Wikipedia:Unusual articles

This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a little unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something you would not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. If you wish to add articles to this list, a broad consensus amongst contributors has identified two main guidelines. If the article in question meets one or both of these categories then it could possibly be deemed unusual:

1. The article is something you would not expect to find in a standard encyclopedia.
2. The article contains some form of juxtaposition that most people would find unusual, such as "Killer Cockroach," "Henry VIII in Space," "edible computers," and so on.

Note: this is a narrow definition, and some articles may still be considered unusual even if they do not fit these guidelines.

For unusual contributions that are not so valuable, see Wikipedia:Silly Things.

A star () indicates a featured article.

A cow with antlers atop a pole, electrical wiring in the background. Wikipedia contains many other images and articles that are similarly shocking and udderly amoosing.

[edit] Places

Baldwin Street, Dunedin

A very long railway station sign for a very long name.

Mill Ends Park, the smallest park in the world.

A chandelier made from human bones, decorating the Sedlec Ossuary.

The Principality of Sealand.

[edit] See also

• Category:Folly buildings
• Place names considered unusual
• List of places with fewer than ten residents
• List of pyramid mausoleums in North America

[edit] Numbers and dates

Unusual days, chronologies and mathematics.

"Beghilos", "Hello"... there are many words that can be spelled using a calculator

Throat pastilles may be required.

−0	Zero has a negative flavor in the worlds of computing, experimental science and statistical mechanics.
0.999...	An infinitely long way to write 1.
Calculator spelling	Something you may've seen at school.
Chrismukkah	A fictional Christmas-Hanukkah hybrid, popularized by the television show The O.C.
Dagen H	September 3, 1967: the day that Sweden changed its traffic directionality.
Erdős–Bacon number	Combination of the degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon and mathematician Paul Erdős
February 30	Not as completely fictional as you might think.
Festivus	December 23: Holiday celebrated by the Costanza family on the television show Seinfeld, since appropriated by many.
Illegal prime	Does the government forbid knowledge of the existence of certain prime numbers?
Indiana Pi Bill	A notorious attempt to legislate the value of pi.
International Talk Like a Pirate Day	Shiver my timbers (a-harrr!) every September 19.
January 0	Thought the day before New Year's Day would be in the previous year? Think again.
Manhattanhenge	Twice every year, the setting sun aligns with Manhattan's street grid.
Mathematical jokes	Mathematics can be funny?
Numbers station	[Six bars of The Lincolnshire Poacher play] "¡Atención! ¡Atención! One, four, seventeen, twenty-four..."
Phantom time hypothesis	A theory by Heribert Illig that the Early Middle Ages (614–911) never occurred. Therefore, we are in 1711 rather than 2008.
Pi Day	The day – March 14 – on which the constant π is celebrated.
Minkowski's question mark function	A function with an unusual notation and possessing unusual fractional properties.
Square root day	Any date when the day and month are both the square root of the last two numbers of the year (the next one being 3rd March 2009).
Time Cube	Time is cubic, not linear. There are four simultaneous days in a single rotation of the Earth. Academic singularity is a DAMNABLE LIE! (And it definitely isn't "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff" (as The Doctor described it in the Doctor Who episode Blink)).
Undecimber	In Java, the thirteenth month of the year.
Vampire number	Integers with real bite; some even have multiple pairs of fangs.
Year 2038 problem	The computing problem that will arise due to the POSIX Time representation used in many computers.
Year 10,000 problem	The collective name for all potential software bugs that will emerge as the need to express years with five digits arises.
Year zero	Was there a year between 1 BC and AD 1?
Zeroth	An ordinal number popular in computing and related cultures.

[edit] See also

• Category:Integers for other numbers with curious properties.

[edit] Language

Unusual words, phrases, names, dialects and codes.

Behind the sofa: a motif of comedy and an archetype of the psyche.

Do you use the Google?

"Which këÿs för this heävy plästic müsïc?"

The Phaistos Disc.

A Toynbee tile found in downtown Washington, D.C.

