The Weird, Forgotten, Awesome Sport of Spaceball

When he first developed the commercial trampoline in the 1940s, gymnast George Nissen thought the recreational device would take over the world. While it didn’t quite become so all-encompassing a phenomenon, his vision did give birth to countless hours of backyard entertainment, an Olympic event—and the weird, failed sport of spaceball.

Nissen built his—and the world’s—first trampoline from a sheet of canvas and rubber strips cut out of a tire inner tube to entertain the kids at a summer camp where he -read more

Weird and wonderful true stories about World War II

Stoned pigeons guiding bombs, German-eating sharks and a chocolate plot to kill Churchill.

They sound like something out of a wartime comedy film – but these were actually among the more weird plots thought up in a bid for victory.

See also: Missing World War II plane found in sea in Cornwall

See also: Woman foraging for seaweed on UK beach finds WWII mines

And you can find them in a new book called Weird War Two, from the ­Imperial War Museum.

Here are a few more gems:

1: The US military trained pigeons to sit inside bombs and steer them by pecking at a target on a screen. This unnerved them, so they were fed cannabis before the mission. The project was cancelled because it was so bird-brained.-read more