When you think of December, you probably think of cozy fireplaces, holiday carols, end-of-year reflections, and the frantic rush of shopping. But peel back that festive, glittery wrapping, and you’ll find that December is… well… weird.
It’s a month where history has apparently decided to throw some of its strangest, most unbelievable curveballs. Forget “Silent Night”; we’re talking about food-related royal deaths, global-scale mysteries, town-wide riots over ice, and holiday traditions that have to be seen to be believed.
We’ve dug through the dusty archives and dim corners of history to find the 10 most bizarre, hilarious, and utterly head-scratching moments that all went down in the “most wonderful time of the year.”
So, if you’re a history buff with a sense of humor, a trivia-hoarding facts-collector, or just looking for some wild, unbelievable stories to share at a holiday party, you’ve come to the right place.
We’re not just giving you a quick list, either. We’re giving you the whole story. This is a deep dive. Grab a cup of hot cocoa (and maybe not a plate of eels… you’ll see why) and get comfortable.
1. The King Who Died from Eating Too Many Eels (1135)
King Henry I of England, the formidable son of William the Conqueror, met a famously undignified end on December 1, 1135. His death was not caused by battle or political intrigue, but by his own unrestrained appetite. The king possessed a passionate, well-documented love for a specific and unusual dish: lampreys.
These were not true eels, but slimy, jawless fish considered a delicacy by medieval nobility. Henry’s personal physician had explicitly and repeatedly warned the aging king to avoid them. The doctor knew that lampreys were incredibly rich, oily, and notoriously difficult for an older person to digest, posing a significant risk to his health.
While staying in Normandy, Henry, reportedly feeling robust after a day of hunting, willfully ignored this medical advice. He ordered a large serving of the forbidden fish and, as the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon famously wrote, consumed “a surfeit of lampreys.” This excessive indulgence proved fatal. The king was soon gripped by a violent fever and acute illness. While history records it as “food poisoning,” it was likely a severe bacterial infection from the fish or that the extreme richness of the meal triggered a fatal complication. After a week of suffering, the king died, forever remembered as a monarch felled by his favorite meal.
2. The Great Ice Riot (1896)
In the sweltering summer of 1896, long before electric refrigerators became a household staple, ice was a critical necessity, not a luxury. It was the only way for families in towns like New Bremen, Ohio, to preserve milk, meat, and other perishable foods, and to provide comfort and medical relief during intense heat. This reliance made the local ice supply a vital piece of community infrastructure.
This essential good became the unlikely flashpoint for a violent public outburst known as the Great Ice Riot. The local ice supplier announced a sudden and significant price hike, raising the cost from 75 cents to one dollar per hundred pounds—a staggering 33% increase. For the working-class residents of New Bremen, this was not a minor inconvenience; it was a direct threat to their ability to keep food from spoiling and protect their families’ health.
The public’s response was immediate and furious. Outrage quickly boiled over into action. An angry mob formed, staging heated protests that soon escalated. Residents began throwing objects, and their frustration ultimately focused on the symbol of their predicament: the town’s icehouse. In a dramatic show of force, the mob attacked and completely destroyed the building, reducing their source of ice—and the source of the price gouging—to rubble.
3. The 11-Day Disappearance of Agatha Christie (1926)
In 1926, Agatha Christie, already a household name for her brilliant detective novels, became the central figure in her own bewildering mystery. The drama began on the evening of December 3rd, just after her husband, Archie, confessed he was in love with another woman, Teresa Neele, and wanted a divorce. Following a quarrel, Christie left their home.
Her car was discovered the next morning, abandoned near a chalk quarry, containing her fur coat and expired driver’s license. This sparked immediate fears of a fatal accident, kidnapping, or even suicide.
The resulting search was a national sensation. For 11 days, the country was gripped by her disappearance. A massive manhunt was launched, involving over 1,000 police officers, hundreds of civilian volunteers, and, for the first time in such a search, airplanes.
Christie was finally discovered safe and well at a spa hotel in Harrogate. In a plot twist worthy of her own fiction, she had registered under the name Teresa Neele—the very name of her husband’s mistress. When her husband arrived to identify her, Christie claimed to have no memory of the past 11 days, suggesting she had been in a fugue state or suffering from amnesia brought on by her profound personal distress. The true motive for her disappearance remains a hotly debated mystery.
