London abounds with all manner of ludicrous laws, and not all of these curious statutes have been relegated to the past. Despite the efforts of the Law Commission there are medieval laws that are still in force, and the City of London and its livery companies have their own legal oddities. Laws are made in the capital because parliament is here; so are the Old Bailey, the Law Courts, the House of Lords and, now, the Supreme Court. The privy council, which sometimes has to decide cases, also sits in London, and there were other courts that used to sit in London, from prize courts concerning war booty to ecclesiastical courts. Having maintained its 'ancient rights and freedoms' under Magna Carta, the City felt free to enact its own laws, many of which seem to have had to do with what people could wear. Until quite recently, for example, a man could be arrested for walking down the street wearing a wig, a robe and silk stockings - unless he was a judge. And all human folly has been paraded through the law courts of London, to the extent that it is difficult to know where the serious business of administering justice ends and where farce begins. As law is made in the courtroom as well as in parliament and elsewhere, judges like to keep a firm hand, but sometimes so-called jibbing juries will simply not do what they are told. All sorts of oddities get swept up into the law. Legislators particularly love to pass Acts about sex. If sexual services are being offered in a London massage parlour, for example, a police officer must then search the premises for school children. According to The Children and Young Persons Act of 1933 it is against the law for children and 'yowling persons' between the age of four and sixteen to frequent a brothel. A writ was introduced under both Edward III and Henry IV to ban lawyers from parliament as there were too many of them, the reason being that it was easier for a lawyer to spend his time in London attending parliament that it was for a knight of the shires. But because parliament was already packed with lawyers it was difficult to make any such rule stick. Then an effective way of excluding them was found. They were denied the wages paid to members in those days. Sadly, these days, parliament and the government are packed with lawyers once again. And they are being paid. A law passed in 1540 - and still in force today - makes it illegal for barbers in the City of London to practise surgery; with impeccable impartiality, the Act also forbids surgeons to cut hair. Finally, never forget that under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, you can be convicted of being 'an idle and disorderly person, or a rogue, vagabond, or incorrigible rogue'. The same act also outlaws people 'professing to tell fortunes', including 'palmistry'. Under the Act, it is an offence merely to be suspected.

In Victorian London, filth was everywhere: horse traffic filled the streets with dung, household rubbish went uncollected, cesspools brimmed with "night soil," graveyards teemed with rotting corpses, the air itself was choked with smoke. In this intimately visceral book, Lee Jackson guides us through the underbelly of the Victorian metropolis, introducing us to the men and women who struggled to stem a rising tide of pollution and dirt, and the forces that opposed them. Through thematic chapters, Jackson describes how Victorian reformers met with both triumph and disaster. Full of individual stories and overlooked details--from the dustmen who grew rich from recycling, to the peculiar history of the public toilet--this riveting book gives us a fresh insight into the minutiae of daily life and the wider challenges posed by the unprecedented growth of the Victorian capital.

When we think of the world's great museums, we tend to think of the Louvre, the Guggenheim or the Victoria and Albert. We do not immediately think of the Dog Collar Museum, the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum, the Museum of Broken Relationships or Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Art Museum. Yet scattered across the globe are museums dedicated to every conceivable subject, from bananas to Bigfoot, lawnmowers to leprechauns, teapots to tapeworms, mustard to moist towelettes, and pencils to penises. Many are serious collections housed in grand buildings, others are located in tiny premises and are open to visitors by appointment only, often the result of one person's crazy lifetime obsession. This book lists the world's 100 weirdest museums in order of quirkiness, encompassing such delights as The Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, a museum in Kentucky that houses 800 ventriloquists' dolls, the Museum of Bad Art in Massachusetts, the Paris Sewer Museum, the French Fry Museum in Bruges, the Museum of Contraception and Abortion in Vienna, the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Tennessee, Japan's Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum (quite possibly the world's only museum devoted to instant noodles), and the Kunstkamera in St Petersburg, home to Peter the Great's collection of oddities including deformed fetuses and the decapitated head of a love rival preserved in vinegar. After all, what holiday is complete until you have seen a 300-year-old decapitated human head in a jar? Each entry will include address, contact and admission details, so the next time you are in Berlin there is no excuse for missing out on a visit to the Currywurst Museum, the world's leading museum dedicated to sausages in hot ketchup.

