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Frank Cotolo
August 28, 2014 |
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From the time mankind began being documented doing anything, people were doing things that other
people considered weird. We can only imagine the strange things that were done by humans before
anyone documented humans doing things. A look through the annals of history proves that there has
always been an interest in people doing things that seemed to make no sense at the time.
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For instance, we know one of the first odd things documented took place in the year 567 B.C.
Scribbled on a scroll found in an ancient temple, the writing translated into English was a
detailed description of a man who ate his robe, which was made out of tree bark and dead bugs. Odd,
even now, right?
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There is evidence that during the Black Plague there was a trend to learn to play the flute in
public as a way of collecting mirth amid the morbidity of the times. That is not, in itself,
strange, but we have evidence that a few of the flute players set their feet on fire while playing
and that is just weird.
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An unidentified man who was trying to build a flying machine before the Wright Brothers got all the
attention is said to have failed miserably with his own invention, a bowl of fruit. He told everyone
that he was convinced a bowl could not fly on its own but when filled with fruit it could soar like
a bird. What was stranger was that each time the man tried this he tossed the bowl of fruit into
the air to provoke it into flight and each time the bowl and its contents tumbled to the ground
and broke, dispersing fruit. A newspaper of the time claimed that the man made at least a thousand
failed attempts to launch what he called a Fruitaplane [sic].
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A book on British pirates claims that during the swell of rebel sailors and treasure hunting bandits
there was a Captain Fibular Blane whose ship flew the skull-and-crossbones flag. The strange thing
about this little-known pirate leader is that he wore two eye patches, one on each eye. Blane wasn't
blind, he was arrogant and the book claims that he defied sight itself while terrorizing the
Caribbean ports where the British often brought goods to trade.
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"Blane was amazing," write the book's author, "in that he survived not using his perfect sight,
though he was always bumping into things and had to care for many broken noses, teeth (until they
were all gone) and bruises on all parts of his body."
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