4. The “Yankee Professors” and the Falling Stones (1807)
In 1807, the very idea that stones could fall from the sky was widely dismissed by the scientific elite as peasant superstition. Enlightenment thinking held that the heavens were orderly and such tales were impossible. This belief was directly challenged on the morning of December 14, when a blazing fireball exploded over Weston, Connecticut, with a series of booms so loud they were heard miles away.
The event terrified locals and left a trail of strange, blackened stones scattered across the town. Intrigued by the reports, two respected Yale professors, Benjamin Silliman and James Kingsley, traveled to Weston to investigate. They didn’t just dismiss the stories; they interviewed eyewitnesses, mapped the debris field, and collected the mysterious fragments.
After careful analysis, Silliman and Kingsley presented their groundbreaking, and at the time radical, conclusion: the stones had, in fact, fallen from the sky. This report was met with widespread skepticism. The most famous (though possibly apocryphal) rebuke came from President Thomas Jefferson himself, a noted intellectual, who supposedly scoffed that he “would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than that stones fall from heaven.” Their work, however, was a pivotal moment, helping to establish the science of meteoritics in the United States.
5. The Boston Tea Party (1773)
While the Boston Tea Party is remembered as a pivotal moment of political protest, the event itself was one of the most bizarre and theatrical acts of the American colonial era. On the night of December 16, 1773, a large group of colonists, known as the Sons of Liberty, took drastic action to protest the Tea Act—a British law that gave the East India Company a monopoly and enforced a tax the colonists never agreed to.
This was no ordinary protest. To protect their identities and to make a symbolic statement about adopting a new, non-British identity, dozens of men disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians. This costume choice was not intended to fool anyone; it was pure political theater.
They boarded three British ships—the Dartmouth, the Beaver, and the Eleanor—docked in Griffin’s Wharf. For the next three hours, they worked with surprising efficiency, hoisting 342 chests of tea from the holds, smashing them open with hatchets, and dumping the entire cargo into the frigid Boston Harbor. It was a clear, destructive, and incredibly expensive message to Parliament, valued at over $1.7 million in today’s money. This single act of organized vandalism dramatically escalated tensions, pushing Britain and the colonies ever closer to war.
6. The “Extinct” Fish That Wasn’t (1938)
On December 22, 1938, the scientific world was stunned by a discovery that was the biological equivalent of finding a live T-Rex. Until that day, the Coelacanth, a large, lobe-finned fish, was known to science only through the fossil record. It was believed to have gone entirely extinct with the dinosaurs over 66 million years ago.
This all changed when Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a young museum curator in East London, South Africa, received a call from a local trawler captain, Hendrik Goosen. He had hauled up a bizarre, five-foot-long fish. It was pale blue, covered in hard, armor-like scales, and possessed four strange, fleshy fins that looked like primitive limbs.
Not knowing what it was, but recognizing its profound uniqueness, Courtenay-Latimer had it preserved. She sent a sketch to the ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith, who, upon seeing the drawing, was floored. He recognized it as a creature from prehistoric times, a true “living fossil.” The find was so significant it was hailed as the greatest zoological discovery of the 20th century, completely rewriting our understanding of what was thought to be extinct. The fish was named Latimeria chalumnae in honor of Courtenay-Latimer and the river mouth where it was found.
7. Van Gogh’s Unfortunate Christmas Gift 1888
The Christmas season of 1888 became the backdrop for one of the most bizarre and tragic episodes in art history, marking the climax of Vincent van Gogh’s profound mental health crisis. At the time, Van Gogh was living in the “Yellow House” in Arles, France, with his fellow painter, Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh dreamed this would be the start of an artists’ colony, but the two men’s clashing personalities and artistic visions led to weeks of escalating tension.
On December 23rd, following a final, furious argument, Gauguin threatened to leave. This threat apparently shattered Van Gogh.
