Currently procrastinating on an assignment due after recess week? Not ready to face the fact that we’re already 7 weeks into term?
One of my favourite things to do when I’m in this predicament is to scroll down the first Wikipedia article I find for random, useless trivia. Although Wikipedia has developed a reputation as a website for “nerds”, the sheer swathe of knowledge that it holds means that you’re sure to find some incredibly funny bits of trivia to chew on.
Can’t figure out where to start? Well, never fear! I’ve selected a few of the most bizarre articles I can find, separated into three categories: The (Un)Gifted, Weird and Wonderful Animal Names, and Earth’s Oddities. Whether you’re here for more niche scientific knowledge or just here for human drama, these Wikipedia articles will leave you hungry for more!
The (Un)Gifted
The Queen’s poet. In his heart, at least. (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Everyone has gone through that phase where you thought it was a good poem as long as it rhymed. Well, William McGonagall stayed in that phase for his entire life! Famously known as the “worst poet of British history”, critics have blasted him for being “deaf to poetic metaphor” and using “inappropriate rhythms” in his work.
Even with the criticisms, McGonagall showed no signs of giving up. At one point, McGonagall approached the Queen to obtain royal sponsorship, but was declined. Constantly broke, he frequently wandered all over the country to find someone that would publish his poems. He eventually found work in a circus, where the audience was allowed to pelt him with “eggs, flour, potatoes, herrings and stale bread” as he performed his poetry, a truly (un)forgettable way to add flavour to his performance!
You might be thinking – how gloriously awful was he? Well, his most famous poem is titled The Tay Bridge Disaster, written after the Tay Rail Bridge’s collapse in 1879. Here’s an excerpt from its ending:
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
He’s got the facts right, at least!
After his death in 1902, a wall-mounted memorial to him installed in 1999 reads as follows:
William McGonagall
Poet and Tragedian
"I am your gracious Majesty
ever faithful to Thee,
William McGonagall, the Poor Poet,
That lives in Dundee."
Now that’s a poem that most people will approve of, McGonagall included!
–
Maybe you have that one friend who always hogs the mic at karaoke, even though they sound like a dying cat. Well, they’d find competition in Florence Foster Jenkins, an American amateur soprano who famously sang songs too difficult for her to perform, complete with consistent flat notes, inconsistent rhythm, and muffled intonation. She was apparently so bad that the author Stephen Pile wrote of her as “the world's worst opera singer ... No one, before or since, has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation.”
That one soprano friend - we all know the one. (Photo source: Wikipedia)
He wasn’t the only one to have this opinion, either. William Meredith, award-winning poet and 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote that a Jenkins recital "was never exactly an aesthetic experience, or only to the degree that an early Christian among the lions provided aesthetic experience; it was chiefly immolatory, and Madame Jenkins was always eaten, in the end."
Yeowch. Those burns (and many, many others on her Wikipedia page) sting.
It wasn’t all bad going for Madame Jenkins, however. There was speculation that her technical failures may have been an act, or that she was purposely playing up her musical flaws for the audience. Regardless of the truth, she amassed considerable fame during her tenure as a musical figure and counted many celebrities among her fans. Her fame remained long after her death, and some of her performances live on in the form of recordings.
(Curious about what her singing sounded like? Her Wikipedia page has a link to her rendition of Queen of the Night, from Mozart’s opera Magic Flute. Check it out to hear her for yourself!)
–
Some people love writing stories. Some people love writing poetry. But some people love writing completely unreadable run-on sentences full of gibberish imagery, and Amanda McKittrick Ros is one of them. Born in Ireland and writing under her pen name, Ros regarded her own work so highly that she imagined “the million and one who thirst for aught that drops from my pen", predicting that she would "be talked about at the end of a thousand years."
Perhaps the first Wattpad writer to ever exist. (Photo source: NRC)
Well, she would definitely be renowned long after her death… just not in the way she imagined. Many critics lambasted her for using overwritten purple prose, which resulted in unsophisticated literary works. And if you don’t know what purple prose is, you’re about to find out. Below is the first sentence of her novel Delina Delaney:
Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?
Whew. I might be a Literature major, but some sentences are just unreadable.
Regardless of the quality of their craft, Ros’s works continue to live on – her novels are incredibly rare to come by, fetching prices of up to US$800 dollars for a genuine first-edition copy.
Weird and Wonderful Animal Names
There are certainly animals with strange scientific names out in the world. But a scientist named Mark Scherz took it to the extreme when he discovered a new genus of microhylid frog in Madagascar. Because the frogs that made up the genus were tiny – only 8 to 11 millimetres long – he thought of a brilliant name.
