Uncover a collection of forgotten, bizarre, and entertaining tales centered around Long Beach, California, collected from the past 130 years:

• The Cinema-Loving Opossum: An opossum with an unexpected affinity for X-rated films.

• The Egg Bandit: A canine thief driven by a relentless appetite for raw eggs.

• The Culinary Misfortune: A man who inadvertently cooked away a $38,000 pearl fortune because he preferred his oysters warm.

• Coastal Oddities: Unexplained events and strange creatures lurking off the California coast.

• Papal Delicacies: The official recipe for Pope Pius IV’s favorite dish—fried frog livers.

• The Great Squirrel Bounty: A forgotten statewide contest where California schoolchildren were tasked with exterminating ground squirrels and bringing their tails to class as proof.

Whether these vintage local stories are absolute historical fact or written with a bit of tongue-in-cheek flair is up to you to decide. Either way, they offer a hilarious, fascinating glimpse into California’s eccentric past.

Read Kate Karp’s review in the Long Beach Post.