Improbable things

The improbable things that people somehow discovered to do:

docbrite mentioned on her LJ that she'd finally gotten to eat a fresh durian:

So as I told Pete, cutting open a fresh durian is like dissecting an alien. I can't imagine how anyone ever figured out that these things are good to eat (and I realize many would dispute that they are). They're as big as your head and covered with hard, pointy spikes that can easily cut your finger. If you do manage to slice through the extremely tough skin, you're greeted with a rush of the gassy, corpsey aroma that causes durians to be banned by many Southeast Asian hotels and airlines. The whole thing is divided into segments and you must saw through the chitinous wall of each individual chamber in order to scoop out the tasty (though admittedly stinky) pulp. I've washed my hands four or five times since tackling my durian, and they still stink a little.

Yesterday, in a discussion of pre-industrial dyes, Linda McAllister said on rasff:

along with tapioca, it's one of those things that makes me scratch me head and think, just how did anyone figure this out? "Hey Mabel - let's take these leaves, let 'em rot, then scrape this blue stuff off which we'll piss on and let sit around in the sun until it turns a sickly green then we'll dip stuff in it!"

to which Paul Dormer replied:

Reminds me of a routine I saw a comic do on TV many years ago. He'd discovered that haemorrhoid treatment was made with shark liver extract. He posited someone walking a beach, his piles causing him agony, and finding a dead shark. "I think I'll take a handful of its liver and stuff it up my arse."