Wikipedia:Unusual articles/Society, economy and law

Society, economy and law[edit]

Comrade! Your hair is not trimmed in accordance with the socialist lifestyle!

Absurdistan	The place where silly bureaucracy rules. Has been located in places as diverse as Czechoslovakia and Iraq.
Bagism	A social ideology created by the Beatle John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono which involves wearing a bag over one's entire body to promote peace and equality.
Beard Liberation Front	A British interest group which campaigns in support of beards and opposes discrimination against those who wear them.
Berners Street hoax	The day that all of London gathered at one house.
Birth tourism	Going on vacation to get a different citizenship for the child.
Frank Chu	All he wants is royalties for being featured in a real life soap opera broadcast in 12 galaxies – or was it 785,249,000,000,000?
Correspondence between the Ottoman sultan and the Cossacks	Amongst other insults and profanity, it supposedly told Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire to fuck his mother.
Crypt of Civilization	A time capsule not to be opened before 8113 A.D.
Cutting in line	How rude!
Elaine Davidson	A Brazilian woman that has the record of having the most piercings in the face.
Erika Eiffel	Wife of the Eiffel Tower.
Elvavrålet	The time of night when Swedish university students throw open their windows and scream their stress away.
Escalator etiquette	Which side are you on?
Fat men's club	Social clubs for the weightiest members of society.
Jenaro Gajardo Vera	A Chilean lawyer who claimed to own the Moon.
Justo Gallego Martínez	A Spanish Catholic priest who, for almost seven decades, single-handedly constructed his own church.
Georgia Guidestones	A granite monument commissioned to help guide humanity, which became the subject of conspiracy theories, and the target of a bomber.
Guerrilla gardening	"Quick... torch on... plant those carrots!"
Go Topless Day	A day to advocate topfreedom for women.
Great Stork Derby	The strangest competition in Canadian history: female residents of Toronto were promised a financial reward to give birth to the most kids in just ten years.
Charles Harrelson	One of the most infamous hitmen in US history... and the father of actor Woody Harrelson.
He never married	A euphemism often used in mid-20th century obituaries in United Kingdom for gay men.
Marie Sophie Hingst	The late German historian and blogger who claimed to be born to Holocaust survivors, despite not being Jewish.
Ancient and Honorable Order of Turtles	Not a ninja turtles fan group, but "an honorable drinking fraternity composed of ladies and gentlemen of the highest morals and good character, who are never vulgar."
Japanese adult adoption	The vast majority of adoptees in Japan are childless adult males, adopted by families needing a strong heir or a male successor for their businesses.
Elizabeth Klarer	A 20th century Afrikaner woman who claimed that she dated an extraterrestrial being and gave birth to an alien. She later wrote two books about this.
Knobbly knees competition	A favourite in holiday camps all over the UK.
Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle	A television show produced by the North Korean government intended to educate the public on good and bad hairstyles.
List of people who have lived in airports	Wish you were here?
Long-term nuclear waste warning messages	How do you warn people to stay away from nuclear waste repositories, in a way that will be understandable 10,000 years from now?
Mónica Macías	The daughter of Equatoguinean president Francisco Macías Nguema who grew up in North Korea, with Kim Il Sung himself serving as her second father.
Jean-Marie Loret	He (and his children) claimed that he was the son of an affair between his mother and a WW1-era, pre-infamy Adolf Hitler.
Man of the Hole	The last survivor of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil, and arguably the world's loneliest person.
Mitsuyasu Maeno	Porn actor, yakuza member, Japanese ultranationalist and failed assassin.
Mongrel complex	A concept regarding an inferiority complex reportedly felt by some Brazilians. Coined following an especially agonizing World Cup loss.
Montreal–Philippines cutlery controversy	A 7-year-old boy's eating habits became an international incident.
Neturei Karta	An international organization of Orthodox Jews that oppose Israel.
Emperor Norton	A man who claimed to be "Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico" in 1859.
Panty tree	Trees covered in various articles of clothing cast off by ski lift passengers.
Pole and Hungarian brothers be	A two-nation proverb often cited, usually while drinking, in both Poland and Hungary.
Posthumous marriage	Saying "'til death do us part" with someone who's already dead.
The Queue	A queue, stretching for 10 miles at one point, all the way to Southwark Park, formed by Britons in September 2022 in order to pay their respects to their late sovereign.
Sentinelese	An autonomous Stone Age human tribe which completely avoids contact with the outside world.
Travelling gnome	Taking a garden gnome on an adventure... occasionally without telling the owner of the garden it was on.
Vesna Vulović	A Serbian flight attendant who became famous for surviving the highest fall without the use of parachutes.
War of the stop signs	Free movement means free movement.

