Jonah Okafor

Jonah collects the oddities: the unsolved, the unbelievable-but-true and the stories that sound like legend until the documents turn up. He checks every one twice before it runs.

Sepia photograph of José Batlle y Ordóñez, a heavy-set man in a dark coat, standing at a ballot table surrounded by men in suits

Strange History

Uruguay Renamed Christmas Family Day in 1919. Pope Leo Just Visited Anyway

Jonah Okafor · November 9, 2026

A gold pocket watch by Breguet, Paris, about 1810, with a white enamel chapter ring and a skeletonised movement visible through the dial

Strange History

The First Chronograph Was Lost for 200 Years and Credited to Someone Else

Jonah Okafor · November 8, 2026

Black and white photograph of an open car and mounted guards passing crowds on a Brussels street during Baudouin's accession in July 1951

Strange History

In 1990 Belgium Declared Its King Unable to Reign, for About a Day and a Half

Jonah Okafor · November 7, 2026

Black and white photograph of a Qantas Boeing 707, registration VH-EBA, on the ground at Heathrow in 1961; a sister ship of the jet in the 1971 ransom

Strange History

A TV Movie Taught a Sydney Man to Hold a Qantas Jet to Ransom in 1971

Jonah Okafor · November 4, 2026

William Hogarth's 1740 engraving The Distrest Poet: a writer at a desk in a shabby attic room, a milkmaid demanding payment at the door while his wife mends clothes by the fire

Strange History

The Man From Formosa Had Never Seen It: Psalmanazar Fooled London in 1704

Jonah Okafor · November 3, 2026

Wood engraving of the Pied Piper in a dark cloak and feathered cap playing his pipe as a crowd of children follows him out of a walled town

Strange History

The Pied Piper Is a Fairy Tale. Hamelin's 130 Missing Children Were Not

Jonah Okafor · October 31, 2026

Black and white photograph of a farmer tuning a large wooden console radio with his young daughter on his lap, California, 1940

The Great Martian Panic of 1938 Was Mostly Invented by Newspapers

Jonah Okafor · October 31, 2026

Hand-coloured etching by Thomas Rowlandson, 1800, of a London night watchman in a greatcoat holding a lantern and a rattle

Strange History

A Man Shot a Ghost in Hammersmith in 1804. The Law Took 180 Years to Decide If He Was Guilty

Jonah Okafor · October 30, 2026

Chromolithograph of about 1872 showing a boy carving a face into a pumpkin while a small girl watches

Why We Carve Pumpkins: An Irish Turnip, a Man the Devil Would Not Take, and a Bigger Vegetable

Jonah Okafor · October 30, 2026

William Hogarth's etching Cunicularii, or the Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation (1726): doctors gather round Mary Toft's bed while rabbits run across the floor

Strange History

Mary Toft Gave Birth to 17 Rabbits in 1726. The King's Surgeon Believed Her

Jonah Okafor · October 28, 2026

Photograph of Adolf Hitler saluting the Olympic flag at the Berlin Games in 1936, the year the Peace Prize went to Carl von Ossietzky

Trump Won't Forget Norway. Hitler Banned Germans From the Nobel in 1937

Jonah Okafor · October 28, 2026

Police photograph of the five lines of pencilled capital letters found on the back cover of the Rubaiyat linked to the Somerton Man

Strange History

The Somerton Man Lay Unnamed for 73 Years, Then a Hair in a Bust Named Him

Jonah Okafor · October 27, 2026

Hand-coloured print of a crowded London barber's shop in 1811, with men being shaved and wigs dressed

Strange History

Why the Barber's Pole Is Red and White: It Was Once Covered in Real Blood

Jonah Okafor · October 27, 2026

Illustrated cover of Puck magazine from 13 September 1911 showing a woman in a blue dress and wide black hat on a striped sofa, captioned Why Worry About Mona Lisa

Picasso Was Born 145 Years Ago Today. In 1911 Paris Police Asked Him About the Mona Lisa

Jonah Okafor · October 25, 2026

Lithograph of the Chinese junk Keying, a three-masted trading junk from Canton, as it appeared in New York harbour in 1847

Strange History

The Pirate Queen Who Beat China's Navy, Then Surrendered on Her Own Terms and Kept the Money

Jonah Okafor · October 25, 2026

Marble head of Zeus Ammon with ram's horns, Roman, about 120 to 160 AD

A Persian Army of 50,000 Vanished in the Egyptian Desert and People Are Still Looking

Jonah Okafor · October 24, 2026

Engraved 1851 plate comparing the planetary systems of Ptolemy, the Egyptians, Tycho Brahe and Copernicus

Strange History

Tycho Brahe Died 425 Years Ago Today, and It Took Two Exhumations to Clear Kepler

Jonah Okafor · October 24, 2026

Photograph of a wild emu feeding on dry open ground in outback Australia

Strange History

Australia Sent Machine Guns Against 20,000 Emus in 1932 and the Emus Won

Jonah Okafor · October 23, 2026

Let Them Eat Cake Was in Print Before Marie Antoinette Could Read

Jonah Okafor · October 23, 2026

Sepia photograph from 1902 of the interior of the basilica of St John Lateran in Rome, looking toward the Gothic canopy over the high altar

Strange History

The Pope Who Dug Up His Predecessor and Put the Corpse on Trial

Jonah Okafor · October 22, 2026

Portrait of the young King Charles II of Spain, the last Spanish Habsburg

Strange History

Incredible Individuals With Unique Genetic Traits

Jonah Okafor · October 21, 2026

The Eiffel Tower lit up at night during the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, on a tinted postcard

Strange History

The Con Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower for Scrap, Then Tried It Again

Jonah Okafor · October 20, 2026

Painting of Snow White lying in a glass coffin in the forest, watched by the dwarfs, by Marianne Stokes

Before Disney: The Older, Darker Stories Behind Its Classic Characters

Jonah Okafor · Updated October 20, 2026