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Hand-picked oddities · always free
A curated collection of true oddities and clearly labelled fiction — researched, explained and edited for curious people. Nothing political. No news. Just oddly.
The four newest pieces.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Under ordinary light a platypus is plain brown, but under an ultraviolet lamp its fur glows blue-green, and scientists still disagree about whether the glow does anything at all.
Fact-based Word Journeys
Shampoo, the Spanish champú and the Russian shampun all go back to a Hindi word meaning to press, and in English it first meant a massage, not a wash.
Fact-based Kitchen Science
Shake oil and vinegar and they part within minutes, yet mayonnaise is about four fifths oil and stays smooth for weeks, because the egg yolk wraps every droplet in a thin coat.
Fact-based Odd Places
Grand Prismatic Spring is deep blue in the middle and ringed with green, yellow and orange, and the two halves of that rainbow are made in completely different ways.
Hand-ordered reading lists, start to finish.
Widely repeated beliefs, checked one at a time: which hold up, which do not, and which are half right.
28 articlesThree hearts, cube-shaped droppings, feet that taste: the strangest real equipment in the animal kingdom, in a reading order.
10 articlesLightning, the Great Wall, raw cashews and a stomach that is not the one rumbling: popular beliefs that turn out to be wrong, and what is true instead.
11 articlesA teaspoon that weighs a billion tons, a metal that melts in your hand, sharks older than trees: true science that sounds made up.
9 articlesBubble wrap that was meant to be wallpaper, a jigsaw that was a geography lesson, a word born in a Czech play: the odd beginnings of ordinary things.
12 articlesFive good first reads, picked by the editor.
Fact-based Weird Facts
Honey is too dry, too acidic and too sugary for most microbes to survive in, which is why a jar at the back of the cupboard is almost always still good.
Fact-based Cosmic Questions
A rising full moon can look enormous, yet a camera shows it is no wider than when it rides high in the sky, which means the giant moon is being built inside your head.
Fact-based How It Started
Long before there were puzzles of kittens and lighthouses, a London mapmaker glued a map of Europe onto a thin wooden board and cut it up so that children could learn where every country went.
Fiction Tiny Stories
Every weekday a stranger plays the same little waltz on the platform piano, and the one morning he did not turn up, the whole station found out it had been listening.
Fiction Useless Inventions
A full-length mirror that waits until you have walked away, then offers a short, studiously non-committal opinion on your outfit.
What readers open most often.
Facts on one side, fiction on the other.
Odd but true trivia that lives rent-free in your head.
Browse → FictionPatent-pending solutions to problems no one has.
Browse → FictionFour-paragraph fiction about strange small lives.
Browse → FictionNew words for feelings the dictionary forgot.
Browse → Fact-basedTiny ponderings about a very big universe.
Browse → FictionPress releases from the rest of the kingdom.
Browse → Fact-basedReal inventions that plants and animals thought of first.
Browse → Fact-basedThe true, surprising origins of everyday things.
Browse → Fact-basedReal corners of the Earth that look made up.
Browse → Fact-basedThe chemistry and physics hiding in your kitchen.
Browse → Fact-basedWords that travelled the world before reaching your mouth.
Browse →