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Wikipedia:Unusual articles

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This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a bit unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are somewhat odd, whimsical, or something you wouldn't expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. If you wish to add articles to this list, a broad consensus amongst contributors has identified two main guidelines. If the article in question meets one or both of these categories then it could possibly be deemed "unusual":

  1. The article is something you would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
  2. The article contains some form of juxtaposition that most people would find unusual. eg Killer Cockroach, Henry VIII in Space, edible computers.

Note that this is a broad definition. Some articles may still be considered "unusual" even if they don't fit the guidelines above.

For unusual contributions that are not so valuable, see Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.

A star () indicates a featured article.

A cow with antlers atop a pole, electrical wiring in the background. Wikipedia contains many other images and articles that are similarly amoosing.

Places

 
Baldwin Street, Dunedin
 
A very long railway station sign for a very long name.
 
Mill Ends Park,
the smallest park in the world.
 
A chandelier made from human bones, decorating the Sedlec Ossuary.
 
The Principality of Sealand
826 Valencia San Francisco's "only independent pirate supply store".
Arbre du Ténéré A solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth.
Baarle-Nassau A municipality of the Netherlands, including small exclaves of Belgium, which in turn comprise even smaller exclaves of the Netherlands.
Baldwin Street A short suburban road in Dunedin, New Zealand, reputedly the world's steepest street.
Bielefeld-Verschwörung Translates as "Bielefeld Conspiracy", about a city in Westphalia which, according to some, doesn't really exist...
Cardrona Bra Fence An eccentric tourist attraction in New Zealand.
Centralia, Pennsylvania A town that's been on fire since 1962.
Colletto Fava An Italian hill featuring an enormous stuffed pink bunny.
DISH, Texas A small town in Texas that changed its name to receive free digital video recorders and satellite television for ten years.
Fallen Monument Park A Russian park best known for its toppled statues.
Ferdinandea An "underwater island" off Sicily, which occasionally emerges and creates territorial disputes and was once mistaken by the US military for a submarine.
Forest swastika A gigantic Nazi swastika made of larch trees that went unnoticed for nearly sixty years.
Fucking, Austria A town in Austria whose sign keeps "disappearing".
Gropecunt Lane An old name for various streets in London where prostitutes did their business.
Helengrad A right-wing nickname for Wellington, New Zealand, derived from Prime Minister Helen Clark's apparent steel grip on her cabinet.
Here Where you are now.
Hitlers' Cross [sic] Where all good members of India's Hitler Youth go to dine.
Icelandic Phallological Museum A museum in Iceland solely devoted to the collection of penis specimens and penis-related art.
Republic of Indian Stream An area of land in northern New Hampshire, USA, that was an independent country from 1832 to 1835.
Jerimoth Hill The highest natural point in Rhode Island. Henry Richardson, a 77-year old man living in the area, has been known to threaten, insult and start fistfights with people who try to go through his property to reach it.
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
The longest officially-recognised place name in the United Kingdom.
Lost counties, cities,
and towns of Virginia 		All the places that are no longer found in Virginia, USA – and a few that never were – including Walton's Mountain and Illinois County (currently the home of Chicago, Illinois).
Mill Ends Park The smallest park in the world – 452 in² (0.3 m²) – located in Portland, Oregon.
Mojave phone booth A public phone booth that stood for several years in the middle of a desert, miles away from any roads or other structures.
Moresnet A tiny European region (approx. 3.5 km²) that existed for a century as neutral territory between Germany and Belgium.
Original Spanish Kitchen A Los Angeles restaurant that suddenly and unexpectedly closed in the early 1960s, giving rise to an urban legend about the fate of its proprietors. The restaurant's contents – even as far as the place settings – remained untouched for decades.
Reality Checkpoint A lamp-post with its own name.
Ryugyong Hotel It would be the world's tallest hotel, except it has no windows, fittings, fixtures, ...
Sealand A micronation located six miles (10 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England, whose population rarely exceeds five.
Sedlec Ossuary A Christian chapel decorated by the bones of approximately 40,000 people.
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu
A small hill with a big name in New Zealand.
Tree That Owns Itself An oak tree in Athens, Georgia that is popularly regarded as owning itself.
UFO-Memorial Ängelholm A memorial to a reputed UFO landing in Sweden.
Winchester Mystery House A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles
Zzyzx, California The ___location of Zzyzx Road, which alphabetically was once the last street name in the world.

