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Throughout most of the world during the 1600s, most men wore hats all the time.

They would wear them inside their own home, at meals, in bed, outside, and on any important occasion. There is no exact record of the date when it began to be thought impolite to do some of these things.

Ever since people first started to wear hats, they have used them for other reasons than just to keep their heads warm. Long, long ago, when soldiers wore armor, the less important soldiers always had to take off their iron helmets when they were with someone more important. Read more »

Except for his boots, an Eskimo's complete winter outfit weighed only 10 pounds, yet he was able to stay warm in the very coldest weather. How?

He knew the secret of using air as insulation. His cold-weather clothes consisted of two suits of trousers and shirts worn over each other, a hooded parka, and a pair of mittens. Read more »

To make them look old, of course. Sounds silly, but it is true.

If a cowboy wore a new hat, he might be taken for a "tenderfoot," a newcomer. Even if an old-time Westerner wore a new hat, he was teased about it.

The men of the Old West wanted their hats to look old and beat up. So they had a special way of making new hats look old. They dug a hole in the ground and put their hats in it. Read more »

A stewardess, Vesna Vulovic, flying for a Yugoslav airline, fell from a height of over 31,000 feet and lived to fly again and again.

On January 26, 1972, the DC-9 on which she was working blew up at 33,330 feet while flying over Czechoslovakia. When she was found, she was strapped to an airline seat lying in a stream.

In a coma for 27 days, she spent 16 months in a hospital while they repaired her fractured spine and removed pieces of metal from various parts of her body. She was also brain damaged and paralyzed from the waist down. Read more »

One hundred thirty miles southwest of Tokyo, Japan, in the city of Hamamatsu, men fight with kites every year during three days in early May.

The combat began many centuries ago, when the ruler of the region celebrated the birth of his first son by flying kites. Two million people a year come to see the Battle of the Kites, as team fights team, each determined to knock the other's kite out of the sky.

The kites are big and colorful, ten feet square and painted with the colors of a neighborhood, some with the names of newborn sons added to the decorations. Read more »

In France at the end of the 1700s, women wore their hair in the strangest fashion you can imagine.

They wore wigs that rose two and a half to three feet above their heads. Some of the women were so tall they had to ride on the floor of their carriages in order to fit inside.

Those that didn't like to sit on the floor stuck their heads out the window. These tall wigs were decorated with everything from toy soldiers to real fruits and flowers. Read more »

Fire walkers can, and few people know how they do it.

These amazing people, who live in Hawaii, India, and on certain islands of the South Pacific, actually walk on fire. A big trench is dug in the ground and is filled with fire.

Eventually, it burns down to a bed of glowing, red-hot coals. The fire walkers then walk for some 45 feet on these hot coals. When they reach the end of the trench, they turn around and walk back over it again. Read more »

There is no proof that such a thing is possible, but there have been people who seemed to be able to foresee the future.

One such person was David Goodman Croly, a successful journalist who lived between 1829 and 1889. One of the things he foresaw long before it happened was World War I. He even named the year.

He said that the Russians would become the strongest nation in Europe, and they certainly have. He predicted that divorce would become legal. It has. Read more »

It is western Burma, and the women with the long necks are the tribeswomen of Padaung.

Brass rings worn around the necks of the women make their necks look as though they were twelve inches long. Each of the rings is one-third of an inch in diameter.

There are 36 of them, and they weigh a total of 20 pounds. On top of the stack is a little pad on which the woman can rest her chin if she wishes. A Read more »

Such a man was Kuda Bux. Bux was a Pakistani who made his living
displaying his amazing talent to paying viewers.

Doctors all over the world examined and tested him, and none could ever call his remarkable ability a trick. Through the heaviest bandages, he could read books and newspapers.

The bandages were often applied by doctors and police. His eyes were even pasted shut with flour and water and then bandaged with a heavy blindfold. He could still read. Read more »