Later that evening, in a state of extreme distress, Van Gogh returned to the house, took a straight razor, and sliced off a portion of his own left ear. His next actions were just as disturbing. He carefully washed the severed piece of flesh, wrapped it in paper, and walked through the town to a local brothel. He then presented this gruesome “gift” to a woman (often identified as a cleaner or prostitute named Gabrielle or Rachel), reportedly telling her to “keep this object carefully.” The police were called, and Van Gogh was found at home, bleeding and near-unconscious, the next morning. This horrifying act of self-mutilation led to his hospitalization and marked the end of his collaboration with Gauguin.
8. The Founding of the KKK 1865
In a dark and bizarre twist of history, the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was founded not in a secretive political meeting, but as a juvenile social club on Christmas Eve of 1865. The group was formed by six bored Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, who were looking for amusement in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Their original intent was closer to a college fraternity, complete with elaborate, silly rituals and a mysterious-sounding name. They devised the name by adapting the Greek word “Kuklos,” meaning “circle,” and adding the word “Klan” for alliterative effect, evoking a sense of Scottish heritage.
Their initial activities were bizarre and theatrical. Dressed in white sheets and masks to disguise themselves and mimic ghosts of the Confederate dead, they would ride through the town at night, playing pranks to frighten the local population and “baffle public curiosity.”
However, this “amusement” quickly turned sinister. The group discovered that their ghostly disguises were terrifyingly effective at intimidating newly freed Black Americans. Almost immediately, the club’s purpose shifted from a bizarre fraternity to a violent, white supremacist terrorist organization, becoming the so-called “Invisible Empire of the South” and launching a campaign of terror to undermine Reconstruction.
9. The Christmas “Poop Log”
In the Catalonia region of Spain, one of the most beloved and bizarre holiday traditions revolves around a character known as the Tió de Nadal (Christmas Log), or more affectionately, the “Caga Tió” (the “Poop Log”).
This tradition centers on a piece of wood, often a small, hollow log, which is given a smiling, painted face, two little legs, and a traditional red Catalan hat (barretina). Starting on December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the family brings the log into the home, covers it with a blanket to keep it “warm,” and “feeds” it small scraps of food like nuts and fruit every night.
The strange and humorous main event occurs on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The children gather around the log, and in order to get their presents, they must beat the log with sticks. While hitting it, they sing a traditional song, urging the log to “poop” out treats. The lyrics are direct, with the most famous line being “Caga tió!”—literally, “Poop, log!” When the song is over, the children lift the blanket to discover that the Tió has “magically” defecated a pile of small gifts, such as candies (like turrón), nuts, figs, and other small trinkets.
10. The Piltdown Man Hoax 1912
In 1912, the scientific world was electrified by the announcement of the “Piltdown Man.” Discovered by amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, the skull fragments seemed to be the long-sought “missing link” between apes and humans. The find consisted of a large, human-like cranium paired with an ape-like jawbone. This perfectly supported the prevailing British theory that human evolution was led by a large brain, while the jaw remained primitive.
For over 40 years, Eoanthropus dawsoni (“Dawson’s Dawn-Man”) was celebrated as a monumental discovery, cementing Britain’s place in the story of human origins.
However, as more hominid fossils were discovered elsewhere, the Piltdown find began to look increasingly out of place. Finally, in 1953, a team of scientists subjected the bones to new, rigorous testing. The truth was shocking: it was an elaborate hoax. The “ancient” cranium was from a medieval human, and the jaw belonged to a modern orangutan. The teeth had been deliberately filed down to look more human, and all the fragments were stained with chemicals to make them appear ancient. It remains one of the most successful and infamous frauds in the history of science.
Conclusion: Keep December Weird
So there you have it. From kings dying from snack-binges to pooping Christmas logs and 40-year-long scientific hoaxes, December is officially the weirdest, most bizarre month of the year.
History isn’t just a collection of boring dates and “important” battles. It’s a collection of strange, hilarious, tragic, and deeply human stories. It’s a reminder that no matter how weird, chaotic, or unbelievable you think our times are, the past was almost always weirder.
The next time you’re sipping cocoa, just remember: somewhere, at some point in December, someone was probably starting a riot over ice, finding a “living dinosaur,” or being fooled by a tea-stained ape jaw.
