On October 10, 1927, Dorothy Cochrane Logan entered the water at Cape Gris Nez, France. Her goal was to swim across the English Channel. Thirteen hours later she reappeared at Folkestone, England. Her time had set a new world record, for which a newspaper awarded her a prize of 1000 pounds. But a few days later Logan confessed her crossing had been a hoax. She had only spent four hours in the water. The rest of the time she had traveled on board a boat. She said that she perpetrated the hoax in order to demonstrate how simply the world could be fooled, and thus to underscore the necessity of supervising such swims. However, a member of her party, Lieutenant Commander L.S. M. Adam, later claimed she only confessed after he had demanded she do so. She was fined for perjury and returned the prize money.

In 1956 runners bore the Olympic flame across Australia, on a path from Cairns to Melbourne, where the summer games were to be held. But before the flame even got as far as Sydney, it had to endure a series of setbacks. Torrential rains soaked it. Burning heat almost overwhelmed the runners. The flame even went out a few times. Then in Sydney itself it encountered a situation unique in Olympic history.

Cross-country champion Harry Dillon was scheduled to bear the flame into Sydney, where he would present it to the mayor, Pat Hills. After making a short speech, Hills would pass the flame along to another runner, Bert Button.

Thirty-thousand people lined the streets of Sydney waiting for Dillon to arrive. Reporters stood ready with their cameras to record the historic occasion. Finally the runner appeared, bearing the flame aloft, and everyone began cheering. As the crowd pressed forward a police escort surrounded the runner in order to keep order.

With this escort around him, the runner made his way through the streets all the way to the Sydney Town Hall. He bounded up the steps and handed the torch to the waiting mayor who graciously accepted it and turned to begin his prepared speech.

Then someone whispered in the mayor's ear, "That's not the torch." Suddenly the mayor realized what he was holding. Held proudly in his hand was not the majestic Olympic flame. Instead he was gripping a wooden chair leg topped by a plum pudding can inside of which a pair of kerosene-soaked underwear was burning with a greasy flame. The mayor looked around for the runner, but the man had already disappeared, melting away into the surrounding crowd. More→

In 1959 Bob Richards, editor of the Nevada-based Territorial Enterprise, announced that a camel race would be held that year down the main street of Virginia City. He challenged other local papers to race their camels in the event. More→

On 21 April 1980, Rosie Ruiz, a 23-year-old New Yorker, was the first woman to cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon. She had achieved the third fastest time ever recorded for a female runner (two hours, thirty-one minutes, and fifty-six seconds), which was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she looked remarkably sweat-free and relaxed as she climbed the winner's podium to accept her wreath. However, race officials almost immediately began to question her victory. More→

In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published an article by George Plimpton that described an incredible rookie baseball player who was training at the Mets camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. The player was named Sidd Finch (Sidd being short for Siddhartha, the Indian mystic in Hermann Hesse's book of the same name). He could reportedly pitch a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. The fastest previous recorded speed for a pitch was 103 mph. More→

On August 31, 1987, the double-A Williamsport Bills were playing the Reading Phillies. Rick Lundblade of the Phillies was on third base, waiting to run for home. The pitcher threw the ball low, into the glove of the catcher, Dave Bresnahan, who immediately threw it towards third hoping to pick off Lundblade. But the throw went wild, over the head of the third baseman, and Lundblade triumphantly sprinted towards home. But when he reached home he found Bresnahan waiting for him with a grin on his face and the ball in his hand.

The entire stadium erupted in confusion. If Bresnahan had thrown the ball out into left field, how was it possible that he now had it in his hand, waiting to tag Lundblade out? The answer was that he had not thrown a ball into left field. What he had thrown was actually a peeled potato.

The stunt immediately became known as the Great Potato Play. Although it cost Bresnahan his job with the Bills, the stunt did earn him an immortal place in baseball history. More→

Jay Forman wrote an occasional "Vice" column for the online magazine Slate.com. In it he often described various bizarre activities he had engaged in or witnessed over the years. For instance, one column probed the synergies between guns and liquor. Another discussed his short career in the pornography trade. In his 8 June 2001 column, he described his participation in the extreme sport of monkey fishing.

Monkey fishing, in Forman's usage of the term, was not a slang expression for some untraditional method of fishing for fish. Forman meant exactly what he said. He went fishing for monkeys. More→

In July 2003, Las Vegas TV station KLAS-TV reported that a local company was selling “Bambi Hunts.” These were games in which men with paintball guns hunted naked women in the Nevada desert. Anyone could sign up to join in a "hunt", although it could cost as much as $10,000 per game. An international media frenzy ensued. Numerous critics denounced the hunts, pointing out that a paintball hitting a naked woman could seriously hurt her. Many questioned how such a thing could be legal.

Only after a week did it become widely apparent that there was no evidence the company had conducted any Bambi hunts. The company wasn’t currently accepting customers (it said there was too much negative publicity), and everyone who claimed to have participated in previous hunts was highly unreliable. Further research revealed that the company was only licensed to sell videos. If it had run commercial paintball games, it had done so illegally.

When the Las Vegas authorities threatened to bring charges against the company, its president, Michael Burdick, admitted that no real Bambi hunts had taken place. The story about the hunts had, he said, just been a “hook” to boost sales of a soft-porn video about a fictional Bambi Hunt. The hook worked. Though their stunt almost got them run out of Las Vegas, Burdick’s company sold thousands of copies of the video.

Samukeliso Sithole was a rising female star in the world of Zimbabwe athletics. The 17-year-old track-and-field athlete had won awards at various regional athletic events, including five gold medals at the Southern Region Youth Championship in 2004. But in 2005 her career came to an abrupt halt when it was revealed that she was actually a he. More→