Politics and government[edit]

1803 Gatton by-election	Two candidates, only one ballot cast, in this by-election in one of the UK's most notorious rotten boroughs of the early 19th century.
1927 Liberian general election	The most fraudulent election in recorded history, with a turnout of 1,680%.
1986 Illinois gubernatorial election	Followers of a bizarre political figure hijack an election, and force one of the main candidates into running under a different party.
2018 Makassar mayoral election	In which Munafri Arifuddin ran unopposed for mayor of Makassar, Indonesia, won more than 250,000 votes, and lost.
Above Znoneofthe	A Canadian politician who changed his name so that people would misread it as "none of the above" on the ballot (with the Z added to appear at the end of the list) and pick his name by mistake.
Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act	An apparently innocuous piece of congressional legislation that became the subject of outrageous but widely believed conspiracy theories in 1956.
Animals as electoral candidates	Why be ruled by some monkey, RINO or pig when you can get a real chimp, rhino or pig into office?
André Dallaire	How often do would-be assassins break into a Prime Minister's residence without resistance?
Antanas Mockus	The surprisingly effective mayor of Bogotá, Colombia known for civically-targeted publicity pranks.
Anarchist Pogo Party of Germany	A satirical party formed in the 1980s. Some of its main objectives include balkanizing Germany, legalizing all drugs and creating so-called "fuckpooling centers".
Anti-PowerPoint Party	Fighting the overuse of Microsoft PowerPoint in offices since 2011.
Bald–hairy	Russian leadership has alternated between bald and hairy leaders since 1825.
Banned in Boston	Boston now has a reputation as a liberal city, but it wasn't always so...
Barack Obama "Joker" poster	You wanna know how I got these scars?
Alejandro Cao de Benós	A Spanish man who is the only non-Korean person to officially work for the North Korean government. Benós is also featured in some documentaries about North Korea, such as The Propaganda Game and The Mole: Undercover in North Korea.
Biotic Baking Brigade	Pie-throwing anarchists.
Boris Skossyreff	Belarusian adventurer, who tried to seize the monarchy of Andorra and called himself Boris I of Andorra.
British Israelism	A long discredited form of British nationalism, by way of the idea that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel made their way to Britain.
Brown Dog affair	Political scandal that resulted in police protection for the statue of a dog.
Bushism	Any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of former United States President George W. Bush.
Bush shoeing incident	An incident where Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw a pair of shoes at George W. Bush on December 14th, 2008 during a press conference.
Byron (Low Tax) Looper	Not only did he give himself a parenthetical middle name, he tried to win an election by simply murdering his opponent. It didn't quite work out.
Candy Desk	A desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate has been kept filled with candy since 1968.
Catmando	A cat who was the head of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.
Charles the Bald	A 9th century emperor of the Carolingian Empire who is depicted in artwork as having a full head of hair.
Chernomyrdinka	Russia can do Bushisms too.
Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office	An official government position in the United Kingdom.
Count Binface	An intergalatic warlord and British political candidate (formerly Lord Buckethead).
Celso Daniel	A city mayor in Brazil who was, allegedly, assassinated in 2002 by criminals, but many people say that he was murdered for political reasons. Within five years, seven witnesses were found dead. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
Congressional office lottery	The process that determines when representatives in the House can pick their rooms, host to such rituals as playing Frank Sinatra songs and Jedi mind tricks.
Crusade of Romanianism	1930s Romania saw possibly the world's only political movement which attempted to synthesize fascism with libertarian socialism.
David Rice Atchison	Possibly President for a day, only finding out after his "term" had ended.
Deez Nuts	A satirical candidate who ran for president during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and polled 10% at his best. In the polls, he had defeated other notable candidates such as Harambe, Beast Mode, Darrell Castle (this one is real), and nearly Jill Stein.
Division of Batman	A former electoral district in Melbourne, Australia. And no, it wasn't named after the superhero.
Democracy sausage	Part of Australia's tradition of holding a fundraising sausage sizzle at polling places on election day. Not connected to the observation about similarities between how laws and sausages are made.
"Dewey Defeats Truman"	When Thomas E. Dewey was falsely thought to have defeated Harry S. Truman in the 1948 election.
Dizzy Gillespie 1964 presidential campaign	Had it succeeded, it would have created a dream cabinet including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Ray Charles.
Donald Duck Party	A non-existent political party, at occasions among the top ten parties in Swedish parliamentary elections.
Dunwich	Another rotten borough which had almost entirely fallen into the sea over two centuries before it was abolished. Not to be confused with the other Dunwich...
