Live strange, die strange, and leave a strange gravestone. We have explanations for some of these weird stones, but for others we do not. Educated guesses and pure speculation as to their origin are welcome.

The Clothespin Grave, Middlesex, VT 

Created for the owner of a local clothespin factory. 

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It’s where the ‘four-knights opening’ could inspire a rap song.

The Hip-Hop Chess Federation holds tournaments that combine chess, poetry, and martial arts. Founded by a lecturer and a visual artist, its last tournament in October was frequented by multiple founders of the Wu-Tang Clan, members of Hieroglyphics and Living Legends Crew, and black-belt Ralek Gracie. Chess master and child prodigy Josh Waitzkin didn’t play - it wouldn’t be fair - but instead, he spoke on a panel.

Many rappers have a tendancy to use chess metaphors in their songs. Rap star GZA once opined, in ‘Queen`s Gambit’: You know, war, capturing, thinking, strategy; Planning, music, it’s hip-hop, and sports; It’s life, it’s reality.` That song was only one of the songs on his 2005 album. It was titled, ‘Grandmasters.’

This federation was founded, first and foremost, to help educate young people. Chess, martial arts, and poetry all involve strategy, deep thinking, patience, focus - all the things that are so underemphasized in popular culture. Their chess tournaments are often mixed, for example, with symposiums on non-violence.

It’s a window to the world.

More specifically, it’s a window between London and New York City, and it’s called the Telectroscope. It claims to be a tunnel, buried through the earth, connecting the two cities. If you stand on one side in Brooklyn, you can see out the other end, in London City Hall.

It isn’t quite the first of its kind. In 2003, people began to talk about a system called ‘Tholos,’ which aimed to network the cities of the world. Huge cylindrical screens would connect London to Vienna, Warsaw to Copenhagen, New York to Shanghai. But Tholos never got off the ground - whereas the Telectroscope goes straight through it.

Brits and New Yorkers alike have been waving hello for over a week now. The Telectroscope is an ‘art project,’ running for a mere month. As the story goes, the ‘tunnel’ was begun a hundred years ago, by the artist’s great-grandfather, Alexander Stanhope St. George. The reality is actually just some high-speed broadband - but the tunnel story is more fun.

It is a house fit for either a genius, or a 12-year old.

The home of Teller - legally, he has only one name - includes trick mirrors, human skulls, and the inevitable secret passages. Medieval torture racks come outfitted with artificial skeletons, and he still has a coffin in which he was stuffed for his 55th birthday. There is also a talking bear, which can tell you which card you randomly picked out of a deck.

Occasionally, his whimsy gives way to sentiment and wisdom. A taxi cab receipt for a drunk Buster Keaton is framed on the wall. There are also busts of Teller’s parents: Joe Teller was no insignificant man himself, painting his way through a Depression-era, hobo-style existence. Teller has also had a portrait painted of himself, of course - in the style of Dorian Gray.

Penn, of course, has his own house. It’s up the road.

It’s been called ‘disturbingly informative.’

The Mutter Museum of Philadelphia houses medical oddities. Within this museum’s walls sits the cast of the world-famous Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng, Grover Cleveland’s cancerous growth, and Joseph Hyrtl’s precious collection of skulls. The museum has 20,000 such items.

The Mutter hopes to remind people of medicine’s recent past, and maybe, what it means to be human. The medicine of the past was not the sterilized hospital we know today: surgery evolved in tandem with gunpowder and warfare; accidents and serendipity reigned. The Museum also includes Marie-Curie’s electrometer, and Florence Nightingale’s sewing kit.

In developed nations, widespread modern medicine now cuts off many deformities at the pass (sometimes literally). Abortions, cosmetic surgery, and even gene therapy have all but eliminated some of the more accidental manifestations of human existence. These days, severe mutations receive extensive press coverage, and often treatment.

They stuff dead bodies in suitcases. For science.

Tennessee’s Body Farm consists of bodies in varied, and educational, states of decay. In the initial years of forensic science, estimating a time of death was done as much by intuition as it was by data. The data, unfortunately, was hard to come by, because no one had ever bothered to time post-mortem body temp, let alone maggots, with a stopwatch. Until 1981, in Knoxville.

The Body Farm will stuff donated corpses in lie, bury them in shallow graves, and every other morbid permutation imaginable. They then study each body, scrutinizing how quickly it decays, and in what fashion. The information they’ve gathered from countless cases of faux cold-blooded killing helped turned forensics into a true science, and series like CSI into a hit.

This 3-acre farm in Tennessee was the first. But body farms also exist in North Carolina, and Texas. Iowa wanted one of their own. And Las Vegas, the site of the original CSI, tried to secure one in 2003: they couldn’t obtain the funding.

Pigeon racing is not a sport played for glamour, but for love.

Pigeon racers - a rank of characters almost exclusively made up of elderly, aging men - often wait for days on rooftops, straining their eyes against the horizon. They’re on the lookout, stopwatch in hand, for the precious pets that they have often bred, raised, tended, and trained. In order to start a race, the pigeons are trucked out en masse to some far-flung point, and released. With luck, they come home.

Homing pigeons are considered the Lamborghinis of the pigeon world. Common pigeons - the ones that snack on trash on city streets, that mob unwary children with a loaf of bread - are derided by breeders as ’street rats.’ During both world wars, pigeons were decorated with medals for heroism and gallantry: the French had their Cher Ami, the Americans their GI Joe.

Pigeon racing is an echo of New York City’s past, and it’s fading. Pigeon coops are being written out of local zoning laws. At the local racing clubs, few members are younger than seventy years old: there are no young racers waiting to take their place. Says one old-timer: “‘Nobody comes in off the street and says, ‘I’m interested in pigeons; how do I get started?’ Now, when youngsters do keep birds, as soon as they discover girls, it’s over.’”

It’s a beauty pageant. With muskrats.

The Miss Outdoors Pageant has been a long-running staple of Golden Hill, Maryland. As it happened, this beauty pageant shared the stage with another contest: the World Championship Muskrat Skinning Contest, which drew crowds of hundreds. The contests usually take place, back-to-back. But these days, some contestants decided to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Tiffany Brittingham did in first, in 2003: skinned a muskrat, in the pageant’s talent portion, while dressed in sparkly earrings and full make-up. Now a 6th-grade teacher, she was actually the subject of the documentary, ‘Muskrat Lovely,’ filmed in 2004. Brittingham finally won the beauty pageant in 2005, during which a man yelled from the audience, ‘I want to marry you.’

All of this makes perfect sense, in Chesapeake marsh country. The traditions are fading, of course: many lifelong muskrat trappers have had to find office jobs. But in 2008, 16-year old Dakota Abbott won both the Miss Outdoors contest on Friday. And the next day, she won the Woman’s Junior World Championship, by skinning two muskrats in a mere 102 seconds.