Weird Universe

On Sep 17, 1975, Stephen Holcomb walked into a branch of the National Bank and Trust Company and presented the teller with a German banknote worth 100,000 marks. The teller gave him $39,700 for it, which was the current rate of exchange for marks and dollars. Unfortunately for the bank, the banknote was a 1923 mark, worth less than a penny. Holcomb left the bank and went on a sp...

Have you ever wondered if there's a mailbox at a particular airport? If so, you can head over to the site of the Airport Mailbox Project which lists over 200 airports and describes the mail facilities at each of them.

The site is a labor of love for the fast-disappearing communi...

A 1952 news story reported that a restaurant patron had removed the onions from his hamburger and thereby incurred the wrath of the restaurant's owner who pushed him up against a wall and beat him.

Daily Iberian - Feb 12, 1952

Compare this to a story repeated by a number of columnists in the 21st century about a wife who beat her husband because...

Lillian and Melanie Rauch were recently granted a patent (No. 12,778,323) for "Clothing and fashion accessories for plants." From their patent:

Plants are living things. Houseplants add an element of beauty to the decor in many homes and offices. Just as pets are often treated as full-fledged members of a family, so too are many houseplants. People feed their housep...

The Velvets were a rare (perhaps only?) example of a group that consisted of a high-school teacher and some of his students... that also managed to get a record into the Billboard Hot 100. Info from wikipedia:

The Velvets were an American doo-wop group from Odessa, Te...