Ed Miliband bacon sandwich photograph	The biggest enemy of British politician - and then Leader of the Opposition - Ed Miliband? A simple bacon sandwich.
Eddie Eagle	Not the British ski-jumping pioneer, but the NRA's firearm safety mascot. For kids!
Wolfgang Engels	A 19-year old civilian employee of the National People's Army who smashed through the Berlin Wall with a stolen APC.
Euromyth	Paranoid and imaginative speculations about the bureaucratic excesses of the European Union.
Four Pests campaign	Mao Zedong's campaign to eliminate all sparrows in China. Helped (in some small way, at least) cause the Great Chinese Famine.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference	The bizarre scene when Trump's presidential campaign hosted a presser not at the Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia... but at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Philadelphia.
Fuddle duddle	A Canadian political incident involving most unparliamentary language.
Gaysper	When Spain's major far-right party accidentally created an LGBT+ icon.
George H. W. Bush broccoli comments	The president's strategy for winning the baby vote.
Glee Club	Predating the American television series by some decades, one British political party hosts this evening of entertainment in which participants are encouraged to sing rude songs making fun of politicians past and present, both in the party and in more general politics.
Greek Ecologists	A Green party which uses nudity in its political campaigns.
Günter Schabowski	A Freudian slip of this East German official started the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
H'Angus	A monkey football mascot who was elected mayor of Hartlepool, England, with a platform of "free bananas for all schoolchildren".
Harold Holt	He goes swimming, and then missing.
Helengrad	A nonexistent communist dystopia that supposedly gripped Wellington, New Zealand between 1999 and 2008.
Huh Kyung-young	A perennial South Korean political candidate who owns a palace filled with portraits of himself, claims to be able to levitate and teleport, and that he has an IQ of 430. Got 0.8% of the vote for President in 2022.
Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party	The best satirical party in Hungary.
Ich bin ein Berliner	President Kennedy did not call himself a jelly donut in front of a German audience.
Ilona Staller	A Hungarian porn star elected to the Italian Parliament.
Incidents of objects being thrown at politicians	In various countries, objects have been thrown at politicians for reasons varying from comedic to harmful with objects from pies to grenades.
Jakob Maria Mierscheid	A fictitious politician in the German Bundestag since 1979, originally introduced in the 1920s by Weimar Social Democrats to avoid paying restaurant bills. Discovered the Mierscheid Law.
Jimmy Carter Peanut Statue	A statue of a grinning peanut in honor of Jimmy Carter...
Jimmy Carter rabbit incident Jimmy Carter UFO incident	...who had two very strange incidents happen to him. Was the rabbit really a killer? And is the truth really out there?
Jón Gnarr	An Icelandic comedian who started the satirical Best Party, and became the mayor of Reykjavik.
John Turmel	With a record of no wins and 100 losses in campaigns since 1979, he's probably the world's least-successful would-be politician.
Kasongo Ilunga	A man who spent several months of 2007 as the Minister for Foreign Trade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – even though he wasn't a real person.
Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary	If you ever find yourself an alien in the Klavern and someone asks "AYAK?" remember to answer "AKIA". It's all "CABARK".
Lyndon LaRouche	What does the Glass-Steagall Act, concert pitch, and a hypothetical Eurasian Land Bridge have in common? According to him, Elizabeth II's attempts to suppress "the truth" about them.
Legislative violence	Where politicians actively fight for what they believe in.
Liz Truss lettuce	The vegetable that outlasted a British prime minister.
Lord Bloody Wog Rolo	Australian political personality and founder of the British Ultra Loyalist League Serving Historical Interests Today (B.U.L.L.…).
Luke Lea	Former American Senator who tried to kidnap the exiled former Kaiser of Germany in 1919. The plan failed when the Kaiser refused to allow him to visit. He ended up stealing a bronze ashtray instead.
List of Kim Jong Il's titles	Because just being the "Great Leader" wasn't enough.
Marxist–Leninist Party of the Netherlands	A fake Maoist political party set up by the BVD in order to spy on the Chinese government. Fooled Zhou Enlai, and may have helped facilitate Richard Nixon's tour of China.
Mitsuo Matayoshi	Perennial candidate. Self-proclaimed God. Repeatedly told opponents to kill themselves.
McGillicuddy Serious Party	A satirical political party in New Zealand.
Mel Carnahan	In 2000, he was elected to the United States Senate, despite dying in a plane crash 3 weeks before election day.
Merkel-Raute	More than one German leader has been known for a distinctive hand gesture.
Nagriamel	A libertarian, welfarist, traditionalist, cargo cultist Ni-Vanuatu political movement that was once led by a man named "Moses" with 23 wives and briefly tried to secede. Still represented in the Parilament of Vanuatu, making it perhaps the world's strangest non-satirical party with actual influence.
New shoes on budget day	One of Canada's less grand political traditions.
Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda	Mexican eccentric who repeatedly ran for president, lost, and claimed he'd won. Sound familiar?
