Saudi Arabia and Oman have camel beauty pageants. That part isn't even the weird bit. Twenty contestants just got disqualified after vets flagged Botox, fillers, and — genuinely — hump inflation. Winning changes an animal's market value overnight. So naturally, people cheat. And naturally, there are now camel cosmetic surgery inspectors. This is not the first time.

On a quiet morning in 1980, men in white jumpsuits wheeled what looked like an IBM copy machine into Harvey's Resort Casino at Lake Tahoe. Inside: 1,000 pounds of dynamite. The note started with "Stern Warning to the Management and Bomb Squad." It ended with a line that haunted the FBI for decades: This bomb can never be dismantled or disarmed without causing an explosion. Not even by the creator. They studied it for 30 hours. Then they tried anyway.

In the early 1930s, a handful of Europeans sailed to an uninhabited island in the Galápagos looking for paradise. What they got was a self-declared Austrian baroness who arrived with two lovers, a pearl-studded revolver, and plans to build a luxury hotel. She declared herself Empress of Floreana, hoarded the island's food and water, and intercepted everyone's mail. Then people started vanishing. Only one family made it out. Their descendants still live there.

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