What a Weird Week gets you caught up on the odd/ interesting/ strange/ fun and weird news that happened this week. Ten stories in 15 minutes!
See https://www.shownotes.page or "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts/ incl YouTube.
Do folks in Papua New Guinea really hide smokes at Easter?! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13256711/The-strangest-Easter-traditions-world-whipping-people-giant-omelettes-large-feed-2-000-people-hiding-cigarettes-near-churches.html
Norway's Easter crime drama and crime novel tradition. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13256711/The-strangest-Easter-traditions-world-whipping-people-giant-omelettes-large-feed-2-000-people-hiding-cigarettes-near-churches.html
Matt Stonie once ate 255 Peeps in five minutes. *Professional eater/ Do not attempt! https://majorleagueeating.com/contests/732 and video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbJ2ccROkY
See https://www.shownotes.page or "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts/ incl YouTube.
Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week, a look at the odd, interesting, strange, fun and weird stories that made news this week. See bottom of shownotes page for a transcript of the podcast episode. To Subscribe/ get in touch/ other see www.shownotes.page.
Thanks for rating and reviewing!
These are the shownotes for Season 6, Ep 16 first published Fri Apr 18th 2025.
It's our Easter special so we've got some weird news and other interesting Easter stuff for you this week.
If you don't celebrate the holiday, I think you'll still find this stuff to be neato but if you want to skip this ep, we'll be back with the usual format next week.
Thanks for rating and reviewing!
These are the shownotes for Season 6, Ep 16 first published Fri Apr 18th 2025.
It's our Easter special so we've got some weird news and other interesting Easter stuff for you this week.
If you don't celebrate the holiday, I think you'll still find this stuff to be neato but if you want to skip this ep, we'll be back with the usual format next week.
Churches in a good-natured Easter fireworks battle on island of Chios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouketopolemos
Enormous Easter omelette tradition in France inspired by Napoleon. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/weirdest-easter-traditions-crucifixion-rabbit-hunting-running-madonna-a7682576.html
Do folks in Papua New Guinea really hide smokes at Easter?! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13256711/The-strangest-Easter-traditions-world-whipping-people-giant-omelettes-large-feed-2-000-people-hiding-cigarettes-near-churches.html
Norway's Easter crime drama and crime novel tradition. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13256711/The-strangest-Easter-traditions-world-whipping-people-giant-omelettes-large-feed-2-000-people-hiding-cigarettes-near-churches.html
^EASTER (file photo)
Marshmallow decorating kits. https://people.com/jet-puffed-marshmallow-dyeing-kit-offers-cheaper-alternative-this-easter-amid-high-egg-prices-11715031
Marshmallow decorating kits. https://people.com/jet-puffed-marshmallow-dyeing-kit-offers-cheaper-alternative-this-easter-amid-high-egg-prices-11715031
Matt Stonie once ate 255 Peeps in five minutes. *Professional eater/ Do not attempt! https://majorleagueeating.com/contests/732 and video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbJ2ccROkY
🐰 World Records you could break this Easter Season:
- most Instagram likes of an egg also see HERE and HERE
- biggest batch of scrambled eggs (more than 6,800 pounds)
- most people to pass an egg around (390+ people did this, I think with spoons but hard to find more info)
- Most eggs eaten while watching Egg Scene from Cool Hand Luke... it's 49 eggs you guys *personal fave
- "The most boiled eggs to be peeled and eaten in a minute is 6"
Here are some Amazing Peeps Facts via (https://nationaltoday.com/peeps-day/)
YouTube stream
Transcript:
- most Instagram likes of an egg also see HERE and HERE
- biggest batch of scrambled eggs (more than 6,800 pounds)
- most people to pass an egg around (390+ people did this, I think with spoons but hard to find more info)
- Most eggs eaten while watching Egg Scene from Cool Hand Luke... it's 49 eggs you guys *personal fave
- "The most boiled eggs to be peeled and eaten in a minute is 6"
- A big list of Egg Records HERE!