Niuas Nobles' constituency	An electoral constituency consisting of just three voters, who elect one of their number to one of the twenty-six seats in the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.
Nobody for President	Vote for Nobody! Nobody will listen to their campaign promises!
Nuisance candidate	In the Philippines political candidates can be disqualified for bringing the election into disrepute or mockery, having a name which confuses voters or not actually intending to run for office.
Official Monster Raving Loony Party	Among other policies, this British political party advocates the banning of semicolons as "no-one knows how to use them".
Old Sarum	A notorious UK rotten borough which elected 2 MPs, despite having an electorate of 11, none of whom actually lived there.
Gabriele Paolini	His sole aim in life: to get condoms on TV.
Panda diplomacy	Turned out that best Chinese diplomats are pandas.
Pascual Racuyal	A Filipino presidential aspirant who promised to build plastic roads and govern the Philippines "via satellite".
Patrol 36	The most famous group of Neo-Nazi Israelis.
Pedro Lascuráin	President of Mexico for 45 minutes.
People's Revolutionary Government	The only Marxist-Leninist constitutional monarchy in history with Elizabeth II as monarch.
Pink Pistols	They're here, they're queer – and they're armed to the teeth.
Polish Beer-Lovers' Party	One of the major political powers in Poland in the early 1990s.
Political Google bombs in the 2004 U.S. presidential election	I was searching for waffles, not John Kerry.
¿Por qué no te callas?	It's not often a head of state tells another head of state to shut up at an official summit.
Proposed Canadian annexation of the Turks and Caicos Islands	First proposed in 1917.
Puedo prometer y prometo	Spain's first political joke after the end of the Franco era.
Putin khuylo!	Or "Putin is a dickhead", in Ukrainian.
Ratfucking	What the Watergate conspirators did. (Not bestiality, if that's what you're thinking.)
Redskins Rule	When the Redskins won, the party of the current president retained the presidency; when the Redskins lost, the opposition party won.
Resignation from the British House of Commons	Illegal since 1624.
Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978)	A British Trotskyist ~~cult~~ party that went right-libertarian post-Cold War, discovered genocide denial, accused ITN of faking footage, and got sued out of existence.
Rhinoceros Party	A former political party in Canada, which often promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public.
Richard Nixon mask	One of the United States' most popular masks.
Russian political jokes	In Soviet Russia, the article reads you.
Screaming Lord Sutch	British musician, founder of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Holds the record for losing all 40 elections in which he stood.
Seijika Joshi 48 Party	The Japanese anti-TV licensing fees party with eight names since 2020, two feuding leaders, and a habit of picking YouTubers as candidates, that is somehow still represented in the Diet.
Shanghai Fugu Agreement	A completely fictitious international treaty accepted by the German state of Hesse in 1985.
Shawinigan Handshake	A tense Prime Minister puts a chokehold on a protestor.
Shi Pei Pu	A male Chinese opera singer-turned-spy who seduced French diplomat Bernard Boursicot for 20 years by pretending to be a woman, even "having" a child with him.
Sister Boom Boom	A drag queen who dressed as a nun and ran for the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco.
Socialist fraternal kiss	When two socialist leaders are very close...
Socialist Patients' Collective	An organization that charged that diseases were caused by capitalism.
Strom Thurmond filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957	You've got to really care about white supremacy to talk for 24 hours straight. (Happily, it didn't stop the Civil Rights Act from passing.)
Taiwan Communist Party	The founder of the party claimed he had no knowledge of communist theory and only picked the name to garner interest.
The Wizard of New Zealand	The Prime Minister of New Zealand gave a friend the title of "Wizard of New Zealand."
"There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama"	A 2008 song celebrating the Irish heritage of then-candidate for President of the United States Barack Obama.
Toad worship	The online cult of former Chinese President, Jiang Zemin.
Tsang Tsou-choi	From the 1970s to his death, he claimed to be the "Kowloon emperor".
Wilson Tucker	The power of group voting tickets brought a man living in America to Australian regional office despite only having gained 98 votes.
Unabomber for President	1996 saw a presidential campaign for an infamous domestic terrorist serving eight life sentences in a supermax prison.
Union of the Centrist Center	Actually centre-right.
Vermin Supreme	A presidential candidate with a boot on his head, who carries around a large toothbrush and pledges that, if elected, he will give every U.S. citizen a pony.
Waitangi dildo incident	Once upon a time in New Zealand, Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce was attacked with a dildo.
White House horseshoe pit	Where George H. W. Bush won an epic duel of horseshoes 21-0 in five minutes.
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan	A spoof scientific study by J.G. Ballard which compares the face of Ronald Reagan to an erect penis. Was circulated at the 1980 RNC as a prank.
You have two cows	A political satire comparing different political ideologies with cows, for some reason.