The Voynich manuscript is written in an undeciphered script.

Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso . . .	You're not alone, we can't spell it either.
Antiqua-Fraktur dispute	A dispute over which typeface was more "German". The Nazis were for Fraktur, before they became against it.
Apples and oranges	According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought.
Arcaicam Esperantom	How do you make things look "old" in an artificial language? By inventing a new one!
Behind the sofa	Where young British children hid from menacing scenes in sci-fi TV, now recalled humorously and nostalgically by British adults.
Brainfuck	It's not really what you think it is.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.	A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about buffalo buffaloing buffalo.
Bushism	Any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of United States President George W. Bush.
Buyer's remorse	Wish you hadn't bought that? This is what you're now suffering.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously	A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical.
Cryptophasia	The secret language of identical twins, also called idioglossia.
Dord	A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939.
The dozens	A usually good-natured African American ritual in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback.
Engrish	Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases.
ETAOIN SHRDLU	Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting.
Faux Cyrillic	Give text some of that Яussiaи flavour.
Fictitious entry	Maybe you think this entry is one.
Fnord	Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordians.
Heavy metal umlaut	Gïvë thë lögö för ÿöür hëävy mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänic fëël.
Hyphen War	A dash between communism and independence.
Inherently funny word	Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle, wankel, ...
Intentionally blank page	The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank".
Katz's back-off model	Back off.
Latin profanity	Latin for the profane.
Leet	T3h 1@ngu/\&e 0f H@xx0rz
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den	A Chinese poem where each character has the same pronouncation, except for the tones.
Longest word in English	Floccinaucinihilipilification, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other contenders.
Markovian parallax denigrate	We don't know. Neither does anyone else. Or do they?
Martian language	Chinese language + Internet = new language
Nucular	An intentional misspelling of the word nuclear to reference a common mispronunciation of the word.
Phaistos Disc	Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs.
Placeholder name	You know, thingamajigs, doohickeys, whatchamacallits...
Pompatus	Steve Miller has much to answer for...
RAS syndrome	An example of RAS.
Robert Shields	You think you are hooked on recording every detail of your life.
Shit happens	An existential observation of life's imperfections, albeit not an eloquent one.
Siamese twins in the English language	Conjoined words.
Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters "George"	An association formed to promote the elimination of referring to railway sleeping car porters by the name "George" regardless of their actual name.
Talk to the hand	Because the face don't understand.
Thinking about the immortality of the crab	A colorful Spanish idiom for daydreaming; try using this one if your teacher notices you becoming inattentive in class.
Toynbee tiles	Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages.
Truthiness	Satirical term popularized by Stephen Colbert meaning to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Yes, the man responsible for causing more vandalism on Wikipedia than anyone else has a featured article.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?	A French phrase, meaning "Do you want to sleep with me?", popularized by the song "Lady Marmalade".
Voynich manuscript	An undeciphered illustrated book written four hundred or so years ago, by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet.

[edit] See also

• List of English words containing a Q not followed by a U
• Rules of thumb
• List of words without vowel letters
• List of names for the Wild Turkey

[edit] Names

People and things that have unusual names, but are otherwise unextraordinary.

Bill Gates' flower fly

Thursday October Christian

'SMAD, mad, mad, mad, mad name?

