Wing III of XII
Events
Grand fictional happenings — battles, treaties, fairs.
Newest in this wing
The Great Pineapple Panic of 1773
A Northamptonshire village said to have been carried to the brink of ruin by one pineapple left in a window — filed against a fruit that cost eighty pounds to raise, was hired out by the evening at a guinea, and was set on a plinth in the middle of the dining table to be looked at and taken away again.
Read the dispatchFrom the Wing's Archive
2 VII 2024
The First (And Last) Underwater Horse Race
Eight runners are entered over six furlongs of Channel seabed off Kent in July 1903 — filed against an animal that cannot breathe through its mouth, cannot be told to hold its breath, and takes exactly one breath to every stride.
25 VI 2024
The Historical Snail Racing Championship
A first-ever championship of 1895, filed from a French village that is in no list of communes, run over a Norfolk course in English inches, at very nearly three times the pace of the fastest snail ever timed.
18 VI 2024
The Great Pillow Fight of 1789
A ballroom at Versailles said to have vanished under a blizzard of down, filed against a palace with no ballroom, a court in mourning, and a summer in which every crowd in France is already accounted for.
11 VI 2024
Napoleon's Secret Moon Mission
An attic in Paris yields the Emperor's own account of a lunar landing in 1804 — filed against the eleven thousand one hundred and eighty-six metres a second that no charge of black powder has ever come within one part in twenty-five of.
6 II 2024
The Great Debate Between Philosophers and Parrots
A stenographic transcript of a debate held in Geneva in 2045, in which fourteen enhanced parrots argue eleven philosophers to a standstill — filed twenty-one years before the event, against a record that does not yet exist.
6 II 2024
The Great Polka Dot Epidemic of 1853
A London ledger of four thousand one hundred and six spotted cases and four thousand one hundred and six recoveries, filed against a year whose real epidemic was counted in graves.
6 II 2024
The Lost Sport of Extreme Tea Dueling
A gentlemen's contest of dunked biscuits and steady nerves, said to have been killed in 1912 by a war that began in 1914 — filed against the calendar, the Washburn equation, and a biscuit nobody baked until 1924.
6 II 2024
The Unexplained Worldwide Laughter Epidemic
A laughing sickness said to have crossed the whole world in 1925 and 1926 — filed against the only decade that had already learned to report an epidemic by wireless every Friday.