See also

Numbers and dates

Unusual days, chronologies and mathematics.

 
"Beghilos", "Hello"... the possibilities are endless. Why use a calculator to calculate?
 
Throat pastilles may be required.
 
M&mmmm... look what someone's dropped!
−0 Zero has a negative flavor in the worlds of computing, experimental science and statistical mechanics.
  0.999... A recurring decimal which is exactly equal to 1
Bacon number The degree of separation between Kevin Bacon and another actor.
Calculator spelling Something you may've seen at school.
Chrismukkah A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C.
February 30 Throughout history, some nations have had thirty days in February.
Festivus An unusual holiday inspired by the television show Seinfeld.
Illegal prime Does the US government forbid knowledge of the existence of certain prime numbers?
Indiana Pi Bill A notorious attempt to legislate the value of pi
International
Talk Like a Pirate Day 		Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19.
Mathematical jokes Mathematics can be funny?
New Chronology (Fomenko) An attempt to rewrite world history by Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, a Russian mathematician who claims that Jesus was the same person as Pope Gregory VII and a few others beside.
Numbers station "[Two bars of The Lincolnshire Poacher play] ¡Atención! ¡Atención! One, four, seventeen, twenty-four..."
Objects dropped
on New Year's Eve 		Curious local imitations of the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year's Eve.
Phantom time hypothesis A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Thus the year 2006 is actually 1709.
Pi Day The day – March 14 – on which the constant π is celebrated.
Minkowski's question mark function A function with an unusual notation and possessing unusual fractional properties.
Time Cube Time is cubic, not linear. There are four simultaneous days in a single rotation of the Earth. Maybe.
Undecimber In Java, the thirteenth month of the year.
Year 10,000 problem The collective name for all potential software bugs that will emerge as the need to express years with five digits arises.
Year zero Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1?
Zeroth An ordinal number popular in computing and related cultures.

See also

Language

Unusual words, phrases, names, dialects and codes.

 
Behind the sofa: a motif of comedy and an archetype of the pysche.
File:EngrishSweatshirt.jpg
Engrish on a sweatshirt.
 
"Which këÿs för this heävy plästic müsïc?"
 
The Phaistos Disc.
 
A Toynbee tile found in downtown Washington, D.C.
 
The Voynich manuscript is written in an undeciphered script.
Apples and oranges According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought.
Behind the sofa Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about buffalo buffaloing buffalo.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical.
Cadigan Not that garment worn by your grandfather or Fred Rogers, but any of those words such as thingamajig, doohickey, whatchamacallit, ...
Dord A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939.
The dozens A usually good-natured African American ritual in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback.
Engrish Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases.
ETAOIN SHRDLU Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting.
Fictitious entry Maybe you think this entry is one.
Faux Cyrillic Give text some of that Яussiaи flavour.
Fnord Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordianists.
Heavy metal umlaut Gïvë thë lögö för yöür hëävy mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänic fëël.
Hyphen War A dash between communism and independence.
Inherently funny word Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle, wankel, ...
Intentionally blank page The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank".
Latin profanity Latin for the profane.
Longest word in English Floccinaucinihilipilification, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other contenders.
Markovian Parallax Denigrate We don't know. Neither does anyone else. Or do they?
Nucular An intentional misspelling of the word nuclear to reference a common mispronunciation of the word.
Oink Oinking transliterated to Swedish, Russian and Korean.
Phaistos Disc Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs.
Pompatus Steve Miller has much to answer for...
RAS syndrome An example of RAS.
Shit happens An existential observation of life's imperfections, albeit not eloquent.
Siamese twins in the English language Conjoined words.
Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George" An association formed to promote the elimination of referring to railway sleeping car porters by the name "George" regardless of their actual name.
Toynbee tiles Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? A French phrase, meaning "Do you want to sleep with me?", popularized by the song Lady Marmalade.
  Voynich manuscript An undeciphered illustrated book written four hundred or so years ago, by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet.

See also

Names

People and things that have unusual names, but are otherwise unextraordinary.

