The historical oddities that stretch credulity. Supernatural legends filed by region, facts that sound invented, the archive's lighter drawer.
A curated cabinet: the Mothman bridge, the bell-tower ghost of Würzburg, the lake monsters of every mid-sized European country. Sorted by plausibility, annotated by region.
Aeschylus and the tortoise. The Boston molasses flood of 1919. The dancing plague of 1518. Eleven causes of death that, on first hearing, sound invented and on inspection are not.
The Cardiff Giant. Piltdown Man. The Cottingley Fairies. Why the smart people believed them, and what it tells us about our own age of plausible fabrications.
From the Great Emu War to the Pepsi Navy, a short catalog of the ones that sound like jokes and aren't. Source notes for every entry, because Eleanor was raised right.
The Roman ban on purple. The English window tax of 1696. Sweden's 1710 high-heel prohibition. Each was once enforceable somewhere, and each tells you about its anxiety.