20 Wikipedia Pages That Will Absolutely Suck You In For Hours
Let's be real, there's nothing most of us love more than getting completely sucked into online rabbit holes.
NBC / Via giphy.com
But today I'm here to talk about Wikipedia, the best rabbit hole in existence. Here are some Wiki pages I bet you're gonna lose some hours to:
1.Dancing plague of 1518
From July to September of 1518 in modern-day France, hundreds of people developed a "dancing mania." There were many theories — like stress-induced mass hysteria and religion — that explained why people were dancing and, as a result, some of them died from it (heart attacks, strokes, and exhaustion).
2.Year 2038 problem
Remember Y2K? Well there's a similar kind of computer bug situation, set to cause some operating systems grief after 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038.
3.Great Stink
As a result of a poorly maintained sewage system that drained directly into the Thames River in London, the smell of sewage permeated London during the hot summer of 1858.
4.List of premature obituaries
Who knew there was a term for when Twitter rumors kill someone off too soon?! But it was actually happening pre-social media, like in 2003 when CNN.com accidentally published some obituary drafts that said Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan, who were all alive at the time, had died two years prior.
5.Hairy ball theorem
It's a weird name for a mathematical theory (known as the hedgehog theorem in Europe), but it states that "there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on even-dimensional n-spheres" or, in simpler terms, "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick."
6.Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Believe it or not, that's a whole grammatically correct sentence that employs the word buffalo in three ways — as a noun, as a verb, and as an attributive noun.
7.Kentucky meat shower
What would you do if it seemed like raw chunks of red meat appeared to be raining down from the sky? Probably coming up with explanations as to how it could be, like the people of Bath County, Kentucky on March 3, 1876.
8.Hamster zona-free ovum test
"Frequently performed by sperm banks when screening potential sperm donors," this test is supposed to determine the efficacy of sperm in penetrating ova to determine infertility.
9.Klüver–Bucy syndrome
This rare syndrome is believed to be related to the medial temporal lobe of the brain which can make people compulsively eat, put inappropriate objects in their mouth, and even engage in hypersexuality.
10."Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them!" controversy
David & Goliath T-shirts were my life for a minute, and they also caused controversy after men's rights activist Glenn Sacks claimed misandry and inciting violence in children as a reason why the shirts shouldn't be sold.
ABC / Via tenor.com
11.Equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington, Glasgow
It would be an unremarkable (though lovely) statue on its own merits, but the addition of traffic cones by mischievous visitors, a tradition dating back to at least the 1980s, elevates the piece.
12.Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon
NBC / Via giphy.com
The unusual (and blessedly fictional) Greek delicacy includes all kinds of bits of fish, birds like pigeons and roosters, sauces, and more.
13.Mozart and scatology
Mozart liked poop jokes and references and made them in many letters, and even hid some in recreational compositions, fascinating those dedicated to studying the history of his work.
14.List of micronations
Micronations are defined as "small, self-proclaimed entities that claim to be independent sovereign states but which are not acknowledged as such by any recognized sovereign state, or by any supranational organization," and also known as "model countries" and "new country projects."
Warner Bros. / Via giphy.com
15.Tarrare
A French man with an unusually large appetite — who was allegedly kicked out of his home because they could not afford to feed him — ended up a charlatan and later a soldier, and was believed to have once eaten a meal meant for 15 people.
16.Extreme ironing
Extreme ironing is a very real extreme sport, no matter how many people say it's not. In fact, that's part of the draw for people who take their irons to trees, rafts, and mountainsides to engage in the activity, which originated in the UK in the late '90s.
17.List of games that Buddha would not play
Buddha's list of no-can-dos is actually the earliest list of games known to man and contains games that limit where a player can walk, games played on boards with rows of 8 or 10, and games that involved dice.
18.Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office
We love a cat with a job. This cat's job is to keep 10 Downing Street mouse-free.
19.United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff
A federal prisoner suing Satan and his cronies? Just a day in the life in early 1970s Pennsylvania. That prisoner couldn't tell a process server where to find Satan to serve him, however, which ultimately tanked the case.
20.Big Mac Index
Initially a joke first published by The Economist in 1986, the price index measures purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies. In other words, the price difference between a Big Mac in the US and anywhere else in the world should be about the same, adjusted for each currency's exchange rate.
