Holy crap at the coconut crab. They weigh about 10 pounds but can lift up to 60 pounds? wtf? I know lighter animals can lift more times their body weight but 10 pounds is starting to be kind of a lot to be 6xing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

(artifact recovered from a c. 100 BC shipwreck that features engineering feats ~1500 years ahead of its time)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

(famous coded European book that has resisted 400 years of decoding attempts)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Batteries

(possible chemical batteries that predate the accepted invention of same by 1000 years)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloop

(really really loud, scary-as-**** noise recorded from the ocean)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

(ancient fennel relative believed to have been a powerful contraceptive, farmed to extinction by the Romans)

Very cool. Nature podcast talked about it some time ago. Apparently there's a book.

http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast...anscripts.html (30 Oct '08 + extra)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths should explain itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster

not wiki but one of my favorite articles:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18381...roadcasts.html

Turkish Abductions: A group of north african raiders sailed to Iceland and capture hundreds of Icelanders. Why, I do not know. Over the course of 10 or so years, a number managed to esacpe and work their way all the way back to Iceland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Abductions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_bursts

One of the first things that came to my mind when I saw the title of this thread.

Other good reads imo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death (been talked about in OOT before)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

The Lake Nyos thing is absolutely insane.

I'm sure a lot of you already know some version of this, but a fun way to degen it up is the Random Article game. Player 1 names a Wikipedia entry that all players have a similar amount of knowledge about. Player 2 then hits the random article link and has to get to the target entry using links on the Wikipedia pages. Once you play for a while you can get pretty much anywhere in 2:30 (if you decide to use Ctrl+F). Occasionally you'll find an entry that isn't linked to any other pages (Reebok Pump). You can decide if you'll use Ctrl+F, are allowed to go back, etc. Pretty standard occurrence is to play for 6 hours straight, end up close to even and not look at Wikipedia for a month.

Wow you were not kidding. That was one of those things that you can't believe nobody has ever told you before, it's so wild.

The Lake Peigneur one is insane too.

Wow crazy list,

2003: Doug McKay was killed at the Island county fair amusement park when his arm was caught as he sprayed lubricant on a Super Loop 2 circular roller coaster. The ride was in operation at the time and he was pulled 40 feet (12 m) in the air before falling and landing on a fence.[134]

I actually know this guys wife, she was telling me the story last year, but from what she said and her workers told me he was actually decapitated and then the car ran him over and cut him in half.

That is so weird that I saw this on that list!

His wife is actually pretty cool, got drunk with her, she tried to give me a lap dance and she wound up falling down. We all laughed at her.

Holy Final Destination Much?

Is it bad that I find this funny?

Jesus christ. That's so terrible.

Again. What the hell with these drains?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

My home town. This is still the largest accidental man made explosion

A portion of Mont-Blanc's anchor shaft, weighing 517 kilograms (1,140 lb) was thrown 3,780 metres (2.3 mi).

I've read a lot about this and it really creeps me the **** out.

Me too. What's your take? I think I like the glossolalia explanation. Made sense to the author at the time on whatever drug/religion induced trip they were on at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocoduck

CROCO DUCK PROOF OF CREATION

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%E1%B8%B5wxw%C3%BA7mesh

A NATIVE TRIBE THAT SOMEHOW HAS A NUMBER IN THEIR NAME

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon

huge ass prehistoric shark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Solonik

crazy badass russian hitman

Pyrrhus of Epirus, the conqueror and source of the term pyrrhic victory, according to Plutarch died while fighting an urban battle in Argos when an old woman threw a roof tile at him, stunning him and allowing an Argive soldier to kill him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

strange radio broadcasts of only numbers and letters along with other signals often thought to be transmitting information to spies.

I remember watching that live. Pretty amazing that the perps were the only people killed.

Vassilis Paleokostas, the greek robin hood. Escaped twice from prison via helicopter

Wiki article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassilis_Paleokostas

This one gives more details

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/paleokostas.html

winner winner, chicken dinner

2009: Sergey Tuganov, a 28-year-old Russian, bet two women that he could continuously have sex with them both for twelve hours. Several minutes after winning the $4,300 bet, he suffered a heart attack and died. It is believed that the heart attack was the result of Tuganov ingesting an entire bottle of Viagra just after accepting the bet.

Man, how do you even get in the situation to offer such a bet?