgin.
62 Cases of Jam v. United States	When is imitation jam not jam?
Batman v. Commissioner	Batman said his teenage son was his partner. The Commissioner wasn't having any of it.
FTC v. Balls of Kryptonite	In some ways, the U.S. government is more powerful than Superman.
Hermesmann v. Seyer	A Kansas Supreme Court case that decided that a 12-year-old boy who was molested by his 16-year-old babysitter had to pay for her child support.
Iceland v Iceland Foods Ltd	Who has a greater claim to the name Iceland - a country established in 874 or a British retailer founded in 1970?
Jarvis v Swans Tours Ltd	A legal complaint about the lack of gemütlichkeit during a Swiss Christmas holiday.
Lawsuits against supernatural beings	Even if you can serve process on them, they are unlikely to show up in court.
Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.	Would you expect to be able to swap 7 million points (worth $700,000) for a Harrier jump jet (worth $22 million)? This man did and took Pepsi to court when they failed to supply him one. Unsurprisingly – to everyone except him – he lost the case.
Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber	Do you still count as "executed" even if you didn't die? This was a surprisingly contentious issue.
Manacled Mormon case	The religious rape case that became a movie and involved the cloning of a dog.
Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc.	The lawsuit that occurred because of a parody song about a barbie girl living in a barbie world.
Memoirs v. Massachusetts	A U.S. Supreme Court case concerning whether the 1748 book Fanny Hill was entitled to First Amendment protection. One of the dissenting opinions contained an extensive discussion of the supposedly pornographic content.
McMartin preschool trial	The most expensive trial in US history. Amid the 1980s' day-care sex-abuse hysteria, hundreds of children wasted 7 years of court time and $15 million of public money by telling bizarre and fanciful tall tales.
Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft	When your name is too good not to buy a domain name featuring.
Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia	Can a city require a business license for a talking cat, and does the cat have free-speech rights?
Monkey selfie copyright dispute	An actual monkey made a monkey out of the law.
Nix v. Hedden	The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.
Pearson v. Chung	Also known as the $54 million pants case, or "The Great American Pants Suit" according to one Wall Street Journal reporter.
Stambovsky v. Ackley	Also known as the "Ghostbusters case", the court ruled that a house in Nyack, New York was legally haunted by ghosts.
State v. Linkhaw	He sang so badly in church that a jury found him guilty of "disturbing a religious congregation".
Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson	The first and only murder case where demonic possession was used as a defense.
Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States	Are the X-Men humans under U.S. law?
Trial of the Pyx	Whence the British Pound lands in court every year.
United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff	Who has jurisdiction over Satan?
United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat's Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness	The FDA will not tolerate misbranding.
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins	The fins won a case that turned on whether buying something from someone counts as "aiding or assisting" them.
United States v. Causby	Planes vs. farmers.
United States v. Ninety-Five Barrels Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar	When is apple cider vinegar not apple cider vinegar?
United States v. Strong	A court case about someone who supposedly had an accident in a courtroom's bathroom, covering much of it.

Taxation

Agricultural emissions research levy	When you keep a lot of cattle, you're contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect ... aren't you?
Bachelor tax	Implicit in many jurisdictions which offer a marital tax relief.
Beard tax	Used to be imposed in England and Russia.
Breast tax	An unusual tax meant to enforce the caste system in an indirect way.
Chicken tax	A U.S. tariff on trucks, which resulted in a period of chicken trade related tension known as the Chicken War.
Taxation of illegal income in the United States	Don't worry: you can deduct your illegal activity expenses.

Interesting 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
List of bow tie wearers
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".

Intriguing 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.

Unusual Featured Pics

Lawn mower racing
Train wreck at Montparnasse
The Agassiz statue, Stanford University, California. April 1906
Medieval trepanation
Polydactyly
Isometric projection flaw
Collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Defecating seagull
Indecency
Aerial turning house
Tank treads on an airplane
Salvador Dalí
Maintenance of Mount Rushmore
One million colors
Keep your hands to yourself!
Like a fly on...
An elaborate flat Earth map drawn in 1893
Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Carrots of many colors
Professional regurgitator Hadji Ali at work
Illustration of a Cartesian theatre
Sir Nils Olav, colonel-in-chief of the His Majesty the King's Guard, inspects his troops in 2008.

Random Fun Videos

Time lapse clips

Prof. Oliver Zajkov demonstrating glow discharge in a low-pressure tube caused by electric current
Example of a performance-type video; a man building a snowman
A time-lapse video of a cicada molting
Columbia glacier Alaska time-lapse
A slow-motion video of a greater flamingo vocalizing during matin season.
Video made with Hubble Telescope images from Jupiter in 4K
A snapshot video of a volcano eruption in Iceland
360º view of a Leica I camera from 1927

Videos about media

The Kid, by Charlie Chaplin.
Spartacus trailer, by Stanley Kubrick.
A clip from The Muppets
A song by folk group OYME

Historical Videos

A Canadian Army Newsreel from 1942, about World War II
Paris during the COVID-19 lockdown, showing empty streets
John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, 1961
Philippines Independence proclamation video, 1946

Documentary type

Example of a tour-type video; Paris during the COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020
Video from NASA about the mission PACE
A documentary about the mink invasion in South America
This is my home, a video about how people live inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone

Too much further reading

References

^ The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840, Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1841, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG599, Given by British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1880
^ ^a ^b McDaniel, W. Caleb (2007). "World's Anti-Slavery Convention". In Peter P. Hinks; John R. McKivigan; R. Owen Williams (eds.). Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition. Vol. 2. Greenwood. pp. 760–762. ISBN 978-0-313-33144-2.
^ Maynard 1960, p. 452.
^ Sklar 1990, p. 453.
^ Zuffi 2003, pp. 254–259.

About Me

This user qualifies as a
nerd extraordinaire.

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19Y

This Wikipedian was born on 26 August 2005 and is 19 years, 8 months, and 25 days old.

This user is asexual.

This user is an autodidact in a wide range of subjects they never took in school or university.

IQ

This user thinks that IQ tests are overrated.

IQ	This user's Intelligence Quotient is 141.

This user loves knowledge.

~~School~~

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SJ

This user studies at, or is an alumnus of, a Jesuit school.

BUS

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This user believes sleep is for weaklings!

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Pessimist? Nihilist? This user is an Antinatalist.

This user is an existentialist.

Friedrich Nietzsche has
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It's not worth the bother. This user is a
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~~God~~

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This nontheistic user prefers BC and AD over "Common Era" for the same reason they prefer Sunday and January over "First Day" and "First Month".