Business and economics[edit]

1933 double eagle	An extremely rare U.S. coin that is illegal to privately own.
2018 Samsung fat-finger error	When new Samsung Securities shareholders got 112 trillion won (1017719218.54 USD) richer.
BackpackersXpress	It's hard to see what went wrong with this proposal to fly Boeing 747s full of singing, dancing and drinking backpackers between Australia and the UK.
Bads	Like goods, but no one wants them. Notable for being exactly the word a child would come up with for this concept as a joke.
Bank of England £100,000,000 note	If you thought the largest UK banknote was £50, then you're VERY wrong.
Big Mac Index	Ronald McDonaldonomics.
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions	Or "BUGA-UP" for short. An Australian group of subversive artists who live up to their self-description by defacing tobacco and alcohol billboard advertisements to promote healthy living.
Boss key	A special button on an application used to quickly mask an employee's counterproductivity.
Dead cat bounce	In finance, a small, brief recovery in the price of a declining stock, because "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height."
Dead mall	That formerly active and popular mall that no one goes to anymore.
Elongated coin	What better souvenir than a mangled and defaced penny.
EURion constellations	Not-so-secret recognition patterns you can find on banknotes.
Fedspeak	A deliberately confusing, carefully rehearsed cryptic language, whose delphic dialect is used to effectively prevent the understanding of Federal Reserve Board policy.
Financial Modeling World Cup	An esport competition of financial modelling, using Microsoft Excel.
Fukuppy	A branding exercise by a Japanese refrigeration company, which turned into a, well, ...
GameStop short squeeze	Internet traders meme their way into a battle for Wall Street. To the moon!
Ghetto tourism	And if you look to your left you will see an impoverished minority neighborhood.
Gruen transfer	In shopping mall design, the moment when consumers enter a mall or store and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, lose track of their original intentions, making them more susceptible to making impulse buys.
Prix Guzman	A prize given by the French Academy of Sciences to the first person who succeeded in communicating with a celestial body, other than Mars (as many believed it to be inhabited at the time), and receiving a response. The prize caught the attention of Nikola Tesla among others, but was not awarded until Apollo 11 in 1969.
Hallmark holiday	A holiday that seemingly exists primarily for commercial purposes.
Hemline index	The other reason why CEOs like women with short skirts.
Hungarian pengő	The worst inflation in history caused this currency to be replaced with another that was 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times its value.
Inflatable rat	Common tool of U.S. labor unions.
IKEA pencil	Free, popular, and even used in surgery.
Kongo Gumi	The world's oldest company that is still in operation today.
Maid café	So cuteeee.
Men's underwear index	An economic indicator popularised by Alan Greenspan.
Meme coin	Actual traded cryptocurrencies based on internet memes.
Merchant Marine of Switzerland	A landlocked country with a significant commercial fleet.
Money burning	Which can provide for behaviour modification, political notoriety and a warm fireplace. (See also K Foundation Burn a Million Quid in the "Television and film" section above.)
Olim L'Berlin	A Facebook page that urged Israelis to move to Germany by comparing prices of a popular Milky pudding.
Oil futures drunk-trading incident	A rather costly drunken mistake.
Operation Bernhardt	When Nazi Germany came up with a plan to drop counterfeit pound notes over Britain: in theory, massively inflating their currency and collapsing their economy.
Purple squirrel	Mythical creature, a job candidate with precisely the right education, experience, and qualifications that perfectly fits a job's requirements.
Rai stones	Stone money, some of which is 3 meters (10 ft) in diameter, and weighs 4 metric tons (8,800 lb).
Gerald Ratner	Business 101: If you own an incredibly popular jewellery company, maybe don't publicly announce that your products are all cheap garbage.
Swastika Laundry	A laundry service whose electric vans cheerfully displayed the notorious symbol around Dublin until the 1960s.
Tanganyika groundnut scheme	A scheme, stymied by a lack of water, to grow peanuts where none had been grown before.
Therbligs	In motion studies, the elemental motions used by a person when performing a process in the workplace. Named by and after Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (yes, the parents in Cheaper by the Dozen).
Ting Hai effect	A sudden drop in the stock market that follows whenever Hong Kong actor Adam Cheng stars in a new TV show.
Tingo Group Dozy Mmobuosi	A seemingly magical Nigerian agri-fintech company that was once valued for more than $1 billion. Actually discovered to be a personal vehicle for its founder, who's now charged with securities fraud.
Toyokawa Shinkin Bank incident	How idle chatter between three high school girls led to a 2-billion-yen bank run.
Trillion-dollar coin	A concept that was proposed as a way to bypass US debt-ceiling crisis through the minting of high-value platinum coins.
Tulip mania	The first recorded asset bubble was for Dutch tulips, which at the peak of the mania sold for 10 times a skilled artisan's income. Disputed to have ever occurred by some.
"Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!"	An ad campaign that figured the best way to sell cigarettes is to show all the consumers with black eyes.
Veblen good	Goods whose demand increases as price increases, violating the law of demand.
Why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland?	Because if you don't, your in-laws will hate you, your children won't respect you, even your therapist will judge you, according to this mocked PR campaign.
Zero-rupee note	A method of reducing bribery in India.

