On the western tip of Belgium’s coast, the town of Oostduinkerke keeps alive a tradition more than twice as old as Belgium itself. Since the late 15th century, seaside communities that line the North Sea have practiced a form of shrimp fishing in which horse-riding fishermen, or paardenvisser, trawl the coast’s shallow waters to capture tasty crustaceans. About 500 years after it began, the tradition was recognized by UNESCO as part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage.

Shrimp and prawns are the same thing.

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Though sometimes confused, shrimp and prawns are vastly different animals. Shrimp are usually smaller than prawns, are found mostly in cold saltwater environments (prawns prefer the opposite), and belong to a completely different taxonomic suborder than prawns.

But what was once a common sight in the sea’s shallow waters is now a rarity, as only a handful of known paardenvissers still exist. Although the method at its most basic is simply dragging a net behind a Brabant draft horse, the process actually employs some clever physics and mechanics. Attached to each net are two metal-and-wood boards that, thanks to water pressure, keep the net continuously open. A metal chain attached to the front of the net sends shockwaves through the sand, causing shrimp to jump into the trap. As the horse drags the net through the surf, water pressure pushes the catch to the back of the net, which makes room for yet more shrimp. Adorned in their typical bright-yellow oilskin jackets, paardenvissers are often seen along Oostduinkerke’s coast during shrimp fishing seasons (from March to May and from September to November), as well as in June when the entire town gathers for the Shrimp Festival. This two-day event is filled with elaborate floats, costumes, and a parade celebrating the town’s crustaceous cultural heritage.

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For one organ concert currently being played at a German church, every chord change makes international news. That’s because this performance of avant-garde composer John Cage’s “Organ²/ASLSP” is slated to last centuries. In 1985, when Cage (1912–1992) wrote a piano version of what later became “Organ²/ASLSP,” he directed musicians to play his notes “as slowly as possible.” They’ve complied. 

There’s a musical instrument made of stalactites in a cave in Virginia.

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The Great Stalacpipe Organ, considered by many to be the world’s largest musical instrument, spans 3.5 acres in Luray Caverns. Pressing the keys leads to small hammers striking stalactites throughout the cave, creating sounds that echo and reverberate.

The performance began on what would have been Cage’s 89th birthday: September 5, 2001. A collection of music aficionados, scholars, and former collaborators planned a one-of-a-kind tribute to Cage in Halberstadt, Germany, where the first modern keyboard organ is thought to have originated. They dreamed up a performance that would last as long as the Halberstadt instrument, believed to have been built in the city’s cathedral in 1361. Since that was 639 years before the turn of the millennium in 2000, the group settled on a 639-year concert. A custom organ was constructed at the medieval church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt. The performance opened with a 17-month pause, and one chord lasted nearly seven years. (Sandbags, moved by human hands, weigh down the pedals to engage the organ’s pipes.) As of press time, only 16 chord changes have occurred; the next is scheduled for August 2026. Private donors have raised money to fund the project, but more is needed for the concert to continue uninterrupted all the way through its scheduled end — in 2640.

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Agatha Christie’s characters have done it all — survived attempted murder, traveled to far-off lands, and solved mystery after mystery. But the bestselling author didn’t just write about adventure; she also sought it out, sometimes on a surfboard. Two years after publishing her first novel, Christie embarked on an international trip with her first husband, Archibald. Their 1922 stop in South Africa included an attempt at surfing, where it’s possible she may have become the first Western woman to stand up on a surfboard.

The globetrotting couple quickly fell in love with the sport and went on to catch swelling waves off the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. Christie, in letters to her mother, recounted the tricky experience of learning to surf, describing the sport as “occasionally painful” thanks to a “nosedive down into the sand.” But the writer eventually became more skilled, detailing in her 1977 autobiography that nothing could compete with the rush of approaching shore at high speeds. She also wrote about surfing in her novel The Man in the Brown Suit, in which her protagonist, nicknamed “Anna the Adventuress,” goes surfing in Cape Town.

Hercule Poirot, the fictional detective in Agatha Christie’s mysteries, has a real-life obituary.

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By the 1940s, Agatha Christie had tired of her witty protagonist and decided to kill off the character, yet was dissuaded by her publisher. Three decades later, Poirot appeared in his last mystery, “Curtain,” marked by an obituary published in “The New York Times” in August 1975.

Christie’s pursuit of the perfect wave was unusual for an English woman of her time. The Museum of British Surfing suggests she and her husband may have been two of the earliest Brits to attempt the activity. However, they did have regal company: Prince Edward, the British royal who would eventually abdicate the throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, was photographed surfing in Hawaii two years before Christie rented her first surfboard.

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It might sound like a trick question: How many gallons of water does a 10-gallon hat hold? Turns out, not even one. The famous piece of Western wear can only contain about 3 quarts of water — that’s a mere three-quarters of a gallon. (Hatmakers advise against double-checking this figure at home, since complete saturation isn’t kind to felt and fur hats.) There’s no clear origin for the misleading 10-gallon name, but some linguists believe the term stems from cross-cultural confusion. One theory holds that American cowboys picked up the name while working alongside Spanish-speaking cattlemen, many of whom wore wide-brimmed hats with decorative galóns (aka braids). The most elaborate of these featured band upon band of detailing — as many as 10 hatbands. Another theory suggests that “10-gallon” was an anglicized version of tan galán, a Spanish phrase meaning “very handsome,” used to describe cowboys as they rode off into the sunset and the like.

An American gallon is smaller than a British gallon.

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Americans and Brits used to calculate gallons the same way, but in 1824 the U.K. adopted the imperial gallon, which equates to 277.42 cubic inches of water. The American gallon is 231 cubic inches of water — which means it’s about 20% smaller.

Western films of the early 20th century primarily outfitted actors in 10-gallon hats, though those depictions weren’t historically accurate when it came to reenacting the Old West. With their large brim and tall crowns, 10-gallon hats can easily catch the wind or attract attention, making them an impractical choice for ranchers and outlaws alike. Derby (aka bowler) hats were actually the most commonly worn men’s hat until the mid-to-late 1800s, after hatmaker John Batterson Stetson released his first cowboy hat, called the “Boss of the Plains.” His version was inspired by the original 10-gallons but could withstand the elements. It became popular on ranches, movie sets, and even at the White House.

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