@scottyhorsman the rise of Peter Cottonbot
♬ original sound - scottyhorsman
🐰 Easter Trivia:
- Easter Trivia... the Easter Bilby from Australia...
- Easter Trivia... the Easter Bilby from Australia...
In 1991, Rabbit-Free Australia launched a campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, or rabbit-eared bandicoot. Why the switch? In Australia, rabbits are widely considered pests for destroying crops and land. Companies now make chocolate bilbies for Easter, pic.twitter.com/oVBXmhpY7N
— Helena Ereditsh Dr (@ereditsh) April 13, 2022
🐤 Early 1950s... the company that makes
Peeps went from hand-made to marshmallow automation (manufacturing time
went from close to 27 hours to six minutes!)
🐤 2009... Peeps Lip Balm is introduced. *Not food.
🐤 2017... World Peeps-eating champion... Matt Stonie of California won the second annual World Peeps Eating Championship in 2017 when he ate 255 peeps in five minutes!
🐤 2009... Peeps Lip Balm is introduced. *Not food.
🐤 2017... World Peeps-eating champion... Matt Stonie of California won the second annual World Peeps Eating Championship in 2017 when he ate 255 peeps in five minutes!
🐤 Amazing Peeps Fact Quote:
"In 1999, some scientists at Emory University tested the theory that
Peeps are indestructible by microwave, tap water, acetone, boiling
water, and sulfuric acid. The candies survived them all until they were
tested with phenol, in which only the eyes remained!"
🐤 What is the best-selling Peep? Yellow chicks are the original Peeps and still the people’s favorite.
🐤 Peeps are the Best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy... around 700 million Peeps are eaten each Easter season!
🐤 What is the best-selling Peep? Yellow chicks are the original Peeps and still the people’s favorite.
🐤 Peeps are the Best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy... around 700 million Peeps are eaten each Easter season!
🎵
Transcript below.
Spotify Stream...
YouTube stream
00:00
It's the What a Weird Week Easter Special 2025. Hi, everybody. It's weird. This is like crazy being here. Weird. Really weird. Bigfoot ate out of my trash. Well, I got a great show for you today with some wonderful weird stuff. Hi, friends. I'm Scott. And this is What a Weird Week. A look at the odd, interesting, strange, fun and weird stories, usually stories from the news this week that are odd and interesting. But this is our Easter special.
00:26
So we've got some weird news and other interesting Easter stuff for you this week. If you don't celebrate the holiday, I think you'll still find this stuff kind of neeto-kazito, but maybe you want to skip this episode. We're back with our usual format next week. If you want to get the show notes or anything like that, get in touch or find out more about our program. You can go to show notes dot page show notes dot page. All right, let's get started with the fireworks war that happens at Easter time in Greece. There are churches.
00:56
in this community in Greece the church is on the hilltop and they're nearby one another and so to celebrate midnight mass at Easter time they have fireworks but they aim at each other's bell tower and then they count how many direct hits and somebody is crowned the winner of the annual fireworks battle so I will link to all of these things we're talking about in the show notes
01:20
Maybe our show goes out over the internet, right? So maybe this is something you do where you're at or you do something similar. I certainly mean no disrespect. It sounds very exciting. Okay. Now we have a tradition of a giant omelet being prepared on Easter Monday. This is a village in France. A thousand people live in this village and every Easter Monday they get a fire going outside. They put a giant 10 foot pan on the fire and they start cracking eggs.
01:49
5,000 eggs, over a hundred pounds of bacon, a of other ingredients. They make one omelet big enough to serve everyone in the village. A thousand people. Zutalao. That sounds delightful. And they say their tradition stems from the story about when Napoleon came through the village and demanded a giant egg dish for his troops. His men needed eggs. And that's where this comes from. Where I'm at you guys, East Coast Canada, the price of eggs.