Law, law enforcement and crime[edit]

"Says in the Mail that these'll have to be straight now! Bloody Eurocrats..."

1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack	The first and largest bioterror attack in United States history involved the poisoning of salad bars with Salmonella in an attempt to sway an election in favor of the followers of an Indian mystic.
2007 Boston Mooninite panic	A guerilla marketing campaign for an animated TV series that quickly became a homeland security issue.
Sada Abe	Sensational journalism—from the Land of the Rising Sun.
Acoustic Kitty	A failed CIA experiment at using a cat for covert surveillance.
Animal trial	Historically, the law in some areas of Europe subjected animals to criminal liability for their conduct.
Attempted theft of George Washington's skull	Alas, poor George!
Baby Jesus theft	When a child is gone...
Batman rapist	Batman's back at it again, but this time it's actually a sex offender who attacked women in the city of Bath.
Bowling Green massacre	A nonexistent massacre mentioned by the Trump administration, subject to parody.
Burke and Hare murders	What is the best way to accelerate scientific progress? Killing people, of course.
Chamoy Thipyaso	At 141,078 years, she holds the record for the longest prison sentence without lifetime imprisonment – and didn't even serve 1% of it.
Chewbacca defense	"Now, why would Wikipedia have an article about the Chewbacca defense? That does not make sense!"
Michael Cicconetti	A judge renowned for his strange alternative punishments.
Cicada 3301	Criminals or puzzle enthusiasts?
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94	The infamous "bendy banana law", this seemingly-dry piece of EU quality standards legislation convinced the UK media and many ordinary people that Brussels had banned bananas from being curved. One of the most infamous Euromyths.
Confraternities in Nigeria	In Nigeria, university student societies have been frequently linked to kidnapping, sexual assault and mass murder.
Crime in Antarctica	It's not the Wild West—er, South.
Crime in Vatican City	Because of its low population and large number of tourists, the statistics suggest the average citizen commits two crimes per year.
Dead Man's Statute	Enacted to prevent a witness from testifying about communications with a dead person.
Easter Act 1928	The government of the United Kingdom legally mandated a change of date for Easter Sunday to a period of seven days - and then never actually enforced it.
Emo killings in Iraq	Music fans killed for their alleged Satan worship and homosexuality.
Expert wizard amendment	New Mexico narrowly avoided requiring all psychiatrists testifying in court to put on a robe and wizard hat.
Free Bench	An unusual English legal custom permitting a widow to inherit her deceased husband's land. In one version, she would have to ride into court backwards on a black ram while reciting a nonsense verse.
Glasgow ice cream wars	In the 1980s, violent conflicts between ice-cream vendors (who also sold drugs and stolen goods) left six people dead.
Troy Leon Gregg	Escaped from death row, got killed in a bar fight that same night.
Disappearance of Johnny Gosch	In 1982, a 12 year-old went missing. As of 2023, the case is still unsolved, and Gosch's whereabouts remain a mystery. However, Gosch's mother claims that he visited her in 1997, and in 2006 she found a photo sent by an anonymous person to her front door.
Guano Islands Act	This strange piece of legislation enables citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits.
Helen Duncan	The last woman convicted under the UK's Witchcraft Act. Her favourite trick: "ectoplasm" made out of fabric and egg.
Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal	A craft store chain purchases stolen Iraqi artifacts.
'I know it when I see it'	"Not that, but something sort of like that?"
John Smeaton	Sometimes, the best way to avoid a terrorist attack is to simply kick the terrorist in the balls.
John "Half-hanged" Smith	They tried to hang him, but he survived. Later attempts to try him fizzled out until they just decided to deport him to America.
Learned Hand	Thanks to his name, this American judge could've part-timed as a superhero—"The Learned Hand of the Law" has a nice ring to it. Given his impact on tax law, his birth name of Billings Learned Hand is even more apropos.
Jay Leiderman	The lawyer that represented Anonymous.
