Weird history
4 checked facts in this niche — each with its receipts.
In 1860, a crew of 600 men using 6,000 jackscrews raised a row of brick buildings on Lake Street in Chicago 4 feet 8 inches in five days while the businesses inside stayed open.
Between 1999 (a trial) and 2001, engineers removed about 38 cubic metres of soil from beneath the raised north side of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, straightening it by about 45 cm back to its 1838 position while deliberately keeping its lean.
The 1917 Halifax Explosion — when the munitions ship Mont-Blanc caught fire and detonated in the harbour — was the largest accidental explosion in history before the atomic age, so violent it hurled one of the ship's anchor shanks, weighing about 1,140 pounds, roughly two miles across the city into the Armdale neighbourhood.
In 1518, a dancing plague broke out in Strasbourg where roughly 400 people danced uncontrollably for days on end, with city authorities responding by hiring musicians and opening a guild hall to keep the dancers moving, believing more dancing would cure them.
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