15 Crazy True Stories You've Never Heard Before (Vol. 28)

Fifteen true stories that sound made up. A cosmonaut who left one country and came home to another. A man who lived in secret in the Maine woods for twenty-seven years. A talking mongoose on a lonely farm on the Isle of Man. A rhinoceros who toured eighteenth-century Europe. A Berlin Wall escape tunnel paid for by American TV. A feud between artists over the pinkest pink and the blackest black. Three lighthouse keepers who disappeared from a tiny Scottish island. A tiny Baltic duchy with colonies in the Caribbean and Africa. A man who stepped out of a balloon gondola nineteen miles above the Earth. A German city that, according to a long-running joke, does not exist. The fight over who owned Sue the T. rex. A carved wooden gift to an American ambassador that was secretly listening. A house built twenty-six feet underground with its own painted sky. An Englishman who became Grey Owl. And the woman who took her husband's car without asking. Every story is documented. Where the popular version goes further than the record, we say so. Settle in, this one runs about an hour and fifty minutes. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:45 The Man Who Fell Off the Map 8:05 The Hermit of North Pond 15:21 The Mongoose That Talked 22:39 The Rhinoceros Who Toured Europe 29:43 The Tunnel That Television Paid For 37:16 The Pinkest Pink in the World 44:36 The Lighthouse That Went Dark 51:58 The Tiny Duchy That Had an Empire 59:11 The Highest Step in the World 1:06:15 The City That Does Not Exist 1:13:03 The Dinosaur That Was Arrested 1:20:55 The Gift That Was Listening 1:28:19 The House with Its Own Sky 1:35:30 The Englishman Who Became Grey Owl 1:43:26 The Mother Who Took the Car The visuals in this film are AI-generated reconstructions made for illustration. They are not archival footage, except for the historical photographs, prints and maps listed below. Photos, prints and maps (public domain unless marked CC0), via Wikimedia Commons: Mir space station, NASA — NASA Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan — Bill Ingalls Soyuz docked at Mir — NASA/Crew of STS-79 Space shuttle Discovery, STS-60, 1994 — NASA International Space Station, 2000 — NASA Albion, Maine, old county map — J.H. Stuart & Co. Belgrade Lakes, Maine, early 1900s — Tichnor Brothers, Publisher Isle of Man, old map — John Speed The Arabian Nights, illustrated edition — William Harvey (1796–1866) Dutch East Indiaman, 18th century Albrecht Durer, Rhinoceros, 1515 — Albrecht Dürer, CC0 Clara in Albinus's anatomy atlas, 1747 — Charles Grignion the Elder / After Jan Wandelaar Royal menagerie at Versailles — Willem Swidde Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Clara, 1749 — Jean-Baptiste Oudry Pietro Longhi, Rhinoceros at Venice, 1751 — Didier Descouens The Berlin Wall, early 1960s — National Archives Cuban Missile Crisis, reconnaissance photo, 1962 Carbon nanotubes, electron microscope — National Institute of Standards and Technology Francisco Goya, The Dog, c. 1820 — Francisco Goya Venice, Canaletto, 18th century — Giovanni Antonio Canal Isle of Lewis and the Outer Hebrides, old map — Blaeu Flannan Isles, sea chart — United Kingdom Hydrographic Office Lighthouse lens — National Park Service Storm waves on rocks — Christine Hegermiller, U.S. Geological Survey Tobago, old map — Thomas Bowen Duchy of Courland, 17th-century map — Johan Lithen, CC0 Duke Jacob Kettler, 17th-century portrait Amsterdam shipyard, 17th century — Ludolf Bakhuizen Gambia River, 18th-century map — Captain John Leach James Fort, Gambia River, 18th century — Francis Moore Excelsior gondola, USAF Museum — U.S. Air Force T-33 jet trainer, US Air Force — Balon Greyjoy, CC0 Arlington National Cemetery — Arlington National Cemetery Badlands, South Dakota — National Park Service Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton — Gary Todd, CC0 Field Museum, Chicago — US postcard publisher Great Seal of the United States — Richard Patterson and Richardson Dougall Spaso House, Moscow — U.S. Embassy Moscow photographer Valeriy Yevseyev The Thing, listening device — Daderot, CC0 U-2 spy plane, US Air Force — NASA Great Seal replica, National Cryptologic Museum — Daderot, CC0 Nuclear test, Nevada, 1950s — USDOE Hastings, 19th century — William Miller American beaver, Audubon plate — Library of Congress Buckingham Palace, London — Rijksmuseum, CC0 Heidelberg, 19th century — Rijksmuseum, CC0 World's Fair, Paris 1889 — Neurdein Full links: see the pinned comment. Which story surprised you the most? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe for more true stories that happened, somehow. #history #truestories #documentary