Lesbian rule	Not the replacement for the Patriarchy, but an archaic term meaning legal flexibility (and originally a building tool from Lesbos).
Ley de fugas	Prisoners were allowed to escape, as an excuse to kill them for trying to escape.
Viola Liuzzo	One of the FBI's darkest criminal cases.
Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano	A Guatemalan attorney who arranged his own death and blamed it on the President, seeking justice for his murdered girlfriend.
Massachusetts School Laws	How 17th-century Massachusetts sought to rid itself of the Prince of Darkness.
The Mad Pooper	An unidentified woman in Colorado Springs, CO repeatedly defecated in public while jogging.
The Matrix defense	A claim that the defendant committed a crime under the belief of being inside a simulated reality. The defense has been successful more than once.
Gary McKinnon	How a UFO enthusiast with Asperger syndrome was able to hack into the US government's computers.
Moron in a hurry	Used in passing-off law, this is the sort of fictional person who would look at a knockoff product and think it's the real thing for long enough to buy it.
Mug shot of Donald Trump	How a photo of the 45th president of the U.S. getting arrested (and released shortly after) became a source of comedy on the internet.
Ninja of Heisei	An elderly Japanese man who successfully committed over 250 burglaries while disguised in a ninja outfit.
Not proven	A controversial Scots law verdict for those neither guilty nor innocent.
Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi	In 1983, a teenage girl went missing in the Vatican and the search for her whereabouts became a major controversy. In 2023, the religious state opened for the first time an official investigation on the matter.
Onion Futures Act	Why you can't buy any onion futures, but you can for corn, oats, rice, aluminum, crude oil, wood, etc.
Operation Flagship	Do not trust the San Diego Chicken.
Perry Mason moment	"Mr. Menendez, did you know Big 5 stopped selling pistols in 1986?"
Phantom of Heilbronn	A DNA-traced serial killer, also known as the "Woman without a face", who turned out to be nonexistent.
Phantom social workers	They make children disappear.
Prenda Law	A law firm that blackmailed people for allegedly downloading pornography; the firm was described by one court as a "porno-trolling collective".
Prohibition of dying	There are really some places where death is illegal. (Although it is unknown what happens to anyone who breaks this law.)
Regulation of flamethrowers in the United States	No permit needed in 48 states.
Robert Hanssen	Tasked by the FBI to help rat out Soviet spies. The problem? He was one of them.
Rough sex murder defense	It is what it is.
Salmon Act 1986	A UK law, designed to curb illegal fishing, which creates the humorously-named crime of "handling salmon in suspicious circumstances".
Sand theft	What do you mean I can't take the sand home?
Shaggy defense	Caught committing a crime, but don't know what to do? Say it wasn't you.
Shawn Nelson	They say that being in a tank gives you the high ground. It certainly reigns true here.
Small penis rule	A technique used by authors to avoid libel lawsuits.
Steve Comisar	America's #1 solar-powered dryer salesman.
Tennessee login law	Laws against password sharing are older than you think, but have always been this unpopular.
Keron Thomas	In 1993, aged sixteen, he posed as a motorman on the New York City Subway and managed to operate a scheduled passenger train for over three hours.
Andre Thomas	Serial killer who tore out his eyes and consumed them in order to prevent the government from reading his mind.
Twinkie defense	When you don't want to go to jail.
Ugly law	A type of U.S. city ordinance banning anyone "diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" from being in public.
United Airlines Flight 976	The worst case of air rage ever? Or just a very bad case of traveler's diarrhea?
Angie Sanclemente Valencia	A former lingerie model alleged to have run one of the largest drug cartels in the world.
Clement Vallandigham	A lawyer who proved his client had not killed a man, but the victim had shot himself... by shooting himself dead.
Whipping Tom	The name given to multiple London sex attackers. One of them, upon seeing an unaccompanied woman, would grab her, lift her dress, and slap her buttocks repeatedly before fleeing. He would sometimes accompany his attacks by shouting "Spanko!"
Wet feet, dry feet policy	America seems to not like wet feet.

