Words You Never Knew

Well, everyone knows "aglet," because it's always first on these lists. But some of them are pretty good.

RayF set this, though I was just checking it out, having seen it at the Corner. I also was reading this list of unusual animal mating habits:

10. RED-SIDED GARTER SNAKES

These snakes are small and poisonous, and live in Canada and the Northwestern United States. Their highly unusual mating takes place during an enormous orgy. Twenty-five thousand snakes slither together in a large den, eager to copulate. In that pile, one female may have as many as 100 males vying for her. These `nesting balls' grow as large as two feet high. Now and then a female is crushed under the heavy mound - and the males are so randy that they continue to copulate, becoming the only necrophiliac snakes!

Bill Maher just emailed to write, "That's pretty much the way it is at the Playboy Club."

Some other good lists, including this list of unusal disasters. This town couldn't catch a break:

1. ST PIERRE SNAKE INVASION

Volcanic activity on the 'bald mountain' towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming ventholes and earth tremors during April, 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town's giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.

What the hell kind of "giant street cats" did the town have capable of killing thousands of 6 foot snakes?

Wasn't that the start of their problems right there? That they shared living space with inner-city saber-toothed tigers?

Weirdness Abounds... Kind of funny, for geeks.

Thanks to Asher for that.

posted by Ace at 05:16 PM

| Access Comments