File:Eristalis gatesi.jpg
Bill Gates' flower fly
 
Thursday October Christian
 
'SMAD, mad, mad, mad, mad name?
Dick Assman A Saskatchewan service station owner whose name garnered international attention in 1995.
Bill Gates' flower fly A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates.
Setaceous Hebrew Character A European agricultural pest with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame.
Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116
A name, pronounced "Albin", given to a Swedish child by his parents in May 1996.
Thursday October Christian The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.
GoldenPalace.com Monkey A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com internet casino.
Sonic hedgehog A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Jennifer 8. Lee A New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight.
Adolf Lu Hitler Marak A politician in an Indian state where people are commonly given names such as "Lenin R. Marak", "Stalin L. Nangmin", "Frankenstein W. Momin" and "Tony Curtis Lyngdoh". He claims to be "happy with [his] name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies".
Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3 Actually, it's a polypeptide.
Optimus Prime The name of a U.S. Army National Guard firefighter in Ohio.
Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel
A candidate for the British parliament in 1981. Inspired by a Monty Python sketch, in a bizarre case of life imitating art.
Zyzyxia lundellii
and Zyzzyva 		The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively.

See also

Science

File:Sexynose.jpg
Nose-picking
File:Cuss 1.JPG
Cuss 1, the first drilling ship for Project Mohole, a 1961 attempt to drill through the Earth's crust.
 
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
 
Trepanation

Unusual articles dealing with science, medicine, anatomy, psychology, logic, physics, cosmology, and various pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories and hoaxes. For military science and technology, see military section.