02:18
still pretty reasonable, but I know some places our show goes out, the price of eggs has skyrocketed and maybe you don't want to, instead of a 5,000 egg omelet, maybe you just want, you know, like maybe two villagers get an omelet and that's all there is in the budget this year. It would still be nice. This one, I almost didn't do it. I feel like it may be controversial and I tried to do fact checking. The rest of the staff has the long weekend off.
02:43
I linked to the article in the Daily Mail. You can read this thing. It's a tradition out of Papua New Guinea where the Daily Mail says instead of looking outdoors, you know, chocolate would melt. So at Easter time, cartons of cigarettes are hidden in trees. And that's the treasure hunt at Easter time. Is it true? If you have more knowledge on this than the Daily Mail, would you reach out and let me know about the looking for Easter smokes?
03:11
Is that a real thing in New Guinea? I'm torn on this. Smoking is bad for your health, but treasure hunts are fun. So maybe treasure hunt, don't then don't smoke. No, you know what? I don't know about this one at all. You guys, it's I'm not sure. I'll link to the thing though, if you want to read the article. This one's a shorty. I didn't know that the butter lamb existed. I remember doing a report on the butter cow one time at a state fair where they made an entire cow.
03:41
Sculpted it out of butter and a similar tradition on a smaller scale in some parts of the world A lamb is carved out of butter and it's given dried clove eyes And the photo that we linked to I mean you'd have to tell me it was a lamb It definitely looks like you tried to do something on a butter, but anyway, let's stop there on that one
04:02
Butter lamb. This next one, a tradition maybe you've heard of, maybe if you haven't, you might want to adopt it. In Norway, the tradition of reading crime novels and watching crime TV shows at Easter time. The article we link to says it all goes back to the 1920s. There was an advertising campaign for a book trying to sell a crime book. And it was, I guess, so successful that every year that was a time to sell your crime novel. And now more recently, your crime TV show.
04:29
Now, if we're wrong, let me say again, the fact checkers have gone home for the long weekend. So if you're in Norway and you're like, nope, nope, you got this wrong. Let us know. Reach out through show notes dot page. Also, that's where you can get our show notes. And that's where we link to the article that talks about this crime novel Easter tradition. How could this not catch on though? A good book and a long weekend where you got a house full of chocolate. Like that's a pretty good weekend.
04:57
This next one is a new tradition they're trying to get going. Maybe you caught this in the news, it got picked up a lot because the price of eggs in some places, very expensive. The folks at JetPuffed, in case you're unfamiliar, that's a marshmallow brand and they're coming out with a kit where you can decorate marshmallows instead of eggs. Dye the marshmallows, paint the marshmallows, decorate those marshmallows. So another option, a less expensive option and some Easter fun.
05:24
It's an idea you could steal, even if you don't get the kit from JetPuffed, might want to steal the idea. We put a link in the show notes. Next up is the world record for eating marshmallow peeps. Delicious peeps, or maybe you're not a peep fan and you're like, peeps are for freaks. That's a pretty good slogan. Write that one down somebody. Try to sell that to peeps later. So this world record has stood the test of time, Matt Stoney.
05:49
A professional eater, please do not attempt unless you're a professional. With 255 peeps! Yeah, I missed! Yeah! The eater, Stoney! In five minutes, Matt Stoney ate 255 peeps. That is the record. Do you want to see that? Perhaps you're in a situation where you eat too many peeps. Watch Matt Stoney eat these peeps and then maybe you won't have an appetite for peeps for a while.
06:19
We'll link to the video in the show notes. Now some additional world records we like to mention at Easter time and maybe one of these is up your alley. Perhaps you this weekend will be breaking one of these world records. First one is the most Instagram likes of an egg. We're into the millions and millions and millions and millions of likes of the world record egg. came out at a time when I believe one of the Kardashians was the most liked photo on Instagram.
