The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (75 page)

Every 25,800 years the earth wobbles, causing solstices and equinoxes to move.

THE MANY MOONS OF SATURN

Saturn has thirty moons—far more than any other planet. It has so many that half of them have numbers for names: Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Epimetheus, Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Telesto,
Calypso, Dione, Helene, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, Phoebe, S/2000 S 1, S/2000 S 2, S/2000 S 3, S/2000 S 4, S/2000 S 5, S/2000 S 6, S/2000 S 7, S/2000 S 8, S/2000 S 9, S/2000 S 10, S/2000 S 11, and S/2000 S 12.

THE RARE EARLY EASTER SUNDAY

The date of the Christian Easter celebration is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21). This schedule is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why Easter Sunday moves around on the Gregorian calendar used in the United States and other Western countries today.

Based on this formula, Easter will never fall before March 22 or after April 25.

In 2008, Easter Sunday fall on March 23, making the earliest Easter most people will ever observe in their entire lives. The last time Easter fell that early in the year was in 1913; that means anyone age ninety-five or older in 2008 are the only people who have witnessed this exceptionally early Easter twice in their lives. It is extremely unlikely that anyone alive in 2008 will live to see another such early Easter, because the next time Easter will fall on March 23 will be in the year 2160.

No one alive today has seen, and likely ever will see, Easter Sunday fall earlier than March 23. The last time it did so was in 1818, when it fell on March 22, and it won't fall on that date again until the year 2285.

“There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.” —JOSEPH CONRAD

There are countless people in past and present lives who have helped make this book the deliciously wicked little thing that it is. For starters, I would like to thank the staff at Weiser Books for their inspiration and guidance: Jan Johnson, Caroline Pincus, Maija Tollefson, Jordan Overby, Donna Linden, and Sara Gillingham. Special thanks to Amber Guetebier and Rachel Leach whose fact checking, story gathering, editorial expertise, and enthusiasm for the strange and macabre made this book possible. A big thanks to interns Rosemary Rouhana, who contributed a great deal to
The Book of the Bizarre
, Elise Jaguga, and Kristina Anderson. A huge thanks to Brenda Knight, who provided countless resources and encouragement. Thanks to Chris A. Ward, Alix Benedict, Giovanni Galati, Raymond Buckland, Addie Johnson, Wendy Guetebier, Dina Petterson, Marianne Jensen, the beloved Allan Topen, The Nevada City Chamber of Commerce, and Ken Pelto and the entire Education Department at the San Francisco Zoo.

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