In 2019, the world came to learn of the existence of three of the tiniest species of frogs – named Mini mum, Mini ature, and Mini scule.
Pictured: Mini mum (top), Mini scule (bottom). (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Due to their recent discovery, researchers are still working on identifying whether they are at risk of extinction. However, their limited range, small size and quickly-degrading habitat has led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to recommend that M. mum and M. scule be declared critically endangered, with a lack of information on M. ature’s status.
While conservation efforts to study and protect these little critters are on the way, one can only wonder what will happen if a fourth member of the genus is discovered – new name variants, perhaps? Maybe we’ll see a Mini van out in the wild soon…
–
Perhaps the first (and last) species to be named after a website, the GoldenPalace.com monkey is also known as the Madidi titi monkey.
(Yes, you read that right, that is its real name.)
This monkey species was discovered in western Bolivia’s Madidi National Park in 2000 by British biologist Robert Wallace. As a titi monkey, it was originally named after the park in which it was found. Upon its discovery, Wallace and his team chose to auction off scientific naming rights to raise funds for FUNDESNAP, the nonprofit organisation that maintains the national park and the monkey’s habitat.
Ultimately, the naming rights were won by an online casino called GoldenPalace.com, famous for publicity stunts. The casino paid a total of US$650,000, outbidding at least a dozen other bidders to name the monkey species after its website, resulting in its unique name. Its species name, Plecturocebus aureipalatii, references the website – literally meaning “of the Golden Palace”.
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey… gambles? (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Thankfully, the GoldenPalace.com monkey is rated Least Concern on the IUCN scale, meaning that it is thriving and not at risk of extinction. Let’s hope the species will get to enjoy their own Golden Palace within their national park for much, much longer!
Earth’s Oddities
Ever believed in the existence of UFOs? What about proof of extraterrestrial life on Earth? Argentinian filmmaker Sergio Neuspiller and his team thought they had discovered just that when they happened upon an island called El Ojo in 2016. The team had been working on a documentary covering various unexplained phenomena in the area when Neuspiller stumbled upon a strange-looking lake on Google Maps. After careful observation and even a flight booked over the lake, they realised that it was an almost perfectly circular rotating island.
Perhaps the most unique thing about the island is that it is perfectly shaped like an eye, with a shifting island in the middle as the moving iris.
Uncannily circular, eerily eyelike. (Photo source: Wikipedia)
El Ojo is hardly the first of its kind – a similar phenomenon has been observed in the ice disks that form every year in Presumpscot River, Westbrook, Maine. But it’s certainly the only one of its kind to share a striking resemblance with an eye. This island just goes to show that if you ever think you’re being watched by someone, it might just be the Earth itself!
–
The Uffington White Horse may not be as famous as its fellow prehistoric artworks, but it certainly is one of the most whimsical. Formed from deep trenches filled with powdered white chalk, the figure of Oxfordshire, England has drawn much attention and intrigue over the years as to its origins and purpose.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… the Uffington White Horse! (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Recent investigations of the area surrounding it have uncovered a prehistoric settlement that is nearly 3000 years old, with archaeologists theorising that it belongs to the same community that created the White Horse.
There has been much debate over the years on whether the figure actually represents a horse, but it has been referred to as a horse as early as the 11th century. (Personally, I think an argument could be made for a sabre-toothed cat or a weird-looking lizard, but who knows. Let’s give them the artistic benefit of the doubt, shall we?)
Due to the surrounding vegetation’s encroachment on the horse’s outline, the horse is maintained by a team of local volunteers in order to preserve it. Every year, local volunteers replenish the horse’s outlines with freshly quarried chalk, using hammers to smash the chalk and re-whiten the art’s outlines. Now that’s a smashin’ good time!
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this far, and I hope this article gave you a bit of joy and trivia to take home with you!
As far as interesting Wikipedia pages go, this article really is just the tip of the iceberg. For those who are interested in finding more random pages, try playing the Wiki Game to visit many different articles. Wikipedia’s main page also features random articles that change daily, which will give you a great start if you are interested in delving deeper into these rabbit holes. For every topic imaginable, there is always more to learn – and more pieces of trivia that you can impress your friends with at your next supper in hall.
What other interesting Wikipedia articles would you like to see next?
Written by: Clarissa
Edited by: Bella, Joelle, Min Shen, Warren
Comments