True stories too strange to be fiction.
In what might be the most spectacular self-sabotage in criminal history, a man trying to cover his tracks accidentally sent incriminating evidence directly to the investigators hunting him. Sometimes the best detective work is done by the criminals themselves.
Percy Spencer was just doing his job testing military radar equipment when he noticed something odd about the chocolate bar in his pocket. His curiosity about that melted candy bar would eventually put a revolutionary cooking appliance in nearly every American home.
When the residents of Cormorant, Minnesota needed a mayor, they didn't look to city hall—they looked to the local bar's furry mascot. Duke, a Great Pyrenees, has now won four consecutive mayoral elections, proving that sometimes the best candidate walks on four legs.
On a freezing January afternoon in 1919, a 50-foot-tall tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses exploded in downtown Boston, sending a 25-foot wave of sticky syrup through the streets at 35 mph. Twenty-one people drowned in dessert. The smell lingered for decades.
Violet Jessop was a ship stewardess who survived collisions on the RMS Olympic, the sinking of the Titanic, and the explosion of the HMHS Britannic—all three sister ships from the same fleet. She lived through maritime history's worst disasters, then went back to work.
Between 1969 and 1977, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven separate times—each documented, each more improbable than the last. His story raises an uncomfortable question: at what point does coincidence stop being luck and start being something science can't quite explain?