History repeats itself, as they say, but not all incidents in history repeat. That’s a good thing for those of us who live in the present because the past is a veritable smorgasbord of the most bizarre, unseemly occurrences.

1. In the 1904 Olympics marathon, the winner was disqualified for using a car to cover 11 miles. The person who came second collapsed at the finish line and was found to have used rat poison to get an energy boost.

2. When a railway line was being constructed in Uganda in 1898, two lions were responsible for curbing its progression by killing the construction company’s employees at night. The final casualty count was found to be 135.

3. In 452 CE, Attila the Hun marched his army towards Rome after pillaging large parts of Germany, Greece, and Macedonia. He was met by Pope Leo I who managed to convince the military leader to turn back without invading the region.

4. Simeon the Stylite was a 5th-century monk who gained popularity for spending 37 straight years on top of a pillar located in modern-day Syria. He would sustain himself with food given to him by boys who would climb up the pillar to deliver parcels.

5. When USPS started its parcel post service, poor families are recorded as having used it to mail relatives their children. In one particular instance, a girl was delivered to her grandmother who lived 73 miles away

6. In 15th century Prague, frustrated citizens would take matters into their own hands by throwing politicians out of windows. Most that didn’t die from the fall would be killed by a mob waiting below.

7. The Mt. Pelée volcanic eruption wiped out almost the entire 35,000-strong population of St. Pierre, a town in Martinique, a French-Caribbean island. One of the only survivors was Ludger Sylbaris who had been sentenced to solitary confinement in a cell that was half underground with very poor ventilation.

8. The Republic of Rose Island was a micronation built by Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa off the coast of Rimini, Italy. The Italian government saw Rosa’s micronation as an attempt to attract tourists without incurring taxes, and the country’s navy destroyed the island using explosives.

9. Truck driver Larry Walters once attached 42 weather balloons to a lawn chair and managed to ascend 16,000 feet in the air. Walters was spotted by the pilots of flights inbound into LAX and caused a whole neighborhood to lose power when the balloons got caught in some power lines.

10. The Nika riots of AD 532 were caused by tensions created between the Byzantine empire’s four chariot racing teams. As many as 30,000 rioters lost their lives in the incident, and Emperor Justinian was forced to rebuild the city of Constantinople since more than half of it had been destroyed.