Interesting Wikipedia articles for killing time and expanding your mind!!

Since August 20, 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found on the coasts of the Salish Sea in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, US. The first discovery, on August 20, 2007, was on Jedediah Island in British Columbia. Feet have been discovered on the coasts of islands in British Columbia, and in the US cities of Tacoma and Seattle.

In Canada, the B.C. Coroners Service said in December 2017 that foul play had been ruled out by authorities in all previous cases. The feet were usually found in sneakers, which the coroner thought were responsible for both keeping the feet buoyant enough to eventually wash ashore, and for giving the feet enough protection from decomposition to be found relatively intact.

Kenneth Rex McElroy (June 1, 1934 – July 10, 1981) was an American criminal and convicted attempted murderer who resided in Skidmore, Missouri, United States. He was known as "the town bully",[1] and his unsolved killing became the focus of international attention. Over the course of his life, McElroy was accused of dozens of felonies, including assault, child molestation, statutory rape, arson, animal cruelty, hog and cattle rustling, and burglary.[2]

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard

Ferdinand Cheval (French pronunciation: [fɛʁdinɑ̃ ʃəval]; 19 April 1836 – 19 August 1924), often nicknamed Facteur Cheval ("Mail Carrier Cheval") was a French mail carrier who spent 33 years building Le Palais idéal (the "Ideal Palace") in Hauterives, in southeastern France. It is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art architecture.

James Sligo Jameson (17 August 1856 – 17 August 1888) was a Scottish naturalist and traveller in Africa. He identified the black honey-buzzard in 1877. Jameson's antpecker, Jameson's firefinch, and Jameson's wattle-eye are named after him. However, he is most remembered for his role in causing a slave girl to be killed and eaten by cannibals.

A grandson of the founder of Jameson Irish Whiskey,

Two years later, he decided to join the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition led by Henry Morton Stanley. In August 1888, while still deep in the Congo Basin, he died of a severe fever, a few months after allegedly paying associates of the slave trader Tippu Tip to procure a young slave girl who was then slaughtered and cooked in front of them. In his diary, Jameson admitted that he paid the charged price, saw the event, and made sketches of it, but claimed that he had considered the whole affair a joke and had not expected her to be actually killed. However, two members of the expedition accused him of having deliberately instigated the murder to satisfy his curiosity about cannibalism, and his diary shows him to be well informed of cannibal customs, making his line of defence doubtful. The occurrence became known as the Jameson Affair.

Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud is a brand of specially prepared mud used to prepare balls in the sport of baseball before they are put into play. Newly manufactured baseballs have a somewhat slick and glossy surface, so when new they are rubbed down with the mud to reduce the slickness and give pitchers a firmer grip and better control without damaging or discoloring the ball.

Major League Baseball rules require every "pearl", or brand-new baseball, to be rubbed with rubbing mud for at least 30 seconds on game day until it achieves the desired texture and off-white color.

Fier died on September 14, 2022, at the age of 66, at the Pegasos Clinic, in Basel, Switzerland, of VAD (Voluntary Assisted Dying) or assisted suicide. According to Exit International director Philip Nitschke, Fier was not suffering from terminal illness, but "wanted to die on his own terms after feeling he had accomplished everything he could in life."
As noted in The Independent, Fier reportedly had left a final letter, in which he wrote "My father died at 42, and my mother at 52. I never expected or prepared myself to live this long and had no example of how to properly do so." Fier's friends reported the musician had money troubles and injuries which hampered his drumming.