Crazy Patents

Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920 – 2 February 2021), more popularly known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and fundraiser. He made international headlines in April 2020 when he raised money for charity in the run-up to his 100th birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic. He served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War, and later became an instructor in armoured warfare. After the war, he worked as managing director of a concrete company and was an avid motorcycle racer. On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99 during the first COVID-19 national lockdown, Moore began to walk 100 lengths of his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday on 30 April. In the 24-day course of his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations.

"The Fir-Tree" (Danish: Grantræet) is a literary fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). The tale is about a fir tree so anxious to grow up, so anxious for greater things, that he cannot appreciate living in the moment. The tale was first published 21 December 1844 with "The Snow Queen", in New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection, in Copenhagen, Denmark, by C.A. Reitzel. One scholar (Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager [de]) indicates that "The Fir-Tree" was the first of Andersen's fairy tales to express a deep pessimism.[1]

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observed by astronomers using early telescopes without photography. They were first described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the opposition of 1877, and attested to by later observers. Schiaparelli called these canali ("channels"), which was mistranslated into English as "canals". The Irish astronomer Charles E. Burton made some of the earliest drawings of straight-line features on Mars, although his drawings did not match Schiaparelli's.

The Field of the Cloth of Gold (French: Camp du Drap d'Or, pronounced [kɑ̃ dy dʁa d‿ɔʁ]) was a summit meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France from 7 to 24 June 1520. Held at Balinghem, between Ardres in France and Guînes in the English Pale of Calais, it was an opulent display of wealth by both kings.[1]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/chasing-tornadoes   National Geographic article on Storm Chasing called Chasing Tornadoes.

Ian Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor and politician.[1][2] Of Jewish descent, he escaped the Nazi occupation of his native Czechoslovakia and joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile during World War II. He was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major academic publisher. After six years as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) during the 1960s, Maxwell again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan Inc., among other publishing companies.

On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells robbed a PNC Bank near his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, United States. Upon being apprehended by police, Wells died when an explosive collar locked to his neck detonated. The FBI investigation into his death uncovered a complex plot described as "one of the most complicated and bizarre crimes in the annals of the FBI".[1]   https://www.wired.com/story/collar-bomb/

Koro is a culture-bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals.[1][2] Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Balloonfest '86 was a fundraising event in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, held on September 27, 1986, in which the local chapter of United Way set a world record by releasing almost 1.5 million balloons.[2] The event was intended to be a harmless publicity stunt. However, the released balloons drifted back over the city and Lake Erie and landed in the surrounding area, causing problems for traffic and a nearby airport. In consequence, the organizers faced lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in damages,[1] and cost overruns put the event at a net loss.[3]

Mostly taken from this GQ article here: https://www.gq.com/story/meet-the-nutmaxxers-obsessed-with-shooting-bigger-loads