Album graecum White dog dung, mixed with honey and used as a treatment for throat and skin problems.
Alien hand syndrome An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take a life of its own.
Apollo moon landing hoax accusations Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Autofellatio/Autocunnilingus Acts of oral self-stimulation.
Bloop Does a mystery sound from the bottom of the sea indicate that the Kraken may awake...?
Buttered cat paradox If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...?
Capgras delusion A rare disorder where a person believes that a close acquaintance, usually a family member or spouse, has been replaced by an identical-looking imposter.
Colors of noise Including white, pink, purple, blue...
The Complexity of Songs About a treatise on space complexity of songs by venerable computer scientist Donald Knuth
Cosmic latte The colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white.
Dancing mania Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Danger triangle of the face This ominous-sounding term refers to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area which makes it possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain.
Dibs Dibs on the front seat!
Dihydrogen monoxide A commonly-used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to erosion, drowning, acid rain, and countless other maladies.
Dimples of Venus For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face.
Drake's Plate of Brass A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry.
Elvis taxon A taxon (species, genus, family etc.) that is believed to be extinct but is falsely claimed by someone to still exist.
Embryo space colonization A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.
Emerald Cockroach Wasp A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too.
Exploding head syndrome Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two.
Fatal hilarity Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter?
Female hysteria A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm.
Fictional chemical substance Compounds and minerals that exist only in fiction.
Five-second rule The belief that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds.
Flat Earth society A British society that holds the belief that Earth is flat, not spherical.
Flynn effect The world is steadily getting smarter.
Foreign accent syndrome A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Phineas Gage A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Gay bomb A potential non-lethal chemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing, that could be dropped on enemy troops to cause "homosexual behaviour".
Gerbilling An urban legend about a sexual practice purportedly observed by Richard Gere, among others.
Gimli Glider Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider.
Guided rat Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand."
David Hahn A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Homokaasu "Gay gas"—mysterious chemical substance conspiracy theory.
Horrendous Space Kablooie A more evocative name for the Big Bang, from the comic Calvin and Hobbes.
The Hum A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations.
Human penis size Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends.
Hypertrichosis Also known as "Human Werewolf Syndrome".
 Infinite monkey theorem An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will produce all possible written texts.
ISO 3103 The ISO standard cup of tea.
Japan blood type theory of personality The Japanese version of astrology, your personality and fortunes are determined by your blood type.
Lighting farts The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence.
List of chemical compounds with unusual names The name says it all.
Magic smoke An alternative theory of integrated circuits: once the smoke is released they no longer work.
Maggot therapy The use of fly larvae in medical practice.
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon A figure said to have terrorized the town of Mattoon, Illinois in 1944.
Male lactation Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it. Go ahead and try!
Male pregnancy Don't expect humans to do this, but seahorses can.
Maple syrup urine disease Not quite as tasty as it sounds.
Lina Medina A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was 5 years old, becoming the youngest-known human mother ever.
Mole Day A Day in celebration of Avogadro's number, 6.02×1023.
Moon for sale Numerous schemes have been hatched to try to sell people portions of the moon.
Mucophagy The consumption of mucus.
Mumbai "Sweet" Seawater Incident Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle.
Nacirema A little known tribe in America that... oh wait, it's "American" spelt backwards.
Natasha Demkina Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision.
Navel lint A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it.
Nose-picking Also known as rhinotillexis, Greek for "ewwwwwwww!!"
Panamax The maximum size a ship can be and still fit through the Panama Canal.
Parasitic twin A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially-formed fetus developing within the body of the other.
Passenger train toilets Why passengers must be discouraged from flushing or using toilets while the train is at a station.
’Pataphysics A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.
Pathological science A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field.
Penis panic A colloquial term referring to a type of mass hysteria or panic where males grow fearful of removal or shrinking of the penis.
Photic sneeze reflex People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.
Pykrete A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound.
Quantum immortality An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Queens Giant A tulip tree located in northeastern Queens, New York, that is confirmed to be the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area, as well as the tallest tree in the NY metro area. As of 2005, it is over 450 years old and 134 feet tall, and was alive before the birth of Shakespeare.
Raining animals When it's literally raining cats and dogs.
Red rain in Kerala Did blood rain from the sky?
Reversed map A reversed map of the world, against conventional projections which have north at the top.
Schmidt Sting Pain Index Created by an entomologist, after having been stung by almost everything, to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale.
School bus yellow A color especially formulated for use on U.S. school buses.
List of sex positions A comprehensive guide featuring extensive hand-drawn illustrations.
The size of Wales A new measurement invented just for the TV news.
 S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 Not much more can be said than the title.
Slinky seismology Using slinkys to demonstrate earthquakes and other seismological events.
Smoot A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sokal Affair A famous hoax played by physicist Alan Sokal on the postmodernist humanities academic world.
Target fixation To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Toilet-related injury Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends.
Tomacco One of the few made up words in The Simpsons that resulted in a real life application.
Thagomizer A feature of stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip.
Thiotimoline A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water.
Thumb twiddling An activity that is done with the hands of an individual whereby the fingers are interlocked and the thumbs circle around a common focal point, usually in the middle of the distance between the two thumbs.
Mary Tofts A maidservant who, according to her doctors, gave birth to at least sixteen rabbits.
Trepanation A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness.
Triskaidekaphobia Fear of the number 13.
Ulam spiral A bored mathematician discovers an unusual numerical pattern while doodling.
Uncanny Valley How to measure your emotional response to androids.
Unobtainium A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess.
Will Rogers phenomenon Also known as the Will Rogers paradox; the apparent paradox obtained when moving an element from one set to another set that raises the average values of both sets.

See also

Inventions and objects

 
East German Ampelmännchen
 
Toilets in Japan have some special features

Unusual devices, tools, utensils, furniture, machines, and techniques.