06:50
And a stock photo of an egg showed up on the account world record egg. And the caption was something like, hey, let's try to get this picture of an egg, the most liked thing on Instagram. Very positive message. We can do it. Something like that. And it did. It went on to become the most liked image on Instagram for quite a while. Now it's second place, but it is the most liked egg on Instagram.
07:18
But maybe you got a great looking egg and you're ready to beat that record this weekend. Good luck and Godspeed. A few other ones here. The biggest batch of scrambled eggs, more than 6,800 pounds. If you wanted to get that going this weekend, most people to pass an egg around. I believe this is the spoon, the old pass the egg on the spoon. It's hard to find a lot more info on this, but the Guinness World Record is 390 plus people passing the egg.
07:47
So that's a record maybe you want to set if you go into a place with a good crowd on. eggs eaten while watching the egg scene from Cool Hand Luke. 49 eggs. That is, in case you're unfamiliar, that is a famous scene from a classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, where the character is trying to eat 50 eggs, hard-boiled eggs, and while people were watching that scene unfold, they ate 49 eggs. And that's not too shabby.
08:16
The most boiled eggs to be peeled and eaten in one minute? Six! That sounds like something you could do, maybe? If you get the right eggs, sometimes those things are hard to peel. How about now we hit you with some Peeps Facts, where Peeps are the best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy. Over half a billion Peeps are eaten each Easter season. The best-selling Peep? The yellow Peep. The yellow chick. Maybe you like the purple bunny or something else?
08:45
Well, you're weirdo. No judgment here. I'm just, you know, science has spoken on that. The company that makes peeps in the 1950s used to make them by hand. Took 27 hours, almost 27 hours to make a peep. Then they went automation. Six minutes, the six minute peep. Scientists at Emory University in the 1990s tested a theory that peeps might be indestructible by a number of means. Microwaving.
09:13
running tap water over boiling water. Hold on a second. A peep can survive boiling water. Really? They ran tests and the peep is surprisingly resilient and hard to destroy. It's the candy of resilience, you guys. I mean, chocolate is delicious, but you leave that chocolate out in the sun for 10 seconds and you got mush. You got chocolatey mush. A peep is going to stay on the test of time. You know what? On that inspiring note, let's call her a day.
09:43
Thank you for listening to the What a Weird Week Easter Special. Next week we're gonna be back with the normal format of weird news, odd and interesting stuff. So hope you can tune that in. I appreciate it when you like, follow, give stars to, whatever the things are. You can get all our show notes and find out more about the program. Go to shownotes.page. Catch you next week with more weird stuff on What a Weird Week.
10:17
Here comes Dennis Cottontail Yeah, he's Peter's brother He'd rather hide himself than Easter eggs Easter eggs He borrowed cash from a shady dude And now it seems he's kinda screwed It's hard to hop around with broken legs Broken legs Happy Easter Save your keister Dennis, you have gotta get out of town
10:46
Just lie low until the heat's died down. Dennis the Rabbit Who Has No Business Sense.
It's the What a Weird Week Easter Special 2025. Hi, everybody. It's weird. This is like crazy being here. Weird. Really weird. Bigfoot ate out of my trash. Well, I got a great show for you today with some wonderful weird stuff. Hi, friends. I'm Scott. And this is What a Weird Week. A look at the odd, interesting, strange, fun and weird stories, usually stories from the news this week that are odd and interesting. But this is our Easter special.
00:26
So we've got some weird news and other interesting Easter stuff for you this week. If you don't celebrate the holiday, I think you'll still find this stuff kind of neeto-kazito, but maybe you want to skip this episode. We're back with our usual format next week. If you want to get the show notes or anything like that, get in touch or find out more about our program. You can go to show notes dot page show notes dot page. All right, let's get started with the fireworks war that happens at Easter time in Greece. There are churches.
