Cat Sharp

For those lonely folk who pass away with no next of kin and no one to claim them at death, there will be at least one person at their funeral: a poet. In response to these so-called "lonely funerals," the country implemented the ritual of lonely funeral poems, in which poets research the deceased, write a poem in their honor, and recite it at the funeral. What started as a small project in Amsterdam has now grown into a country-wide competition.

The word "flyting" comes from the Old English word for "quarrel." Something like today's freestyle rap battles, the purpose of flyting was to craft poetic insults so devastating to your competitor that they'd be too insulted to muster a comeback. One recorded exchange is known as The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, in which Kennedie tells Dunbar, "You look like the crows already ate your cheeks; Renounce, rebel, your rhymes and sorry shrieks." What a burn.

On the Apollo 14 space mission in 1971, Alan Shepard became the first and only person to play golf somewhere other than Earth. He attached a six-iron head (which he'd smuggled onboard in a sock) to a piece of rock-collecting equipment and hit two golf balls while on the moon's surface, hitting his second shot further than 200 yards.

That would be Roy Cleveland Sullivan, a park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, who between 1942 and 1977 was struck by lightning on seven different occasions, earning him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records and the nickname "Human Lighting Rod." He survived all of them and lived to the age of 71.

When Queen Elizabeth paid a royal visit to the set of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland, she refused to sit on the Iron Throne for legal reasons. As series co-creator David Benioff told Esquire, "Apparently the Queen of England is not allowed to sit on a foreign throne… This is an esoteric rule we didn't know about until that moment."

When Queen Elizabeth paid a royal visit to the set of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland, she refused to sit on the Iron Throne for legal reasons. As series co-creator David Benioff told Esquire, "Apparently the Queen of England is not allowed to sit on a foreign throne… This is an esoteric rule we didn't know about until that moment."