Anal language	13,000 people talk Anal. Mostly in India and Myanmar. Not to be confused with Anus language, spoken in Indonesia.
Dick Assman	A Saskatchewan service station owner whose name garnered international attention in 1995.
Nicholas Barbon	No, Nicholas is not an unusual name, but there is more to it...
Praise-God Barebone	Nicholas' father.
Bill Gates' flower fly	A flower fly, Eristalis gatesi, named after Bill Gates.
Setaceous Hebrew Character	A European agricultural pest with wing markings bearing a chance resemblance to a letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
Strigiphilus garylarsoni	A biting louse named for cartoonist Gary Larson of Far Side fame.
Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116
	A name, pronounced "Albin", intended for a Swedish child by his parents in May 1996.
Thursday October Christian	The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Deportivo Wanka	An unfortunately-named Peruvian football team whose strips are remarkably popular in Britain.
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
	An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.
GoldenPalace.com Monkey	A new species of monkey that was officially named after the GoldenPalace.com internet casino.
Ima Hogg	Fortunately, she's not.
Neville Neville	The father of Phil Neville and Gary Neville, English footballers.
Covered smut, False loose smut and Loose smut	You may snicker now, but if you had any one of those, I guarantee you wouldn't be laughing much.
Sonic hedgehog	A protein in the vertebrate hedgehog family that was officially named after Sega's video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.
Jennifer 8. Lee	A New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight.
Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache
	If you think that's a bad name, his brother was "Lyulph Ydwallo Odin Nestor Egbert Lyonel Toedmag Hugh Erchenwyne Saxon Esa Cromwell Orma Nevill Dysart Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache".
Adolf Lu Hitler Marak	A politician in an Indian state where people are commonly given names such as "Lenin R. Marak", "Stalin L. Nangmin", "Frankenstein W. Momin" and "Tony Curtis Lyngdoh". He claims to be "happy with [his] name, although I don't have any dictatorial tendencies".
Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3	Actually, it's a polypeptide.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville
	A warning to us all about taking double-barrelled surnames too far...
Zyzyxia lundellii and Zyzzyva	The last plant name and animal name in the dictionary, respectively.

[edit] See also

• List of unusual personal names

[edit] Science

Unusual articles dealing with science, medicine, anatomy, psychology, logic, physics, cosmology, and various pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories and hoaxes. For military science and technology, see military section.

Cuss 1, the first drilling ship for Project Mohole, a 1961 attempt to drill through the Earth's crust.

Galloping Gertie, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Trepanation