00:56
in this community in Greece the church is on the hilltop and they're nearby one another and so to celebrate midnight mass at Easter time they have fireworks but they aim at each other's bell tower and then they count how many direct hits and somebody is crowned the winner of the annual fireworks battle so I will link to all of these things we're talking about in the show notes
01:20
Maybe our show goes out over the internet, right? So maybe this is something you do where you're at or you do something similar. I certainly mean no disrespect. It sounds very exciting. Okay. Now we have a tradition of a giant omelet being prepared on Easter Monday. This is a village in France. A thousand people live in this village and every Easter Monday they get a fire going outside. They put a giant 10 foot pan on the fire and they start cracking eggs.
01:49
5,000 eggs, over a hundred pounds of bacon, a of other ingredients. They make one omelet big enough to serve everyone in the village. A thousand people. Zutalao. That sounds delightful. And they say their tradition stems from the story about when Napoleon came through the village and demanded a giant egg dish for his troops. His men needed eggs. And that's where this comes from. Where I'm at you guys, East Coast Canada, the price of eggs.
02:18
still pretty reasonable, but I know some places our show goes out, the price of eggs has skyrocketed and maybe you don't want to, instead of a 5,000 egg omelet, maybe you just want, you know, like maybe two villagers get an omelet and that's all there is in the budget this year. It would still be nice. This one, I almost didn't do it. I feel like it may be controversial and I tried to do fact checking. The rest of the staff has the long weekend off.
02:43
I linked to the article in the Daily Mail. You can read this thing. It's a tradition out of Papua New Guinea where the Daily Mail says instead of looking outdoors, you know, chocolate would melt. So at Easter time, cartons of cigarettes are hidden in trees. And that's the treasure hunt at Easter time. Is it true? If you have more knowledge on this than the Daily Mail, would you reach out and let me know about the looking for Easter smokes?
03:11
Is that a real thing in New Guinea? I'm torn on this. Smoking is bad for your health, but treasure hunts are fun. So maybe treasure hunt, don't then don't smoke. No, you know what? I don't know about this one at all. You guys, it's I'm not sure. I'll link to the thing though, if you want to read the article. This one's a shorty. I didn't know that the butter lamb existed. I remember doing a report on the butter cow one time at a state fair where they made an entire cow.
03:41
Sculpted it out of butter and a similar tradition on a smaller scale in some parts of the world A lamb is carved out of butter and it's given dried clove eyes And the photo that we linked to I mean you'd have to tell me it was a lamb It definitely looks like you tried to do something on a butter, but anyway, let's stop there on that one
04:02
Butter lamb. This next one, a tradition maybe you've heard of, maybe if you haven't, you might want to adopt it. In Norway, the tradition of reading crime novels and watching crime TV shows at Easter time. The article we link to says it all goes back to the 1920s. There was an advertising campaign for a book trying to sell a crime book. And it was, I guess, so successful that every year that was a time to sell your crime novel. And now more recently, your crime TV show.
04:29
Now, if we're wrong, let me say again, the fact checkers have gone home for the long weekend. So if you're in Norway and you're like, nope, nope, you got this wrong. Let us know. Reach out through show notes dot page. Also, that's where you can get our show notes. And that's where we link to the article that talks about this crime novel Easter tradition. How could this not catch on though? A good book and a long weekend where you got a house full of chocolate. Like that's a pretty good weekend.
04:57
This next one is a new tradition they're trying to get going. Maybe you caught this in the news, it got picked up a lot because the price of eggs in some places, very expensive. The folks at JetPuffed, in case you're unfamiliar, that's a marshmallow brand and they're coming out with a kit where you can decorate marshmallows instead of eggs. Dye the marshmallows, paint the marshmallows, decorate those marshmallows. So another option, a less expensive option and some Easter fun.
05:24
It's an idea you could steal, even if you don't get the kit from JetPuffed, might want to steal the idea. We put a link in the show notes. Next up is the world record for eating marshmallow peeps. Delicious peeps, or maybe you're not a peep fan and you're like, peeps are for freaks. That's a pretty good slogan. Write that one down somebody. Try to sell that to peeps later. So this world record has stood the test of time, Matt Stoney.
