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Strange & Unbelievable

Photographs that look impossible until you learn what was actually going on. Context first, never invented mystery.

A young girl photographed outdoors with a small winged figure apparently standing in front of her

Two Girls, a Borrowed Camera, and the Fairy Photographs That Convinced Sherlock Holmes's Creator

Arthur Conan Doyle published them as evidence of the supernatural in 1920. The cousins who made them finally explained how in 1983 — and one of them never fully recanted.

23 August 20263 min read

Annie Edson Taylor standing beside the wooden barrel she rode over Niagara Falls, with her cat

Strange & Unbelievable

She Went Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel on Her 63rd Birthday

Annie Edson Taylor was a widowed schoolteacher who calculated that surviving the Horseshoe Falls would make her rich. She survived. It did not.

22 August 20263 min read

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Two Girls, a Borrowed Camera, and the Fairy Photographs That Convinced Sherlock Holmes's Creator

She Went Over Niagara Falls in a Barrel on Her 63rd Birthday

One photograph, one story, every Friday