Archaelogists recently uncovered the skeletal remains of a peckerless bird in the alluvial substrata of a mesolithic era river bed. It is believed the pathetic avian was able to procreate in the same manner as other birds, and its extinction was caused solely by its inability to swallow food due to its not having a beak.
All clocks manufactured in the city of Magdeburg in 1542 counted 59 seconds to the minute because of a legal ruling based on an argument between two philosophers as to whether or not the sixtieth second should be counted as "second zero", the start of the next minute rather than the end of the current one. This state of affairs persisted until January 18th 1543 when the law was overturned, but by then local time was so badly out of whack that they had to insert an extra Thursday every other week for almost six months to fix things. To this day, Magdeburg is officially still a minute and a half behind everyone else.