Did you know that: It's against the law to check into a hotel in London under assumed names for the purpose of lovemaking? Under a statute of Edwards II all whales washed up on the shore belong to the monarch? Under a Tudor law Welshmen are not allowed into the city of Chester after dark? In THE STRANGE LAWS OF OLD ENGLAND, Nigel Cawthorne unearths an extraordinary collection of the most bizarre and arcane laws that have been enacted over the centuries. Some of the laws, incredibly, are still in force. It is still illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour . . . This elegant and amusing book is perfect for everyone fascinated by the eccentric history of these islands.

Weird laws, Dumb Laws, Funny Laws, Crazy Laws from around the world. Weird laws from Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, USA (State-wise list) and many other countries.Sample This:01. Weird Laws -- Australia01. Weird Laws -- Australia01. It is against the law for children to purchase alcohol, cigarettes, but they are not prohibited from using them.02. It is against the law to be drunk in a pub.03. It is against the law to be near or inside a house that is used by thieves regularly. [Vagrancy Act of 1966]04. It is against the law to come closer than one hundred meters from where a carcass of a dead whale is.05. It is against the law to crush a can of beer between your breasts.06. It is against the law to dress up as batman or robin.07. It is against the law to drive a cat or dog attached to a vehicle in public place.08. It is against the law to have an article of disguise without a lawful excuse.09. It is against the law to leave the keys in the ignition or inside a vehicle of an unattended vehicle.10. It is against the law to roam the streets wearing black clothes, felt shoes, and black shoe polish on your face.11. It is against the law to swim unless you are wearing a neck to knee swimsuit in Brighton Beach.12. It is against the law to touch in electric wires that cause death instantly.13. It is against the law to walk on the right hand side of a footpath.14. Bars are required to stable, water and feed the horses that come with patrons.15. If you advertise a reward for finding lost or stolen objects, the advertisement must have a statement that no questions will be asked.16. Men are allowed to cross-dress, just as long as their dresses are not strapless.17. No man under 4ft 8 inch is allowed to surf on Klondike Beach (due to the size of the waves.)18. Taxicabs are required to carry a bale of hay in their trunks.19. The legal age for straight sex is 16, unless the person is in the care/custody of the older person, in which case it is 18.

'An entertaining new book… which looks back at the most bizarre sporting activities ever devised by mankind' Daily Mail 'Perfect book for the Christmas stockings of adults and curious children' Wall Street Journal For those who enjoyed the quirkiness of Schott's Miscellany, the erudition of The Etymologicon or the extremes of The Dangerous Book for Boys, this is the ideal read. From Flagpole Sitting to Hot Cockles, Edward Brooke-Hitching has researched through piles of dusty tomes to bring vividly back to life some of the most curious, dangerous and downright bizarre sports and pastimes ever devised, before we thought better of it and erased them from the memory. After all, who would ever want to bring back Fox Tossing, a popular sport for men and women in 17th-century Germany? The sport involved dozens of couples pairing up and standing 20-25 feet apart in an enclosed field, each holding one end of a net, and then they would pull hard at both ends as the fox ran past, sending it flying high into the air. There are many other sports revealed within these pages that are unlikely ever to make an appearance on our TV screens, such as Firework Boxing, which is just as dangerous as it sounds. Meanwhile, Ski Ballet may not have been so risky, but Suzy 'Chapstick' Chaffee's signature move - the Suzy Split (a complete forward split while balanced on the tips of her skis) - was probably not one to try at home. An intriguing, entertaining and occasionally shocking insight into the vivid imaginations of humanity across the years, Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports is an unforgettable read and a perfect gift.

There were eccentric characters in the hotel. The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words. There were the Rougiers, for instance, an old, ragged, dwarfish couple who plied an extraordinary trade. They used to sell postcards on the Boulevard St Michel. The curious thing was that the postcards were sold in sealed packets as pornographic ones, but were actually photographs of chateaux on the Loire; the buyers did not discover this till too late, and of course never complained. The Rougiers earned about a hundred francs a week, and by strict economy managed to be always half starved and half drunk. The filth of their room was such that one could smell it on the floor below. According to Madame F., neither of the Rougiers had taken off their clothes for four years.