Accessory breast	Some people have more than two.
Album graecum	White dog dung, mixed with honey and used as a treatment for throat and skin problems.
ALH84001	The famous rock that made news around the world when it was said to have had fossilized Martian life.
Alien hand syndrome	An unusual neurological disorder, also known as "Dr. Strangelove syndrome", whereby one of the sufferer's hands seems to take a life of its own.
Anophthalmus hitleri	Rare blind beetle named after Adolf Hitler, poached by collectors of Hitler memorabilia.
Apollo moon landing hoax accusations	Fake photos, slow-motion cameras and secret studios. All directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Archaeoacoustics	Can ancient pottery be used to play back recorded voices from the distant past?
Autofellatio	Acts of oral self-stimulation.
Bananadine	Exactly how psychedelic are those dried banana peels?
Bloop	Does a mystery sound from the bottom of the sea indicate that Cthulhu may awake...?
Bristol Stool Scale	Taking a close look at a toilet bowl for the sake of science. The scale was inspired by eye charts.
Buttered cat paradox	If a cat always lands on its feet and toast always lands buttered-side-down, what if...?
Capgras delusion	A rare disorder where a person believes that a close acquaintance, usually a family member or spouse, has been replaced by an identical-looking imposter.
Charles Bonnet syndrome	Millions of perfectly sane people are having freakish hallucinations - and just not admitting it.
Colors of noise	Including white, pink, purple, blue...
The Complexity of Songs	About a treatise on space complexity of songs by venerable computer scientist Donald Knuth
Cosmic latte	The colour of the Universe: a slightly beige white.
Dancing mania	Unknown forces cause large groups of people to dance hysterically until dropping from exhaustion in multiple incidents in Europe from the 13th to 17th centuries.
Danger triangle of the face	This ominous-sounding term refers to the special nature of the blood supply to the human nose and surrounding area which makes it possible for retrograde infections from the nasal area to spread to the brain.
Vladimir Demikhov	Eminent Soviet biologist, and father of the canine head transplant.
Natasha Demkina	Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision.
Dihydrogen monoxide	A commonly-used chemical that can be deadly to all forms of plant and animal life, contributing to erosion, drowning, acid rain, and countless other maladies.
Dimples of Venus	For fans of those dimples you don't find on a face.
Drake's Plate of Brass	A forgery-related practical joke that went horribly awry.
Elvis taxon	A taxon (species, genus, family etc.) that is believed to be extinct but is falsely claimed by someone to still exist.
Embryo space colonization	A proposal for colonizing space using embryos raised by robots.
Emerald Cockroach Wasp	A wasp that can ride a cockroach and drive it, too.
Exploding head syndrome	Some people hear a massive explosion that wakes them up after being asleep for an hour or two.
Fatal hilarity	Is there really anything so funny you can die of laughter?
Female hysteria	A once-common diagnosis of a range of symptoms in women, cured through masturbation to orgasm.
Five-second rule	The belief that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat only as long as it's picked up within five seconds.
Flat Earth society	A British society that holds the belief that Earth is flat, not spherical.
Flynn effect	The world is steadily getting smarter.
Foreign accent syndrome	A rare medical condition whereby sufferers speak their native language with a foreign accent.
Fregoli delusion	The belief that different people are actually one person in disguise.
Phineas Gage	A 19th-century construction worker who survived a three-foot-long tamping iron going through his skull. His resultant behavioral changes have made him an important figure in the development of neuroscience.
Gay bomb	A potential non-lethal chemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing, that could be dropped on enemy troops to cause "homosexual behaviour".
Gimli Glider	Due to an input error, a Boeing 767 plane runs out of fuel mid-flight and becomes a glider.
Guided rat	Implanted electrodes let researchers "steer the animal over an obstacle course, making it twist, turn and even jump on demand."
Gynecomastia	Also known as "man boobs".
David Hahn	A 17-year old known as the Radioactive Boy Scout, he irradiated his back yard attempting to build a nuclear breeder reactor from spare parts.
Hamster zona-free ovum test	A test, sometimes called a hamster test, involving human semen, hamster eggs, and a petri dish.
Hodges Meteorite	The only human in recorded history to have been verifiably injured by a falling meteorite.
Homokaasu	"Gay gas"—mysterious chemical substance conspiracy theory.
The Hum	A phenomenon involving a persistent and invasive low-frequency noise of a humming character and unknown origin, not audible to all people, reported in various geographical locations.
Human penis size	Scientific data on average size, racial variations, surgical enlargement and urban legends.
Hypertrichosis	Also known as "Human Werewolf Syndrome".
Infinite monkey theorem	An infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will produce all possible written texts.
ISO 3103	The ISO standard cup of tea.
Jenkem	Huffing the gas from fermented human feces for a hallucinating effect
