Leslie Gilbert Elman - Weird But True, 200 Astounding, Outrageous, and Totally Off the Wall Facts

Weird
But
True

200
Astounding,
Outrageous,
and Totally
Off the Wall
Facts

Leslie Gilbert Elman

2010 by Leslie Gilbert Elman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Book design by James Sarfati

Fall River Press
122 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011

ISBN: 978-1-4351-3697-7
Sterling ISBN 13: 978-1-4351-3697-7

T ruth is stranger than
Fiction, but it is because
Fiction is obliged to stick
to possibilities, Truth isnt.

Mark Twain

Contents

A ll the wild fantasies dreamed up by novelists, artists, and filmmakers, often dont compare to the oddball discoveries made every year by researchers around the world. Nobody would believe a novel that included a suicidal treebut you can see one for yourself in Madagascar. A film that featured a floating raft of garbage the size of Texas would seem fantasticscientists say theres one in the Pacific Ocean thats at least that large.

If youre fascinated by the strange, unusual, and unexplainable truths of our world (and who isnt?), just turn the page

The Facts
as We Know
Them...

You Wash,
Ill Dry

T here are 16 million thunderstorms on Earth every year. In January 2010 a man in Sydney, Australia, was struck by lightning while he was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink. During the same storm, lightning entered another home through an open window and set the curtains on fire.

Dont
Answer
That

T he most common victims of indoor lightning strikes are people who are talking on the phone during a storm. Landline telephones conduct electricity.

Whats the
Frequency,
Earth?

E arth broadcasts a symphony of sound crackles, pops, whistles, and sizzlesvia radio waves that result from lightning strikes. No lightning in your area? No problem. Even storms on the other side of the planet can send these very low frequency (VLF) radio waves bouncing between the surface of the planet and the ionosphereboing, boing, boingall the way to your house. Typical radio receivers wont detect them, but special VLF receivers will.

Fueling
Fossils

W hen lightning strikes a place where the soil is sandy, its heat causes the silica in the sand to form craggy glass tubes that fossilize the lightning. Fossilized lightning bolts are called fulgurites.

* * *

Fulgur is the Latin word for lightning.

Lightning
in the Desert

A fulgurite estimated to be about fifteen thousand years old was found in the Sahara. Because a rainstorm almost always accompanies lightning, geochronologists (scientists who specialize in determining the age of rocks) believe this fulgurite is evidence that the Sahara was not always the hot, dry environment we know today.

The
2,000-Year-Old
Poop

T o make a case for linking the Dead Sea Scrolls to the strict religious sect called the Essenes, scholars did a little digging in the... er... dirt near where the scrolls were discovered. There they found a 2,000-year-old communal latrine where the Essenes did their business and, following the laws of the Bible word for word, buried their poop. The poop itself was long gone, but they found traces of human intestinal parasites such as tapeworms that had been buried in the soil for thousands of years.

More
Poop

A rchaeologists working at Paisley Caves in Oregon in 2002 found human poop that they have determined to be 14,300 years oldthe oldest traces of human life ever found in North America.

* * *

Polite archaeologists call fossilized poop coprolites.

I n England during the nineteenth century, coprolite mining became an important industry. The fossilized dinosaur dung (for thats what it was!) was loaded with phosphates used to make the first artificial fertilizer for agricultural crops.

* * *

Theres a Coprolite Street in Ipswich, England.

Island
Time

M adagascar, the island nation off the east coast of Africa, is a favorite spot for paleontologists in search of dinosaur bones. Among their finds have been the remains of a mini 2.5-foot crocodile that lived on land, a cannibalistic dinosaur, and a creature that researchers call Masiakasaurus knopfleri. This last dinosaur was named for the lead singer/ guitarist of the band Dire Straits because the crew realized that every time Dire Straits music was played at the dig site they found another dinosaur bone.