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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1872 | 1 |
| 1876 | 2 |
| 1877 | 1 |
| 1882 | 1 |
| 1883 | 1 |
| 1891 | 1 |
| 1893 | 1 |
| 1894 | 3 |
| 1895 | 1 |
| 1899 | 1 |
| 1903 | 2 |
| 1909 | 2 |
17 stories matching strangest
- A Ghastly Industrial Hazard
A horse is destroyed after a horrific accident at a railroad switch.
- The 'Artistic Swindle' of the Shipbuilding Trust
A scathing editorial denounces the financial manipulation behind the Shipbuilding Trust as a 'bunco game' orchestrated by Gilded Age titans.
- Twenty-Three Miners Died in a Nearly Undamaged Mine
Inspector Edmunds told a Seattle paper that the Blue Canyon explosion was one of the strangest disasters he had ever seen: the mine was barely damaged, yet 23 men were dead, most killed by concussion and gas.
- A Dog Wallowed in a Spring. Then Northport Struck Gold.
A ranch dog's muddy wallow exposed flake gold, touched off a Black Canyon claim rush, and gave Stevens County one of its strangest mining origin stories.
- The Elopement That Baffled Tacoma and Seattle
A husband seeks his wife after she runs off with a gambler, only to find the new arrangement agreeable to all parties involved.
- A Father’s Deadly Act at Riverside
On the same morning his daughter was born, a man took his own life and critically injured his toddler daughter in a shocking explosion.
- The Woman Who Chased Her Lover from Seattle to Semiahmoo
A fugitive, a jilted pursuer, and a steamer route through Puget Sound made for one of the summer’s strangest chases.
- The Pied Piper of Seattle: The Policeman Who Controlled Animals
Before Seattle became a sprawling metropolis, a local officer reportedly possessed a magnetic, inexplicable influence over stray dogs and wild creatures.
- The 'Folly' of Tacoma: A Steamboat Traveler’s Skeptical Report
An 1876 visitor finds the new city of Tacoma lacking and highlights the tragic loss of local boys at sea.
- The Farmer’s Cabinet: Why Seattle’s Papers Are Fighting a War in Washington
An editorial in the *Seattle Daily Post-Intelligencer* argues against elevating the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet status, warning that it would create bureaucratic chaos and ignore the true role of federal oversight.
- "That Ticket Has Blood on It": The Night Seattle Was Haunted by a Cursed Bill
A mysterious $5 bill with a death threat scribbled on the back sparked a city-wide panic and a frantic search for two young women who vanished into the night.
- The School Law That Existed Only in the Enrolled Bill
A $3,700 school-fund dispute in Spokane exposed a legislative clerk's error—and left Washington's superintendent asking whether the enrolled bill or the journals were law.
- Carried Out of Church, Then Found Reading Luke
Already expelled for 'lack of moral rectitude,' Dr. Everett O. Johnson returns to a revival service at First M.E. Church and is removed by police and ushers. His open Bible offers the episode's strangest coda.
- The Dream That Found Two Bodies in Lake Washington
A double murder near Mercer Island, a suspect tried four times and never convicted, and a daughter's suicide—the lake tragedy that haunted the Colman-Patten case for years.
- Two Hundred Lives, One Closed Door: The Pacific Inquiry
Witnesses swore in Port Townsend that the steamer Pacific was rotten when she sailed. Now the very inspectors who certified her seaworthy are investigating her loss — in secret.
- John Wiley's Whiskers Steal a 25–15 Ballgame
A comedian's two-base hit, a 1,000-person crowd, and a disastrous first inning turned a grudge match between the Jacobites and Philistines into Seattle's strangest sporting spectacle of 1894.
- The Moss-Cloaked Giants of Bay Center
A teacher’s letter from the Pacific Northwest frontier describes a landscape of colossal trees and lush undergrowth, challenging the myth of the harsh pioneer struggle.