THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU NEEDED TO KNOW

  Tik Tok: people dance, sing, make food, extoll the virtues of a good book, basically anything to get attention. But two trends from the 1920s and 1930s became popular crazes without the aid of social media - flagpole sitting and goldfish swallowing. Those trends have died out over many years, but once were popular attention getters. Newspapers covered these antics, and record setters became stars. Now these trends are all but forgotten, even though both seem perfect social media fodder. Flagpole sitting was exactly what it sounds like. Ordinary people would  ascend flag poles in high traffic areas, place themselves on a platform and ... sit. And sit. And sit. The trend started with a man called "Shipwreck" Kelly - called that because he alleged to have survive the Titanic. A Hollywood movie theater hired Kelly to sit atop the flagpole and promote a new film. The novelty caught on and businesses hired "sitters" to advertise sales and other promotions. A record-sett

  Let's say you're in Nuremberg, Germany on May 26th, 1828. Normal day, doing normal German stuff - eating pretzels, drinking beer, wearing Lederhosen - when suddenly a young man of about 16 approaches town square. Citizens say he looks "drunk or crazy." A shoemaker goes up to the boy who says "I want to be a soldier like my father," and repeats that phrase for days anytime he's spoken to. The boy hands over two letters addressed to a specific Calvary man. The boy is taken to him, but the soldier does not recognize the boy. The first letter, written by the boy's mother, says he is named  Kaspar Hauser  and he was born April 30, 1812. His father was a Calvary man who is now deceased. She could not take care of him and left him with a man. The second letter is from that man who says the boy knows basic reading and writing. The man can no longer care for the boy and says "keep him, or kill him." The handwriting on both letters looks strikingly

  Just a Little Weird June tells spooky and kooky tales like.... A German mystery man who came to a small village with two letters and a crazy story Swallowing a snack that does not smile back An Italian physicist defied the laws of physics by vanishing into thin air