Lighting farts	The act of igniting gases produced by human flatulence.
List of chemical compounds with unusual names	The name says it all.
Magic smoke	An alternative theory of integrated circuits: once the smoke is released they no longer work.
Maggot therapy	The use of fly larvae in medical practice.
The Mad Gasser of Mattoon	A figure said to have terrorized the town of Mattoon, Illinois in 1944.
Male lactation	Given the right conditions, just about any male can do it. Go ahead and try!
Male pregnancy	Don't expect humans to do this, but seahorses can.
Maple syrup urine disease	Not quite as tasty as it sounds.
Lina Medina	A Peruvian girl who gave birth to a son when she was 5 years old, becoming the youngest-known human mother ever.
Mellified Man	A legendary medicinal substance from Arabia.
Mole Day	A Day in celebration of Avogadro's number, 6.02×1023.
Monty Hall problem	The counter-intuitive way to prevail at playing Let's Make a Deal.
Mucophagy	The consumption of mucus.
Mumbai "Sweet" Seawater Incident	Salty creek becomes sweet for one tide cycle.
Nacirema	An obscure New World tribe with some interesting practices.
Nanoputian	A series of organic molecules having a structure that looks human.
Navel lint	A study proves that most belly button fluff is blue and that women are less likely to have it.
Nose grease	Grease obtained from the surface of the human nose.
Nothing up my sleeve number	A number which is "above suspicion".
Chandre Oram	A man in India with a 13-inch tail.
Ota Benga	The tragic story of a Pygmy man from the Belgian Congo who was briefly exhibited in the Bronx Zoo.
Panamax	The maximum size a ship can be and still fit through the Panama Canal.
Parasitic twin	A medical condition where one of two conjoined twins lacks essential organs and must rely on the other for survival, often leeching its blood. An especially rare variant of this, fetus in fetu, involves one partially-formed fetus developing within the body of the other.
Passenger train toilets	Why passengers must be discouraged from flushing or using toilets while the train is at a station.
’Pataphysics	A parody of science that purports to study what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics.
Pathological science	A pejorative term for scientific ideas that will simply not "go away", long after they are given up on as wrong by the majority of scientists in the field.
Penis panic	A colloquial term referring to a type of mass hysteria or panic where males grow fearful of removal or shrinking of the penis.
Photic sneeze reflex	People who sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light.
Pykrete	A bullet-resistant frozen-water compound.
Quantum immortality	An infinite number of parallel universes means that any one person will always live forever.
Raining animals	When it's literally raining cats and dogs.
Red rain in Kerala	Did blood rain from the sky?
Reversed map	A reversed map of the world, against conventional projections which have north at the top.
Schmidt Sting Pain Index	Created by an entomologist, after having been stung by almost everything, to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale.
School bus yellow	A color especially formulated for use on U.S. school buses.
List of sex positions	A comprehensive guide featuring extensive hand-drawn illustrations.
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897	Not much more can be said than the title.
Smoot	A strange unit of distance used to measure the Harvard Bridge.
Sokal Affair	A famous hoax played by physicist Alan Sokal on the postmodernist humanities academic world.
Sound of fingernails scraping chalkboard	Stop that noise!
Tanganyika laughter epidemic	What happens when contagious laughter becomes an actual epidemic.
Target fixation	To become so fixated on an object you are trying to avoid that you collide with it.
Toilet-related injury	Not all injuries and deaths linked to toilets are urban legends.
Tomacco	One of the few made up words in The Simpsons that resulted in a real life application.
Thagomizer	A feature of stegosaurus anatomy named after a Far Side comic strip.
Thiotimoline	A fictional chemical which dissolves before it comes into contact with water.
Thumb twiddling	An activity that is done with the hands of an individual whereby the fingers are interlocked and the thumbs circle around a common focal point, usually in the middle of the distance between the two thumbs.
Mary Tofts	A maidservant who, according to her doctors, gave birth to at least sixteen rabbits.
Trepanation	A form of surgery where a hole is drilled or scraped into the skull. It was thought that such a procedure could cure problems like epilepsy or allow a person to enter into a higher state of consciousness.
Triskaidekaphobia	Fear of the number 13.
Ulam spiral	A bored mathematician discovers an unusual numerical pattern while doodling.
Uncanny Valley	How to measure your emotional response to androids.
Unobtainium	A term used to describe any material with properties that are unlikely or impossible for any real material to possess.
Vomit comet	Lack of gravity is not good for the stomach.
Will Rogers phenomenon	Also known as the Will Rogers paradox; the apparent paradox obtained when moving an element from one set to another set that raises the average values of both sets.
Wrap rage	If you have ever been driven to a towering fury by packaging that just won't open, you may have this condition.