Aglet The largely unacknowledged invention which revolutionised shoelaces.
Ampelmännchen The East German little man on the traffic signal.
British Rail flying saucer Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the 10:13 to Venus.
Canard Digérateur Or "Digesting Duck", an automaton built to simulate a duck eating, digesting, and excretion.
Centennial Light A hundred year old light bulb thats been burning nonstop for 30 years.
Digital sundial Unlike an analog sundial, a clock that indicates the current time with numerals formed by the sunlight striking it.
Dreamachine A device made with a light bulb and a record turntable that reportedly induces lucid dreaming.
Dymaxion car A 1933 concept car with 3 wheels. It was 20 feet long, carried up to 11 passengers, could go at speeds of up to 120mph and had a steering wheel that turned the car in the opposite direction.
Fictional elements, isotopes and atomic particles Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
History of perpetual motion machines The concept has eluded and baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years. They do not exist.
Hollowed-out book Why books are popular in prisons.
Human mail Why buy an expensive ticket when you can go by mail?
  Japanese toilet The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights.
Jesus nut The bolt on the top of a helicopter that connects it to the rotor blades.
Killdozer Why it's always a bad idea to put the guy next door out of business, especially if he has somewhat of a 'creative' streak.
Knork In contrast to the spork, here's a knife/fork combo.
Koteka An unusual traditional garment of western New Guinea, also known as the "penis gourd".
Lloyds Bank turd Possibly the largest example of fossilised human faeces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England.
The Mississauga Blob A flaming object that fell from the heavens onto a back-yard picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in 1979. The mystery of its true nature drew worldwide attention and speculation. Turns out it was a frisbee.
Nazi UFOs Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there.
Pimpmobile A large luxury automobile that has been heavily customized in a garish, extravagant style to advertise its owner's wealth and importance.
Pointy hat A distinctive feature of a wide range of people during history.
Rocket mail The delivery of mail by rocket or missile, attempted by various organisations in many different countries, with varying levels of success.
R/P FLIP A manned ship designed to be capsized at a 90° angle for weeks on end.
Shipping container architecture The concept and art of using shipping containers to build stuff.
South Pointing Chariot An ancient Chinese mechanical compass which took a millenium to reproduce.
Space advertising Plans to launch giant billboards into space.
Spork A cross between a spoon and a fork.
Spanish announcers' table Staple prop in destructive professional wrestling bouts.
Tin-foil hat Headgear that allegedly prevents a person from having their minds read or controlled.
Toilet roll holder A surprisingly complex device for holding a roll of toilet paper.
Whizzinator A fake penis used to beat drug tests (complete with dried urine, heater, syringe). Comes in white, tan, latino, brown, and black.
Xianxingzhe A Chinese robot, according to the Japanese, that will save its country from corporate capitalism with its crotch cannon.

See also

Computers, the Internet and games

 
The Utah teapot
AOL disk collecting A hobby in collecting AOL software disks, infamous for its excessive distribution.
All your base are belong to us An Engrish phrase that originated in a 1989 computer game, and sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002.
Any key You don't actually have to press it, so don't bother looking. You will be surprised which one it is!
Archimedes Plutonium An eccentric Usenet contributor who claims that the universe is a giant plutonium atom and that he is the world's greatest scientist.
Badger Badger Badger A Macromedia Flash animation consisting mainly of images of badgers doing calisthenics, a mushroom in front of a tree and a snake in the desert.
Bang Cartoon A website which features satirical Flash cartoons based on the NFL.
Bert is Evil A popular humour website that depicts the Muppet character in various Photoshopped images alongside Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and others.
Blinkenlights DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN!
The Book of Mozilla A well-known computer Easter egg found in the Netscape and Mozilla series of browsers.
Boss key A special key or key combination used in computer games to quickly hide the game from superiors or coworkers.
Cho Aniki Probably more homoeroticism than any other video game, featuring phallic personifications that shoot white laser beams from their heads.
The computers take over A science fiction scenario in which a supercomputer becomes intelligent and views humans as a threat to its safety. The computer will then try to wipe out the human race, or at least take control of it. Examples include The Terminator and The Matrix, among others.
Crazy Frog One man's moped impression that went on to earn millions as a ring tone.
The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science A 1990 academic paper which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness.
Dogcow A glyph from an old Apple font representing a creature that makes the noise "Moof!"
elgooG Google's mirror image version, literally: all letters are displayed in reverse order.
Esoteric programming language Refers to programming languages designed as a test of the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, or as jokes, and not with the intention of being adopted for real-world programming.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) A notoriously poor video game made for the Atari 2600 and subsequently used in a landfill.
Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten The internet meme relating to a photoshopped image.
FWAKs Fake FAQs for video games. Not to be confused with IAQs (Infrequently Asked Questions.)
Gibs The little bits of gore you get when someone or something in a video game explodes.
Glitch City A glitch-filled city found in the first Pokémon games.
Goatse.cx One of the most infamous Internet shock sites.
Hollywood operating system It always works very well... except when the plot says otherwise.
Hong Kong 97 A video game where the dead Deng Xiaoping is a weapon of mass destruction.
Infrequently Asked Questions (IAQs) FAQs for fake video games. Not to be confused with FWAKs or Indoor air quality.
INTERCAL A programming language that uses rabbit ears.
Internet phenomenon Its name is Legion, for it is many.
IP over Avian Carriers An internet protocol for sending data packets using homing pigeons.
JFK: Reloaded A video game released in 2004 where the player gets to assassinate president John F. Kennedy.
John Titor The name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001.
Lenna How an image of a nude Playboy model became the industry-standard digital image compression test subject.
Mark V Shaney A fake Usenet user whose computer-generated postings were created using Markov chain techniques.
Meow Wars Perhaps the largest and longest-lasting flame war in the history of the Internet.
Minus world A glitch in the original Super Mario Bros. game.
Monster infighting Demon civil war.
Office Assistant Microsoft's anthropomorphic paperclip that pops up in Word 97.
O RLY? The sarcastic owl image that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous on the Net.
OS-tan A small Internet phenomenon where certain types of software (including various Microsoft and Linux operating systems) are depicted as young anime women.
Polybius Video game, urban legend, and deadly killer, all rolled into one.
Pwn A term used by the Internet gaming subculture which means to beat or dominate an opponent.
Robotic unicycle The ongoing academic effort to teach robots to ride unicycles.
Super Mario 128 A mysterious Mario game supposedly in production.
Tourist guy The picture of a Hungarian man and how it relates to 9/11.
Trojan room coffee pot The fascinating target of the world's first webcam at the computer science department of Cambridge University.
Uncyclopedia According to Wikipedia, the Uncyclopedia is a parody of Wikipedia. According to Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia is a parody of Uncyclopedia.
Utah teapot A 3D model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community).
Wingdings A Microsoft Windows font that has inspired multiple conspiracy theories.
You are X and I claim my five pounds A British stock phrase commonly used in online discussion forums such as Usenet.

