France
In 1827, a young Nubian giraffe walked 550 miles from Marseille to Paris as a diplomatic gift to King Charles X. She was the first living giraffe France had seen in over three centuries — and she triggered a full-blown fashion craze.
Archéologique Notre-Dame
Beneath the parvis of Notre-Dame lies a 200-metre archaeological crypt containing the layered ruins of three separate cities — Roman, medieval, and 19th-century Paris — stacked on top of each other. Most visitors above never know it is there.
TL;DR: A blackened, mummified human forearm has hung from an iron chain inside Prague's Church of St. James the Greater (Kostel sv. Jakuba Většího) for approximately 400 years. The church's own inscription records that a thief reached for the jewels on the Madonna statue and
Moscow
In 1925, a Soviet physician severed a dog's head and kept it alive with two pumps and a glass jar. The machine he built became the blueprint for open-heart surgery.
Brazil
In October 1959, a five-year-old black rhinoceros named Cacareco received 100,000 votes in a São Paulo city council election — ten times more than the nearest human candidate. The election board nullified her ballots. The Portuguese language kept her name forever.
Marseille
France beheaded its last prisoner on September 10, 1977, in a Marseille prison courtyard. The executioner was a printer. Most voters wanted to keep it.
Rome
In January 897, Pope Stephen VI ordered the corpse of Pope Formosus pulled from its grave, dressed in papal vestments, and seated on a throne to stand trial. He had been dead for seven months.
Rome
Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia of Pompey, not the Senate House. The site is now Largo di Torre Argentina — buried for centuries, excavated in 1929, and open to visitors since 2023.
Paris
This article contains affiliate links. If you book through these links, Hidden World earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. This supports our research. The Mur des Fédérés in the south-east corner of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris carries visible bullet holes from 28 May 1871,
Paris
The Paris Catacombs are two kilometres of a 280-kilometre quarry network. In 2004 police found a cinema in the tunnels. No one has ever identified who built it.