Written by Cassidy Krygger

From back scratchers to hotel key cards, humans like to collect weird and quirky stuff. 

And some of us are so good at it that it can garner you a mention in the Guinness World Records. According to the Neurologist and collector of Chinese Porcelain, Dr Shirley M. Mueller, humans collect objects for one simple reason; it makes us happy. 

But let’s not confuse the habit of collecting with hoarding – The Great Toilet Paper Hoard of 2020 ringing a traumatic bell? 

Collectors generally feel a sense of pride in their possessions and keep them well looked after and organised. A hoarder commonly suffers the difficulty of parting with any item, regardless of its value with serious side effects for the health both physically and mentally for the Hoarder in question. 

We had a riot researching some of the weirdest and wackiest collections from around the world and here are our top 10 quirky finds. 

Celebrity Hair Collection

 Guinness World Record holder John Reznikoff has a collection of celebrity hair from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. He doesn’t sell his collection nor collect the hair of living people. 

photo credit @JohnReznikoff

Napkin Collection

Antonia Kozakova has collected over 80,000 napkins since beginning the collection over 20 years ago. The oldest dating back to 1940, Kozakova has napkins from all over the world. And she has no intent on stopping with her next goal to get to 100,000 napkins.

Traffic Cones

Not only does David Morgan hold the World Record for the collection of the most traffic cones, but he also claims (disputed) to have invented them. He must really love traffic cones. 

Toothpaste Tubes

Dr Val Kolapov is a dentist who takes his love of teeth to the next level. He has collected over 3,000 tubes of toothpaste from all over the world, a habit he calls “much, much more exciting” than the pulled teeth he used to collect which is lucky because he displays his collected tubes in his office. 

Back Scratchers

Manfred S. Rothstein will never have an itchy back again with the 675 back scratchers he has collected from over 70 countries. Beginning his collection in the 1970s, dermatologist Rothstein keeps his back scratchers displayed in his clinic. 

Joker Cards

After inheriting over 2,000 Joker Cards in 1999, Italian man Tony De Santis has since amassed over 8,000 Joker Cards. According to the Guinness World Records, De Santis likes  to memorise each and every one of his Joker Cards and spends time looking at them individually every week. 

Hotel Key Card Collection

Another card collection but this time something a bit different, it belongs to a 10-year-old boy. Elias Brooks from South Carolina is now a Guinness World Record holder with a collection of 540 Hotel Key Cards.  Brooks began his collection at just 5 years old when he kept his hotel key card from a family holiday. And he plans on continuing to grow his impressive collection. 

Erasers

Petra Engels from Germany need never make a mistake on paper again. With an impressive 19,571 non-duplicate erasers. Beginning her collection in 1981 at the age of 9, she has amassed her erasers from over 100 countries. 

Sugar Packets

With the oldest sugar packet in his collection dating back to 1950, Ralf Schroder has collected over 14,500 sugar packets since starting his collection in 1987. That’s one heck of a sweet tooth. 

Garden Gnomes

Have you heard of a magical garden in England that is home to over 2,000 Garden Gnomes? Belonging to Ann Atkins, the garden, now called ‘The Gnome Reserve’ is now a tourist attraction that is visited by over 25,000 people per year. Atkins asks all humans to don a pointy hat before entering the garden so as ‘not to embarrass the gnomes.’ I know where I am going as soon as the International travel ban is lifted!

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Written by Kirsten Macdonald

Sparking interesting topics for the dinner table conversation isn’t always easy.

Perhaps you want to drop a complete random on someone; always a fun choice. Well, we delivered! Get your think gear around these. 

Jupiter Rains Diamonds

The gassy giant some 637.41 million km away from Earth very possibly rains diamonds according to Planetary scientists Mona L. Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering and Kevin H. Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

Diamonds require carbon and pressure along with high temperatures to form. Both of which exist in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Atmospheric methane gas coverts directly into diamonds which rain down into their interiors. 

Drops of Jupiter has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? 

Yoda’s face was based on Albert Einstein.

Yoda was based on Albert Einstein’s face! Stuart Freeborn, an english makeup artist, based Yoda’s face partly on his own and partly on Einstein’s. Freeborn, had a long and wonderful career in the Star Wars franchise design and fabrication. Highly regarded, he also created the look for Ewoks and Jabba. 

A Woodpeckers tongue reaches right around its skull

The tongue of a woodpecker can be extended over its entire head! The crafty forest dweller has this very long tongue in order to access ants and lava from deep crevices. With a lingua to put Gene Simmons to shame for storage, the tongue is curled around the back of the head between the skull and skin.