See also

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The World Famous Bushman
The Aristocrats A joke considered to be both "the world's funniest" and "the world's worst." Also a 2005 documentary of the same name.
Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them! T-shirt slogan aimed towards young women, rocks aimed towards young men.
The Bus Uncle A Hong Kong resident gets into an uncomfortably tense argument with a fellow passenger - all caught on video...
George P. Burdell A fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927, and who has been continuously enrolled at the school ever since.
Can't sleep, clown will eat me A stock phrase that's become a popular joke-explanation for insomnia.
Cartoon physics An explanation of the laws of physics as they have come to be (mis)represented in cartoons.
Cuteness in Japanese culture It's not just Hello Kitty.
Conan the Librarian A perennial parody of Conan the Barbarian that has appeared in film, television, comics, and fan fiction.
Cosplay A Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games.
Croydon facelift A hairstyle peculiar to parts of England.
Donkey punch A sex move involving punching one's partner in the back of the head during intercourse. One variant, the "Tony Danza", involves a switch to anal sex while repeatedly yelling "Tony Danza!" and punching one's partner.
Evil clown A recent development in American popular culture in which the playful trope of the clown is rendered as disturbing through the use of dark humor and horror elements.
Evil Overlord List How to avoid the movie clichés.
Exploding head A gesture, usually fatal, of extreme bewilderment or anger.
Fuck for Forest Do your bit to save the rainforest — have an orgy!
Garden Gnome Liberation Front Vive la révolution des nains!
Noël Godin Belgian man who regularly attacks powerful figures such as Bill Gates with pies.
Hammerspace An extra-dimensional storage area used to explain how cartoon or anime characters can sometimes produce objects seemingly out of thin air.
Happy Corner An East Asian hazing ritual.
Happy slapping Hurting someone while taking a picture of them, usually with a camera phone.
Human rainbow A huge gathering of colours.
Interactive Urine Communicator Star Trek technology? Not exactly.
List of problems solved by MacGyver For example, plugging a sulfuric acid leak with chocolate.
Love padlocks A fence in southern Hungarian town Pécs where lovers clamp padlocks
Making a face A Western term for creating odd appearances of the face.
Manscaping A shorthand for "landscaping" the male body, by shaving, trimming, waxing, or brushing the body hair, usually in an artful manner aimed at presenting that body in the best light possible.
Merhan Karimi Nasseri An Iranian refugee who has been living in Charles de Gaulle Airport since 1988.
Meta-joke A joke that refers to itself as the joke.
Metafiction Fictional fiction.
Metrophile A person who loves underground railway systems.
Mile High Club Soaring members.
Moe anthropomorphism In this time and age even a washing machine can be the girl of your dreams.
Mooning The act of exposing one's bare buttocks.
Muffin top A marketing mishap, many well meaning young women, and vanity came together to form this demographic.
Napoleon in popular culture Fictional characters believing they are Napoleon are often used to suggest mental ill health.
Colleen Nestler A woman who sent "thoughts of love" to David Letterman and then tried to get Arizona to issue a restraining order against him. Surprisingly, they granted it.
No soap radio A prank joke intended to fool one of its listeners into believing that it is a joke.
Pen spinning An activity in which assorted tricks are used to manipulate a pen in aesthetically pleasing ways.
Le Pétomane A French entertainer famous in Victorian times for being able to break wind at will.
Pillow fight flash mob Wherein a group of up to several hundred people suddenly congregate on an area and proceed to fight each other with pillows.
Portable toilet tipping Tipping over portable toilets for amusement.
Professional farter Paid to be flatulent
Aron Ralston One tough guy who, in order to escape from death, cut off his own arm with a dull knife after a boulder fell on it.
Shoe flinging The practice of throwing footwear, whether for humorous or political purposes.
Size queen Slang term originally used in the gay community to refer to individuals with a preference for larger-than-average (male) genitalia, more recently applied to women with such a preference as well.
Toilet humour Humor based upon bodily functions.
Treacle mining The fictitious mining of treacle (molasses) in a raw form similar to coal.
Walking like an Egyptian Ancient Egyptians walked just like everyone else, but modern music hall performers and catwalk models have walked in a quite unusual fashion.
Larry Walters Successfully piloted a lawn chair to 16,000 feet over Los Angeles.
Wellesley College Senate bus Also known as the Fuck Truck
The World Famous Bushman A street entertainer in San Francisco who makes a living by pretending to be a bush.
List of flops in entertainment  

