Many of Europe's greatest architectural wonders were lost to history — or willingly demolished.
Here are some you haven't heard of... 🧵
1. Neue Elbbrücke Bridge: torn down to add an additional lane
Frank Lucas, the black drug lord who ruled Harlem in the 1970s, was so discreet that the police didn't know who he was in 1971 when he decided to wear a $100,000 full-length chinchilla coat — to a Muhammad Ali boxing match.
He later wrote that this was a “massive mistake."
Apparently, Lucas’s coat caught the eye of law enforcement — who were surprised that he had better seats than Diana Ross and Frank Sinatra.
As Lucas put it: “I left that fight a marked man.”
Shrek was an ordinary Merino sheep residing in South Island, New Zealand. One day, he decided to escape his enclosure and ventured into nearby caves.
For 6 years, he lived on his own until his owner, John Perrian, discovered him. John remarked upon seeing him,"He looked like some biblical creature."
While certain sheep breeds naturally shed their fleece, like the Bighorn sheep in North America, Merino sheep don’t. Their wool persistently grows, potentially obstructing their sight, a condition known as "wool blindness."
Over millennia, domesticated sheep have adapted to human grooming habits, with their domestication traceable to 11,000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia where they provided meat, milk, and wool.
Six wool-growing years later, Shrek had amassed enough fleece to tailor 20 suits for sizable men. In total, his fleece weighed 60 pounds.
This hefty fleece was sheared off on live television and auctioned to benefit pediatric medical charities. Shrek even met the Prime Minister and inspired multiple children's books. Regrettably, in 2011, Shrek died at 16 years old.
[1/3]The circus story of Ella Harper (1870-1921), known as "the Camel Girl" because of the congenital malformation that curved her knees forward, is rather anomalous.
There were books published about extraterrestrial life in the 1600s, like this one (the image is a later addition)
"Conversations on the Plurality of Other Worlds"