Legal cases[edit]

2008 French mistaken virginity case	France's most bizarre lawsuit: an angry man takes legal action against his newly married wife for not being a virgin.
62 Cases of Jam v. United States	When is imitation jam not jam?
Batman v. Commissioner	Batman said his teenage son was his partner. The Commissioner wasn't having any of it.
FTC v. Balls of Kryptonite	In some ways, the U.S. government is more powerful than Superman.
Hermesmann v. Seyer	A Kansas Supreme Court case that decided that a 12-year-old boy who was molested by his 16-year-old babysitter had to pay for her child support.
Iceland v Iceland Foods Ltd	Who has a greater claim to the name Iceland - a country established in 874 or a British retailer founded in 1970?
Jarvis v Swans Tours Ltd	A legal complaint about the lack of gemütlichkeit during a Swiss Christmas holiday.
Lawsuits against the Devil	Who would you think had the best lawyers?
Lawsuits against God	A notoriously apathetic defendant, He/She/It has never turned up for one of His/Her/Its hearings.
Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc.	Would you expect to be able to swap 7 million points (worth $700,000) for a Harrier jump jet (worth $22 million)? This man did and took Pepsi to court when they failed to supply him one. Unsurprisingly – to everyone except him – he lost the case.
Manacled Mormon case	The religious rape case that became a movie and involved the cloning of a dog.
Memoirs v. Massachusetts	A U.S. Supreme Court case concerning whether the 1748 book Fanny Hill was entitled to First Amendment protection. One of the dissenting opinions contained an extensive discussion of the supposedly pornographic content.
McMartin preschool trial	The most expensive trial in US history. Amid the 1980s' day-care sex-abuse hysteria, hundreds of children wasted 7 years of court time and $15 million of public money by telling bizarre and fanciful tall tales.
Miles v. City Council of Augusta, Georgia	Can a city require a business license for a talking cat, and does the cat have free-speech rights?
Monkey selfie copyright dispute	An actual monkey made a monkey out of the law.
Nix v. Hedden	The U.S. Supreme Court decides that the tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.
Pearson v. Chung	Also known as the $54 million pants case, or "The Great American Pants Suit" according to one Wall Street Journal reporter.
Stambovsky v. Ackley	Also known as the "Ghostbusters case", the court ruled that a house in Nyack, New York was legally haunted by ghosts.
State v. Linkhaw	He sang so badly in church that a jury found him guilty of "disturbing a religious congregation".
Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson	The first and only murder case where demonic possession was used as a defense.
Toy Biz, Inc. v. United States	Are the X-Men humans under U.S. law?
Trial of the Pyx	Whence the British Pound lands in court every year.
United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff	Who has jurisdiction over Satan?
United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat's Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness	The FDA will not tolerate misbranding.
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins	The fins won a case that turned on whether buying something from someone counts as "aiding or assisting" them.
United States v. Causby	Planes vs. farmers.
United States v. Ninety-Five Barrels Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar	When is apple cider vinegar not apple cider vinegar?

Taxation[edit]

Bachelor tax	Implicit in many jurisdictions which offer a marital tax relief.
Beard tax	Used to be imposed in England and Russia.
Breast tax	An unusual tax meant to enforce the caste system in an indirect way.
Chicken tax	A U.S. tariff on trucks, which resulted in a period of chicken trade related tension known as the Chicken War.
Flatulence tax	When you keep a lot of cattle, you're contributing significantly to the greenhouse effect ... aren't you?
Taxation of illegal income in the United States	Don't worry: you can deduct your illegal activity expenses.

Punishments[edit]

"Had a little too much to drink, have we, sir?"

Bamboo torture	Death by a growing bamboo shoot.
Blood eagle	The "wings" were your lungs pulled out through your back.
Brazen bull	Encased in bronze and boiled to death, with wind instruments attached so your screams would turn into moos.
Disneyland with the Death Penalty	Best way to describe Singapore according to William Gibson.
Drunkard's cloak	Attire for the village drunk.
Enhanced interrogation techniques	No inhumane torture over here.
Half-hanging	For when you don't want to go all the way.
Hanged, drawn and quartered	Dark Ages punishment for high treason.
Pitchcapping	A hat made of tar was molded on to your head, then ripped off, taking your skin with it.
Poena cullei	Taking a fatal trip down the river with a dog, snake, monkey, and rooster (none of whom did anything wrong).
Rhaphanidosis	For sex crimes in classical times, you got a radish shoved up your rear.
Rough music	A form of vigilantism, more loud than violent.
Scaphism	Probably the worst ever execution method - the condemned was enclosed in a pair of boats, covered with milk and honey, and eaten to death by insects.
Schwedentrunk	Victims were bound and were forced to swallow large amounts of foul liquid, usually excrement.
Scold's bridle	A muzzle for the nagging wife.
Washing out the mouth with soap	That'll teach you to say dirty words!
Whipping boy	A boy who received corporal punishment for misdemeanors of a prince; as well as some of his privileges.

See also