Thirteen of the silliest events that happened throughout history

For every war and revolution in history, there are dozens of other events that are almost too ridiculous to be true, but they really did happen.

Thousands of deliveries were directed to one woman’s house

November 27, 1810, was a strange day for Mrs. Tottenham, a woman living in London, England. A chimney sweep knocked at her home, then another arrived, and then another. Her home at 54 Berners Street was soon the site of multiple deliveries, doctors, lawyers, and so much more.

There were even wedding carriages, if you can believe that. It’s all because a writer named Theodore Hook wanted to win a bet that he could make an ordinary address famous. It worked. Hook watched the whole thing happening nearby.

Britain broadcast spaghetti growing on trees

You’d think the BBC is a trustworthy organization. It usually is, apart from on April 1, 1957, when it released a report about spaghetti trees. It was weirdly convincing. Viewers watched a Swiss family picking long strands of spaghetti from spaghetti tree branches.

The narrator said it was an excellent harvest, and he even spoke about how the farmers had defeated the dangerous spaghetti weevil. Totally real, of course. So many British viewers had never really had spaghetti at the time, so they called the BBC to learn how to grow their own.

Key West fought the United States for one minute

One minute. That’s how long Key West was at war with the federal government, just one minute. It happened in April 1982, when local leaders were angry about a Border Patrol checkpoint. It was causing huge traffic delays along the Florida Keys. 

So they did the only rational thing and created the Conch Republic. They then declared independence and declared war on the United States. Mayor Dennis Wardlow smashed stale Cuban bread over a man dressed as a sailor before surrendering and asking for $1 billion in foreign aid. Standard stuff, really.

Cleveland offered nearly unlimited ten-cent beer

Ten-cent beer sounds like a great deal. On June 4, 1974, it was a reality for the 25,000 fans at an Indians game in Cleveland, and it was totally unlimited, too. They could buy six beers at a time and return for more. You don’t need to be a genius to work out what went wrong.

Fans got drunk very quickly and ran onto the field. They did all sorts, like throwing objects, setting off firecrackers, and eventually pouring out of the stands. That was by the ninth inning. The umpires ended the game by awarding Texas a win because they had no other choice.

Rabbit Hash kept choosing dogs as mayor

The town of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, sure has a weird name, but that’s not even the strangest thing about it. Its most famous mayors have had four legs. Yes, the community began holding animal elections in 1998 as a fundraiser and made each donated dollar count as one vote. 

The first winner was a dog named Goofy, and then several other dogs followed. One of them was Brynneth, a rescued pit bull who got more than 3,300 votes in 2017. But don’t expect them to be doing any actual work, the job itself is mostly ceremonial.

Harvard students stole Massachusetts’ wooden fish

Wooden fish are a big deal in Massachusetts. So much so, in fact, that in 1933, police launched a massive search to find one that went missing from the State House. The Sacred Cod disappeared from the Harvard Lampoon, and it became a serious incident.

The police questioned students and checked an airplane in New Jersey. They even searched part of the Charles River. Because apparently, a wooden fish is way too important. They eventually found it after an anonymous caller revealed it’d been stolen. Crisis averted. 

Students raced to swallow live goldfish

It started as a ten-dollar bet at Harvard in 1939. It turned into a national college craze. Freshman Lothrop Withington Jr. swallowed a single live goldfish, and students at other colleges followed suit, trying to beat his ‘record.’ 

Three fish, then twenty-four, then way higher, even though it was pretty cruel. Schools across the country, including MIT, Boston College, Michigan, and New Mexico State, got involved. One record claims they swallowed 101 goldfish. No word on how the fish felt, though.

Burger King had a round hamburger for left-handed people

A left-handed burger sounds utterly ridiculous, that’s because it is. But Burger King announced they were releasing the Left-Handed Whopper on April 1, 1998. They claimed they’d turned every ingredient exactly 180 degrees so the sauces would drip on the left side, not the right.

There was still one big problem, of course. The Whopper was round, so changing the toppings did absolutely nothing except, you know, give Burger King a gimmick to sell. People actually visited the chain’s restaurants and asked for the left-handed version.

Napoleon reportedly retreated from hungry rabbits

Napoleon might’ve faced armies across Europe and fought in some incredible battles. But it was a crowd of hungry rabbits that gave him the biggest trouble. It all started when his chief of staff arranged a rabbit hunt, although he’d accidentally bought tame ones instead of the wild kind.

Bad move. The rabbits ran toward Napoleon when they were released, instead of into the fields, because they were expecting food. They crowded around him and climbed up his clothing. What a sight that must’ve been. Napoleon ran away, and his servants had to chase them away.

A submarine surfaced because its toilet broke

Submarines are supposed to be super high-tech, and they usually are. Except, that’s not always a good thing. The German submarine U-1206 had an advanced toilet that could work deep underwater, but on April 14, 1945, something went wrong with it.

Seawater entered the submarine and affected the batteries, creating poisonous chlorine gas. The captain was forced to surface near Scotland, where British aircraft began attacking it. The vessel was scuttled. All that because of a faulty toilet, you couldn’t write this stuff.

France and Brazil debated whether lobsters swim

Lobsters don’t exactly seem like a debate topic, but that’s exactly what they became for France and Brazil in the early 1960s. Specifically, how they move. French fishermen caught spiny lobsters off Brazil, and Brazil said these crustaceans belonged to them.

They said the animals crawled along the seabed, so they were on Brazil’s continental shelf. France pushed back, and they argued lobsters can swim and that the catch wasn’t Brazilian. Warships appeared, and diplomats argued, fighting in the Lobster War without firing a shot.

Civil War soldiers organized a giant snowball battle

The winter of 1862–1863 was pretty brutal in Virginia, not just because of the Civil War, though. There was a lot of snow. Thousands of soldiers actually decided to have a snowball fight because, really, what else could you do?

They had units and officers. They carried flags and took ‘prisoners,’ although it wasn’t just a simple snowball fight. Some of the snowballs actually left bruises because they were so tightly packed. 

Andrew Jackson opened a 1,400-pound cheese to the public

A 1,400-pound cheddar had been sitting in the White House for around two years in 1837. It was a gift from New York dairy farmer Thomas Meacham to Andrew Jackson in 1835. But Jackson didn’t know what to do with it.

He decided the public could help them finish it, and he invited them to come in to try it on Washington’s birthday. They poured in and hacked off chunks of it. It took two hours to eat the whole thing, not bad, honestly.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

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