4

A Dutch Highway "Sang" The National Anthem, Driving Locals Crazy

Rumble strips, a standard feature of most highways, warn drivers that they're drifting out of their lane. The Dutch town of Jelsum decided to add some whimsy to potential vehicular slaughter by installing a "singing road," which played the provincial anthem whenever a car drove over it at the designated speed. As a technology, it was all rather ingenious. As a practical matter for locals, it was "psychological torture."

Here, imagine your favorite song. Got it? Now imagine hearing it played exclusively on an electric washboard, all day, every day. Still think it doesn't sound too bad? Check out this 13-minute video of the road in action.

The first instance of the song is cute, the second is a little less so, the third is a bit much. By the 40th iteration, you're ready to rent a jackhammer. A mere two days after the 88,000 Euro cultural celebration had been installed, it was removed. Now if you want to musically annoy the locals from your car, you have to do it the old-fashioned way: with an enormous subwoofer.

3

The White-Tailed Sea Eagle Was Brought Back From The Brink Of Extinction, Is Now On A Reign Of Terror

This is the white-tailed sea eagle:

Sjo/iStockNamed after the famous explorer Archibald "White Tail" Billingsley, so called because of his notoriously pasty ass.

2

A Town Started A Legal Battle Over A Train Which Transported Human Feces, Leaving The Train Stuck In Another Town

You probably don't give a lot of thought to your feces once you're done with them, and if you do, you probably have some bookmarks that we don't want to know about. So, a brief primer: Sometimes human waste is transported across the country to be stored in a landfill or used to treat soil acidity. That's because places like New York City don't have much space for all their shit -- metaphorical as well as physical -- and dumping it all into the ocean went out of style once we learned what an environment was. So New York regularly sends millions of pounds of human waste by train to Alabama for safe disposal, on what hobos call "the brown eye."

Well, they should, anyway.

To be clear, biosolids aren't loose turds; they're what is left over after sewage treatment. They look like any other form of fertilizer. But they still reek. That's a fact of life. So Jefferson County, Alabama started a legal battle to prevent the Midnight Soil Express from stopping in the town of West Jefferson to transfer its noxious cargo to trucks. They cited local zoning laws meant to stop foul odors, and argued that the overpowering reek and hordes of flies were ruining property values. It was a reasonable complaint that needed addressing ... but while it was being sorted out, the train's 56 cars and ten million pounds of waste were stuck in Parrish, Alabama. For two months.

1

An Old Herbicide Made Pants Explode

Back in the 1930s, New Zealand was dealing with a ragwort infestation. Ragwort is a weed that's poisonous to horses and cows, and while farmers were using the tougher stomachs of sheep and goats to devour as much as they could handle, the weed kept spreading like a low-key Biblical plague. So they brought in sodium chlorate to use as an herbicide.

Luckily, sodium chlorate killed ragwort dead. Farmers mixed it with water, sprayed the affected fields, and presumably laughed themselves to sleep with unabashed hubris. Then their pants started catching fire, because fun science fact, sodium chlorate is extremely flammable when dry. So once any clothing that had gotten wet during the spraying process dried out, well, let's just say it was a very unfortunate time to be a liar.

The Evening Post

One farmer put his pants in front of a fire to dry, whereupon they abruptly went up in flames with a loud bang. Another's pants reportedly started smoldering while he was riding his horse, which was no doubt unpleasant for both of them. And several others either suffered serious burns or flat-out died because they were wearing the pants when they spontaneously combusted. The problem was soon identified and therefore easily fixed. But imagine going out to destroy an all-consuming plant, only to catch fire for no apparent reason hours later. Your first suspicion would have to be a vengeful God, right?

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The best kinds of eagles are Bald Eagles anyway.

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