05:49
A professional eater, please do not attempt unless you're a professional. With 255 peeps! Yeah, I missed! Yeah! The eater, Stoney! In five minutes, Matt Stoney ate 255 peeps. That is the record. Do you want to see that? Perhaps you're in a situation where you eat too many peeps. Watch Matt Stoney eat these peeps and then maybe you won't have an appetite for peeps for a while.
06:19
We'll link to the video in the show notes. Now some additional world records we like to mention at Easter time and maybe one of these is up your alley. Perhaps you this weekend will be breaking one of these world records. First one is the most Instagram likes of an egg. We're into the millions and millions and millions and millions of likes of the world record egg. came out at a time when I believe one of the Kardashians was the most liked photo on Instagram.
06:50
And a stock photo of an egg showed up on the account world record egg. And the caption was something like, hey, let's try to get this picture of an egg, the most liked thing on Instagram. Very positive message. We can do it. Something like that. And it did. It went on to become the most liked image on Instagram for quite a while. Now it's second place, but it is the most liked egg on Instagram.
07:18
But maybe you got a great looking egg and you're ready to beat that record this weekend. Good luck and Godspeed. A few other ones here. The biggest batch of scrambled eggs, more than 6,800 pounds. If you wanted to get that going this weekend, most people to pass an egg around. I believe this is the spoon, the old pass the egg on the spoon. It's hard to find a lot more info on this, but the Guinness World Record is 390 plus people passing the egg.
07:47
So that's a record maybe you want to set if you go into a place with a good crowd on. eggs eaten while watching the egg scene from Cool Hand Luke. 49 eggs. That is, in case you're unfamiliar, that is a famous scene from a classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, where the character is trying to eat 50 eggs, hard-boiled eggs, and while people were watching that scene unfold, they ate 49 eggs. And that's not too shabby.
08:16
The most boiled eggs to be peeled and eaten in one minute? Six! That sounds like something you could do, maybe? If you get the right eggs, sometimes those things are hard to peel. How about now we hit you with some Peeps Facts, where Peeps are the best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy. Over half a billion Peeps are eaten each Easter season. The best-selling Peep? The yellow Peep. The yellow chick. Maybe you like the purple bunny or something else?
08:45
Well, you're weirdo. No judgment here. I'm just, you know, science has spoken on that. The company that makes peeps in the 1950s used to make them by hand. Took 27 hours, almost 27 hours to make a peep. Then they went automation. Six minutes, the six minute peep. Scientists at Emory University in the 1990s tested a theory that peeps might be indestructible by a number of means. Microwaving.
09:13
running tap water over boiling water. Hold on a second. A peep can survive boiling water. Really? They ran tests and the peep is surprisingly resilient and hard to destroy. It's the candy of resilience, you guys. I mean, chocolate is delicious, but you leave that chocolate out in the sun for 10 seconds and you got mush. You got chocolatey mush. A peep is going to stay on the test of time. You know what? On that inspiring note, let's call her a day.
09:43
Thank you for listening to the What a Weird Week Easter Special. Next week we're gonna be back with the normal format of weird news, odd and interesting stuff. So hope you can tune that in. I appreciate it when you like, follow, give stars to, whatever the things are. You can get all our show notes and find out more about the program. Go to shownotes.page. Catch you next week with more weird stuff on What a Weird Week.
10:17
Here comes Dennis Cottontail Yeah, he's Peter's brother He'd rather hide himself than Easter eggs Easter eggs He borrowed cash from a shady dude And now it seems he's kinda screwed It's hard to hop around with broken legs Broken legs Happy Easter Save your keister Dennis, you have gotta get out of town
10:46
Just lie low until the heat's died down. Dennis the Rabbit Who Has No Business Sense.
END TRANSCRIPT