In 1589, German farmer Peter Stumpp confessed that the devil had given him a belt that would give him “the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws.”

Over the course of 25 years, he said, he had killed and eaten 14 children, two pregnant women, and their fetuses.

The confession was extracted on the rack, but the magistrate didn’t care: Stumpp was broken, hobbled, beheaded, and burned.

(The Damnable Life and Death of One Stubbe Peeter, a Most Wicked Sorcerer, 1590.)

In 1600, actor William Kempe traveled from London to Norwich, a distance of 177 kilometers. Why is that notable? He morris-danced the whole way, a feat that took nine days spread over several weeks. He published an account of the journey to convince doubters:

Vpon Fryday morning I set on towardes Thetford, dauncing that tenne mile in three houres; for I left Bury somewhat after seauen in the morning, and was at Thetford somewhat after ten that same forenoone. But, indeed, considering how I had been booted the other iourneys before, and that all this way, or the most of it, was ouer a heath, it was no great wonder; for I far’d like one that had escaped the stockes, and tride the vse of his legs to out-run the Constable: so light was my heeles, that I counted the ten mile no better than a leape.

He’s remembered for an even more distinctive accomplishment — he was one of the original stage actors in Shakespeare’s early dramas.

(Thanks, Tyler.)

A few details from Christine Quigley’s Conjoined Twins (2003):

• Filipino twins Simplicio and Lucio Godino, above, had separate cars, each with the steering column on the appropriate side, “but Lucio had the better arrangement, since in the Philippines the cars passed each other on the left as in England.”
• When Mary and Margaret Gibb boarded the ocean liner Majestic in 1930, they attempted to use a single passenger ticket. The White Star Line denied their request, basing its decision on the number of meals they’d consume.
• “In a case in Paris in the seventeenth century of a conjoined twin stabbing a man to death, the sentence of death was commuted rather than executing the innocent twin.”
• Ronnie and Donnie Galyon had two Social Security numbers and two voter registration cards but one passport.
• Yvonne and Yvette McCarther didn’t share a wristwatch, lighter, or purse, “but their purses contained matching sets of everything from vitamin jars to wallets containing the same family photos.” “I speak for myself, and she speaks for herself,” said Yvonne.
• Abigail and Brittany Hensel received two birth certificates, but both read “first” as to order of birth. If either misbehaved, both were sent to their room.
• Separated from her conjoined sister Maria in 1965, six-year-old Giuseppina Foglia asked, “Am I really myself?” She told her sister, “You’re so far away!”

Psychologist Nancy Segal writes that “[W]hile most identical twins get along well, many conjoined twins are are masters at negotiation, cooperation and compromise.” By contrast, when unjoined sisters Patricia and Madeleine Infante connected themselves with a wire and entered show business as “Violet and Daisy Milton,” they ended up quarreling with their manager and destroying a sign billing them as “the only original American Siamese twins.” They were charged with vandalism, ending their career.

In 1962, determined to start life anew, Yorkshire newspaper editor Brendon Grimshaw purchased little Moyenne Island in the Seychelles for £8,000. He remained there for the next 40 years. In that time Grimshaw and an assistant planted 16,000 trees by hand, built three miles of nature paths, attracted 2,000 new birds, and became caretakers of 120 giant tortoises. The island now hosts two thirds of all plants endemic to the Seychelles.

Grimshaw once turned down an offer of $50 million for the island, saying that he didn’t want to see it become a holiday destination for millionaires. Instead, in 2008 it was named a national park. Grimshaw died in 2012, but today a warden is posted on the island to collect entrance fees from tourists.

Fighting a storm in the Kuril Archipelago in January 1960, Soviet barge T-36 ran out of fuel and was carried out of its lagoon and into the open ocean. By the time the storm ceased it had also lost its radio transmitter, and when rescue crews found debris it was concluded that the vessel had sunk.

In fact it was drifting eastward across the North Pacific. The barge had recently been stocked with a three days’ supply of food and water, but some of this had been ruined in the storm, and the four-man crew were eventually reduced to eating their shoes and belts as they drifted endlessly east. “Each time we awoke, we were surprised to be alive,” private Philip Poplavski later told Time. “But we felt we were too young to die.”

Finally, after 49 days, they were spotted by an American Navy reconnaissance plane and picked up by the aircraft carrier Kearsarge. Amid worldwide publicity, the crew sailed to Paris on the Queen Mary, then flew back to the Soviet Union.

This is a photograph of an absence. In 1876 the whaling ship Velocity reported spotting some “Sandy Islets” in New Caledonia, and “Sandy Island” was carried into later charts as a potential navigational hazard. But doubts began to arise in the 20th century, and in 2012 an Australian research vessel visited the area and “undiscovered” the island. With its absence officially confirmed, it’s been removed from modern maps and databases.

This is the headquarters of India’s National Fisheries Development Board. Makes sense.

See Yogi Bear’s Dream.