While I work on some more detailed physics posts, I thought it would be a good time to recap some recent weird science facts that I’ve posted to Twitter under my longtime hashtag #weirdscifacts!
Oct 24: Aww. Nineteen Species Of Ferns Named After Lady Gaga. This one speaks for itself! (Via @kyliesturgess)
Oct 24: Edgar Allen Poe – writer and mollusk expert? Who knew that Poe had a scientific connection? (Via @NMNH)
Oct 30: 12-yr-old uses D&D to help dad w/ research, gets 1st-author paper in Roy. Soc. journal! (Post by @edyong209)
Nov 11: Spider accident-induced priapism. Short on Viagra? Getting bitten by the right spider could do the trick, too, though it wouldn’t exactly be a pleasant experience. (h/t @seelix)
Nov 26: Project A119, the top secret U.S. military project to boost public morale by… detonating a nuke on the Moon?
Dec 5: Prowling Catfish Catch Pigeons on Land. This is freaky — invasive species of catfish in France have adapted to nabbing pigeons for food out of the water. (Via @plosblogs)
Skulls in the Stars 
Poe was always scientifically minded. Read The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade in which Scheherazade recounts all sorts of amazing scientific oddities, all carefully footnoted in the text, but the story ends with her totally discredited for telling such an unbelievable tale. Poe was also the first to cite the correct, as currently understood, reason for why the sky is dark at night. I gather he did a bit of science popularizing along with writing his gothic tales.