Art and literature

 
The Headington Shark

Unusual artists and authors, art and literary movements, artistic works such as sculptures, photography, and paintings, literary works such as novels and poems, fusions of the two such as comics, and other artistic and literary concepts.

112 Gripes about the French A handbook produced to help American soldiers understand the French.
Anthropodermic bibliopegy The practice of binding books in human skin.
Arseface A comic book by none other than DC Comics
Atlanta Nights A group of science fiction authors get together and deliberately write an absolutely horrible novel in order to fool and embarrass a "vanity publisher".
Banksy An artist who smuggles his works into world-class museums.
Battle of the Cowshed and Battle of the Windmill (Animal Farm) Two famous battles from Animal Farm, complete with infoboxes listing casualties on both sides.
The Book of Heroic Failures A book which glories in failure. Started off The Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. The book was a success and thus declared a "failure as a failure".
Clan McDuck A fictional family in the style of a Scottish clan, from which a great number of Walt Disney Company's comic book characters held their origin.
Henry Darger Writer of a 15,000-page manuscript with along with several thousand watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story, who went to Mass several times daily.
Dinny the Dinosaur A larger-than-life, 150-ton sculpture of a brontosaurus in the desert of Southern California west of Palm Springs. Dinny's companion is "Mr. Rex," a 150-ton sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Early American editions of The Hobbit Now collectors items because of their printing differences.
English as She Is Spoke A 19th-century Portuguese-English conversational guide and phrase book that is regarded as a classic of unintentional humour due to its overly literal translations.
Evil laugh Muhahahahaha and the like.
The Eye of Argon An infamously bad heroic fantasy novella, written in 1970 by Jim Theis and circulated anonymously in science fiction fandom since then.
Fallen Astronaut a small statuette which is the only piece of art on the moon.
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women A 1558 diatribe by John Knox against Mary, Queen of Scots and Mary Tudor.
Gadsby A 50,100-word long book famous for not using the letter "e".
Gävle goat A giant straw Yule Goat that is the target of frequent arson attacks and vandalism.
Gorillas in comics A curious abundance of gorillas in comic book plots during the Silver Age of Comics.
The Headington Shark Oxford man has had a 25 foot long sculpture of a shark embedded headfirst into the roof of his unassuming house since 1986.
The Incredible Popeman The name of a Colombian comic book by Rodolfo Leon Valencia being released in tribute to Pope John Paul II, reincarnating him as a superhero who uses various superpowers to battle Satan and the forces of darkness.
Jenny Everywhere An open-source webcomic character.
Largest photographs in the world Includes information on print and digital photos that are reputedly the world's largest.
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den A poem written by a Chinese poet in Classical Chinese. It can be comprehended and understood by all who understand the language, despite the fact that it consists entirely of the word "shi" repeated 92 times in different tones. Also known as "Shī Shì shí shī shǐ".
Marlovian theory A theory which states that Christopher Marlowe's unnatural death was a hoax and that he continued to write and publish under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare".
Mexican Perforation A French artistic movement that expresses itself in underground places.
Naked Came the Stranger Journalists prove a point when their intentionally awful sex novel becomes a bestseller.
Saddam Hussein's novels Crimes against literature?
Suicide Squid A fictional character from a fictional comic.
Shakespearean authorship Proven by circumstantial evidence, a great conspiracy which concealed the identity of the true author of "Shakespeare's" works, implying that all contemporary references to Shakespeare's authorship were fraudulent or mistaken. Can you guess who the secret author is?
Tillie An odd painting of a grinning face, that used to be on the Palace Amusements building in Asbury Park, New Jersey before it was demolished.
Le Train de Nulle Part A French novel, 233 pages long, written without verbs.
List of books with the subtitle "Virtue Rewarded"  