Elephants are the only land mammals that can’t jump.

When you weigh over 3 tonne, i wouldn’t want to jump either. Can you imagine? Thank goodness elephants don’t have wings. 

Smurfs are 3 apples tall 

Created by Belgian comic Pierre Culliford in 1958, the beloved Blue Smurf was exactly 3 x apple tall. Which type of apple? Not too sure. But, originally known as Les Schtroumpfs, the tribe of cute has gone the distance. I imagined them smaller did you?

The Hula Hoop was invented in Australia

A wooden hoop that Australian children twirled around their waists during gym class was patented by a toy company in the USA and given the name because of its Hawaiin dance motion aka- Hula.

Hatters really were mad! 

Mad as a Hatter came from hat makers using mercury to create felt. Mercury vapours were unknowingly very toxic. The toxicity caused Dementia and Erethism, aka Mad Hatter’s Disease common amongst 19th Century hatmakers.

Thus “Mad as a hatter” phrase was born. Extra fact; Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, didn’t use this term; his character was referred to as simply The Hatter. Mad Hatter’s Disease came later. The Cheshire Cat called the March Hare and the Hatter “quite mad.” However, Carroll’s uncle was on the board of an asylum where many hatters and textile makers resided. Here they staged theatre plays along with tea parties. Curioser and Curioser… 

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Written by Cassidy Krygger

Fran Drescher has lived an incredible life. 

Best known to us all as the hilarious and carefree Fran Fine in the hit 90’s sitcom ‘The Nanny’ that she co-created and produced. But Drescher has overcome many traumatic life situations that forced her to, in her own words, “change the negatives into positives.”  From a rape in her 20s to a cancer diagnosis in her 40s,  how did Fran Drescher overcome the odds to become the funny and vivacious woman that we all know and love?

Francine Drescher was born in 1957 in Flushing, Queens, New York. 

She had her first break out role in the iconic Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta in 1977 and continued to play small and bit parts throughout the 1980s.  In January 1985, two armed robbers broke into her and her husband, Peter Marc Jacobson’ house, and raped Drescher while Jacobson was held at gunpoint.  In an essay Drescher later wrote for InStyle Magazine in 2019, she recalled that “Afterward, I didn’t really get into my feelings or my vulnerabilities. I never wanted to come off as “weak,” so I just kind of buried it and got on with life.” It took Drescher many years to recover and even longer to tell the story publicly. Her rapist, who was on parole at the time, was returned to prison and received two life sentences. 

But life was about to change for the better.

A chance meeting on an international flight in the early 1990s with the President of the American television network CBS. In the usual Fran way, Drescher was able to persuade the President to let her and Jacobson pitch a show to CBS. He agreed and a few weeks later Drescher and Jacobson found themselves in sunny Los Angeles, pitching their idea of their own unique spin on The Sound of Music. In Drescher’s own words; “Instead of Julie Andrews, I come to the door.” 

The series was picked up and The Nanny was born. Premiering in 1993.

The Nanny was about a young woman who turns up on the doorstep of a handsome widowed Broadway Producer who hires her as the new nanny to his three children.

Playing to her talents, Drescher created a character much like herself and the chemistry between Fran and Mr Sheffield, played by Charles Shaughnessy, would be the true magic of the 6 seasons of the iconic series.

While her career was going from strength to strength, it was during the last season of The Nanny in 1998, that Drescher’s life began to crumble. 

After nearly two years of symptoms and misdiagnosis, Fran was diagnosed with Uterine Cancer.

She immediately underwent an emergency hysterectomy which successfully treated the disease. In her essay for InStyle, she wrote that

“It was strange — and kind of poetic — that my reproductive organs, of all things, had cancer,” she continued. “But it was also an amazing affirmation that pain finds its way to exactly the right place in the body if you don’t deal with it. Since I hadn’t been paying attention to my own vulnerabilities, my pain from the rape lodged itself in my uterus.”

But as she is known to do, Fran found a way to turn one of the worst hands life could deal her into a positive and in 2007 the ‘Cancer Schmancer Movement’ was created. 

Cancer Schmancer is a non-profit organisation that ensures all women’s cancers are diagnosed in Stage 1, the earliest and most treatable stage. In 2008 she was appointed the Public Diplomacy Envoy for Women’s Health issues by President George W. Bush and has since spent time in Washington rallying politicians on behalf of awareness and funding for healthcare. 

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