The Mississippi Scheme, Princess Caraboo, The Corpse Queen, The Berners St. Hoax, Bizarre Animal Mating & Diogenes The Cynic

Episode 13 of The Oddities Department takes us way in the back of the museum, and it gets weirder by the minute. This week’s crate contains six stories that history couldn't keep locked up. We start with The Mississippi Scheme, a French colonial program that tried to populate Louisiana by forcing prisoners to marry sex workers and shipping the couples across the ocean.Then comes Princess Caraboo, a servant girl who convinced an entire English town she was a mysterious foreign princess from a completely fictional island.Next is Inês de Castro, the murdered noblewoman who was exhumed, crowned Queen of Portugal, and presented to a horrified royal court forced to kiss her corpse.From there we dive into The Berners Street Hoax, the most elaborate prank in history, where thousands of letters summoned doctors, clergy, musicians, and dignitaries to one very unlucky London address.Science gets aggressively weird with the mating ritual of flatworms, where reproduction is decided through a literal duel known as penis fencing.And finally we meet Diogenes the Cynic, the philosopher who lived in a jar, bullied Plato with a plucked chicken, and told Alexander the Great to move out of his sunlight.Six case files. Maximum audacity. Minimum dignity.Welcome to The Oddities Department.Send us Fan Mail