Weekend Link Dump

Normal people with normal lives have trees in their backyard that sprout beautiful leaves, tasty fruits, scented blossoms.

Here at Strange Company HQ, the trees sprout kittens.

Why the hell do we sleep?

Why the hell do whales leap in the air?  Now we know!

What the hell are the mystery walls of Bayers Lake?

What the hell happened to the sun in 5480 BC?

Watch out for those clog-wearing devils!

How Victorian boarding school students kept themselves...uh, entertained.

A French ballerina became richer than a queen.

A human dowsing rod who found corpses rather than water.  Or something.

The all-American Napoleon III.

Our galaxy has a strange supersonic cloud powered by a black hole bouncing around the place.  So, you know, duck.

And here we have giant Transylvanian dinosaur-eating monsters.   It's going to be quite a weekend.

The remarkable journeys of Alexander von Humboldt.  (My favorite detail about Humboldt's life: Poe dedicated "Eureka" to him.)

Two photogenic Staten Island dogs.

The lost city of the Monkey God.

Eat your heart out, Tom Brady.

When Louisa met Joseph.

The lost redheaded Spaniard.

The British Museum's oldest portrait.

The influential wife of William the Conqueror.

Why a raven's nest can be unexpectedly useful.

A miser comes to a sad end.  As they so often do.

The history of the Cretan Labyrinth.

A country music singer's busy ghost.

The complex relationship between cats and humans.

A new Dead Sea Scrolls cave has been discovered.

Why outer space now has a soccer ball.

A 16th century English merchant in Constantinople.

The case of the stolen moon rocks.

That time Charles Dickens served on a coroner's jury.

That time Abraham Lincoln turned true-crime writer.

That time George Washington was related to Odin.

The last surviving copy of a 17th century schoolbook.

Just a reminder that the law doesn't need a body to convict you of murder.

Georgian-era shopping.

Victorian electric rat-traps.

What it means when you dream about food.

In search of Haitian zombies.

Toronto's "most haunted" house.

Victorian fashion gets the blues.

Georgians, on the other hand, are in the pink.

The Icelandic Dracula.

The burning of a witch.

The first fatal submarine accident.

How to play Victorian monopoly.

WWII military slang.

The Broad Haven Triangle mystery.

A 17th century "alien encounter."

One of the last public uses of the guillotine.

A look at nautical superstitions.  Avoid those bananas!

The skeleton in the priest hole.

Two baby-farmers meet the noose.

Arsenic family values.

And here we come to the end of our latest WLD. See you on Monday, when we'll be looking at an unusually chatty dachshund. In the meantime, here's some Locatelli: