The Stipa-Caproni was an experimental Italian aircraft built in 1932 around a hollow, barrel-shaped fuselage. Its engine and propeller sat inside the tube, making the entire aeroplane one enormous ducted fan with two open cockpits perched on top. It flew quietly and was so stable that test pilots found it difficult to change direction, but the barrel created enough drag to limit its speed to 131 km/h.
Motorcycle chariot racing was an eccentric 1920s and 1930s spectacle in which men dressed as Roman charioteers stood behind pairs of riderless motorcycles and steered them using reins. Early versions sometimes used chariots made from wine barrels; later races appeared at British stadiums and Australian police carnivals, encouraged by the popularity of Ben-Hur. It remains one of the few occasions in which motorcycles were treated as livestock.
The Leningrad Human Chess Match was played across Palace Square in 1924 using people as pieces. Members of the Red Army formed the black side, while the Soviet Navy played white; horses carried several of the larger pieces. Chess masters Ilya Rabinovich and Peter Romanovsky directed them by telephone as around 8,000 spectators watched. For one afternoon, an imperial square became a chessboard and the military obeyed two men seated at tables.
Auto polo was an early 20th-century sport that replaced horses with stripped-down Model Ts. Each car carried a driver and a malletman, who leaned from the side to strike a ball while the vehicles swerved, collided and frequently overturned. Popularized in 1911 by Ford dealer Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson as a sales stunt, it became an attraction at fairs across America and Europe. It was invented to demonstrate the Model T’s durability; the resulting repair bills eventually helped end it.
Fallstreak holes are enormous circular openings that appear in otherwise unbroken sheets of cloud. They often form when an aircraft passes through a layer of supercooled water droplets, causing them to freeze into ice crystals and fall. The reaction spreads outward, enlarging the opening, while a feathery column of ice remains suspended at its centre. By the time the portal becomes visible, the aircraft that made it has usually disappeared.
Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly was an American stunt performer who turned flagpole sitting into a national craze during the 1920s. Beginning with a 13-hour publicity stunt, he toured 28 cities, eating, shaving and sleeping on tiny platforms while crowds paid to watch from nearby rooftops. In 1930, he spent 49 days and one hour atop a 225-foot flagpole above Atlantic City’s Steel Pier. Kelly called himself “the luckiest fool in the world.” For a few years, America made him famous for going nowhere at exceptional height.
Plennie Wingo was an unemployed Texas café owner who attempted to walk around the world backwards during the Great Depression. Wearing spectacles fitted with small rear-view mirrors, he set out from Santa Monica in 1931 and walked roughly 8,000 miles across the United States and Europe before authorities stopped him in Istanbul. He financed the journey by selling signed postcards to curious strangers. Eighteen months and thirteen pairs of shoes later, he returned home with four dollars.
After his wife died following delayed access to medical care, Dashrath Manjhi decided the mountain itself was the problem. From 1960 to 1982, the labourer used a hammer and chisel to cut a 110-metre road through a quartzite ridge in Bihar, India. Villagers who initially dismissed him eventually brought food and tools. His passage reduced the journey to the nearest town from roughly 55 kilometres to 15. India Post placed him on a commemorative stamp in 2016. The mountain remained; the detour did not.
Tipu’s Tiger is an 18th-century wooden automaton made for Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore and an enemy of the British East India Company. It depicts a near-life-sized tiger attacking a European man. Turning a handle makes the man’s arm move while hidden pipes produce his cries and the tiger’s grunts; a flap opens to reveal a small organ keyboard. British troops seized it from Tipu’s palace in 1799, brought it to London and made it a popular attraction.
The Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race is the world’s longest certified footrace, held around a single ordinary block in Queens, New York. Competitors have 52 days to complete 5,649 laps, running from six in the morning until midnight and averaging nearly 60 miles a day. The route passes a high school, a playground and the same collection of parked cars. Runners reverse direction each morning. Everything else remains exactly where it was.