When Willard Asylum closed in 1995 after 126 years of operation, staff members discovered hundreds of forgotten suitcases that told the stories of the patients who had died there.New York Library/Wikimedia CommonsAn early photo of Willard Asylum in the 19th century.
In 1869, Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane opened near Seneca Lake in New York. The facility was built as an alternative to the prisons and poorhouses that typically housed patients suffering from mental illness at the time, where residents were often chained to their beds or locked in cages. Read More...
Gloria Ramirez, The Toxic Lady YouTubeGloria Ramirez, before her 1994 death.
Gloria Ramirez’s life was pretty normal but the circumstances surrounding her bizarre death have made her one of history’s weirdest people.
Ramirez’s seemingly average life took its unusual turn on Feb. 19, 1994, when she was taken to General Hospital in Riverside, Calif. after she experienced a rapid heart rate, a drop in blood pressure, and was unable to form coherent sentences. Read More...
From mushrooms that talk to each other using a vocabulary of 50 words to a mummified "goatelope" pulled from a melting glacier, these are the most bizarre news stories of 2022.Every year, the typical news cycle is disrupted by some event that is so wildly out of left field that it lands in another stadium, and 2022 was no exception.
We covered over 300 news stories this year about history, science, and crime — but there were also stories that came across our desks that were so weird, strange, and bizarre that they captured our attention completely. Read More...