[edit] See also

• Category:Famous body parts—Includes such show-stoppers as Albert Einstein's brain and the Holy Prepuce.
• List of animals displaying homosexual behavior
• List of famous rocks
• List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
• List of unusual units of measurement
• List of snow events in Florida
• List of hypothetical planetary objects

[edit] Inventions and objects

East German Ampelmännchen Toilets in Japan have some special features Loose wheel nut indicators show that this bus is safe to ride Stainless steel soap is used to remove odours from the hands

Unusual devices, tools, utensils, furniture, machines, and techniques.

Aglet	The largely unacknowledged invention which revolutionised shoelaces.
Ampelmännchen	The East German little man on the traffic signal.
Brannock Device	The foot-measuring device found in shoe stores everywhere.
British Rail flying saucer	Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the 10:13 to Venus.
Canard Digérateur	Or "Digesting Duck", an automaton built to simulate a duck eating, digesting, and excreting.
Centennial Light	A hundred year old light bulb that has been burning nonstop for 30 years.
Digital sundial	Unlike an analog sundial, a clock that indicates the current time with numerals formed by the sunlight striking it.
Dreamachine	A device made with a light bulb and a record turntable that reportedly induces lucid dreaming. (And you thought the makers of Die Another Day made it up. There's still no news about invisible Aston Martin V12 Vanquishes.)
Dymaxion car	A 1933 concept car with 3 wheels. It was 20 feet long, carried up to 11 passengers, could go at speeds of up to 120mph and had a steering wheel that turned the car in the opposite direction.
Electronic voice phenomenon	Alleged spiritual voices heard in white noise and radio interference.
Fictional elements, isotopes and atomic particles	Not actual periodic elements. Many end in '-ite'. Some of the elements may indeed be minerals.
History of perpetual motion machines	The concept has eluded and baffled the greatest minds for thousands of years. They do not exist.
Hollowed-out book	Why books are popular in prisons.
Human mail	Why buy an expensive ticket when you can go by mail?
Japanese toilet	The most advanced toilets in the world with computers, nozzles and flashing lights.
Interactive Urinal Communicator	A talking Urinal made for advertising purposes
Jesus nut	The bolt on the top of a helicopter that connects it to the rotor blades.
Marvin Heemeyer	Why it's always a bad idea to put the guy next door out of business if he has a ten-ton armor-plated bulldozer in his garage.
Knork	In contrast to the spork, here's a knife/fork combo.
Koteka	An unusual traditional garment of western New Guinea, also known as the "penis gourd".
Lloyds Bank turd	Possibly the largest example of fossilised human feces ever found, discovered under the future site of a Lloyds Bank in England.
Loose wheel nut indicator	Yes, those funny yellow tags you see on truck wheels really do have a purpose.
The Mississauga Blob	A flaming object that fell from the heavens onto a back-yard picnic table in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada in 1979. The mystery of its true nature drew worldwide attention and speculation. Turns out it was a frisbee.
Nazi UFOs	Did the Luftwaffe, in fact, explore the final frontier and make contact with alien races? Whether the secret Nazi base is on the Moon or in Antarctica, the truth is apparently out there.
one red paperclip	A man's small piece of metal turns out to be worth more than expected.
Pimpmobile	A large luxury automobile that has been heavily customized in a garish, extravagant style to advertise its owner's wealth and importance.
Pointy hat	A distinctive feature of a wide range of people during history.
Rocket mail	The delivery of mail by rocket or missile, attempted by various organisations in many different countries, with varying levels of success.
R/P FLIP	A manned ship designed to be capsized at a 90° angle for weeks on end.
Russian floating nuclear power station	Self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants.
Shipping container architecture	The concept and art of using shipping containers to build stuff.
South Pointing Chariot	An ancient Chinese mechanical compass which took a millennium to reproduce.
Space advertising	Plans to launch giant billboards into space.
Spork	A cross between a spoon and a fork.
Stainless steel soap	Metallic soap that removes odours from the hands.
Tin-foil hat	Headgear that allegedly prevents a person from having their minds read or controlled.
Toilet roll holder	A surprisingly complex device for holding a roll of toilet paper.
Whizzinator	A fake penis used to beat drug tests (complete with dried urine, heater, syringe). Comes in white, tan, latino, brown, and black.
Xianxingzhe	A Chinese robot, according to the Japanese, that will save its country from corporate capitalism with its crotch cannon.
Zanbatō	An enormous Japanese sword that does not exist.

[edit] See also

• List of inventors killed by their own inventions
• Unusual uses of traffic lights

[edit] Computers, the Internet and games

The Utah teapot