Music

Unusual musicians, songs, instruments, styles of music, and music-related articles.

ABC-DEF-GHI A song sung by Big Bird of Sesame Street where he tries to discern the meaning of a very long word (which is actually the alphabet). (This is not an article about the other, more popular, alphabet song.)
Animutation The practice of taking lyrics of foreign songs, "mishearing" them into English, and producing a flash video to go along with it.
As Slow As Possible A piece of music to be performed until 2640.
Dark Side of the Rainbow What happens when you mix Pink Floyd and The Wizard of Oz?
Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester An Austrian orchestra whose musical instruments are made solely from vegetables.
Earworm A term used for an annoying song that a person cannot get out of their head.
Elvis sightings There are many who still believe.
Florence Foster Jenkins An American soprano famous for her singing ability or lack thereof.
Hitler Has Only Got One Ball Was the führer only half a man?
Industrial musical A musical production performed for the employees of a business, intended to create a feeling of being part of a team, and/or to educate and motivate the management and salespeople to improve sales and profit.
Jandek A prolific and pseudonymous singer/songwriter active since 1978 who only grants the occasional interview and has never provided any biographical information.
Manualism The little-known art of playing music by squeezing air through the hands.
Musikalisches Würfelspiel A system written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in which the musical piece is decided randomly by playing dice.
P Funk mythology An article about the whimsical universe surrounding the P Funk all stars.
Paul Is Dead Was Paul McCartney replaced by a lookalike in the 1960s?
Pink Floyd pigs The band's recurring props and references.
Tromboon An unusual instrument, with an even more unusual sound sampleⓘ.
William Shatner's musical career His rendition of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds regularly wins radio station competitions to find the "worst music of all time".
You Suffer At a full 1.316 seconds in length, the shortest song of all time
List of music genres suffixed -core  
List of self-referential songs "Here's a little song I wrote..."
List of songs in English labeled the worst ever  
List of songs whose title constitutes the entire lyrics  
List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks  
List of songs about masturbation Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Television and film

Unusual actors, television series, movies, documentaries, and related articles.

Food and drink

 
Snake wine

Animals

Sports

Folklore

 
Spring Heeled Jack

Politics, economy and law

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Norton I, Emperor of the United States
 
Legislative violence: One MP uses an old debating trick.

Religion and spirituality

 
Artist's impression of one of Xenu's space planes

Military

 
Antonov A-40 flying tank.

Death

 
Crushing by elephant
 
Safety coffin

Unusual ways to die, and unusual post-mortem occurrences.

(these contain unusual articles which might not be listed here)

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