INTRODUCTION


Hello, my name is Daniel. The idea behind my blog is to investigate and talk about bizarre laws around the world.

Quensland, Australia restive horse law

In Quensland, Australia, drivers must give way to a restive horse. What this means is that if you are in a car driving along the road, and you happen to encounter a horse whom seems distressed, be it by your car or another cause, you are required to not only move to the side of the road, giving space for the animal to be rode on, but also switch off your engine until a suitable time when the movement or noise of the car will not affect the horse.

Although this law seems strangely specific, it is actually relatively logical unlike many other strange laws. The reason being that you obviously don't want to stress the horse out as that could become a tricky situation seeing as the animal is so large. Also in consideration is the person riding the horse as you would not want the situation to lead to someone getting injured. From what I gather this law would have been invented relatively early on in the production of cars, as back then they would have been much louder and startling for the horses. not to mention the fact that the horse and carriage would have been in strong use, and horses would have "ruled the road", not cars.

The strangest law so far that I have come across has to be the law in France that allows somebody to marry a dead person. It was called Posthumous marriage. It came about during World War II, when some French women were married by proxy to soldiers that had died weeks before (marrying by proxy is where a person acts as someone else, and marries the other person on their behalf). this is legal under Article 171 of the civil code. it states " The President of the Republic may, for serious reasons, authorize the solemnization of marriage if one of the spouses died after completion of official formalities marking it unequivocal consent." Sourced from Wikipedia. It became legal for civilians in the 1950's, when a man engaged to a women called Irene Jodant was killed when a dam burst in Frejus, France, and killed 399 other people. Iréne Jodant pleaded with the French President Charles de Gaulle, to let her carry on her plans, to marry this man  André Capra, who had died. She somehow managed to get the support of the media and public. Within a few monthes of her pleading, her persistence and overwhelming support got her what she wanted, she married the man.
If somebody wants to do this, then they have to send a request to the President, who sends it to the Justice Minister, who send it to the prosecutor of the surviving members district.


in my opinion thus is by far the strangest of all the laws that I encountered.
































































 

In London it is illegal for a person who has the plague, knowingly, to flag down a taxi and try to ride a bus. This seems quite obvious to me that if you have the plague, or any of the other notifiable diseases including rabies and leprosy, that taking public transport shouldn't really be an option for you. However apparently it needs to be in writing, as it is, in a part of the  Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. Although this is unlikely, the plague could spread throughout a city as in urban areas with high rat infestations, the plague can pass between fleas and rats. If this somehow happens and you are unfortunate enough to contract one of these diseases, the taxi driver is actually allowed to let the you in, as long as they have their taxi immediately disinfected afterwards. However when it comes to the bus you have no chance as it is illegal for the driver to let you on. If only there laws for stopping a person with a horrific cold onto the bus.

Alabama salt on railroad law

I came across a strange sounding law from Alabama, USA, which says that "it is illegal for a person to put salt on a railroad track." Despite how random this sounds, there was a reason for this. In the 1900's, robbers would put salt on the railroad tracks, if there were large animals like cows or deer near by. The reason for this was that they were trying to recreate a salt lick, also known as a mineral lick. A salt/mineral lick is a deposit of either natural salts and minerals, or man made blocks of it. These animals require these salts/minerals, and get them by licking these deposits. So the plan of the robbers was that by putting down this salt, it would attract these large animals to the track, blocking it off , and force the driver of the train to stop it, therefore giving the robbers time to board the train, and loot it.


So despite my original thoughts when I read it, it made a little more sense as I researched it. 

Florida Parrachute Law

To this day, all around the world, there are some bizarre and random laws that are still in practice. I intend on sharing some of these laws with you and going into the history of some of them.




To start, we will begin in Florida, USA. There is a law that says that "If you're a single, divorced, or widowed woman, you can't parachute on Sunday afternoons". When asked about this law, a worker named Tommy from Skydive Jacksonville said that he had never heard of it, nor had he heard of this law being enforced and that it certainly doesn't stop anyone from coming out on one of their busiest days of the week.



The origins of this bizarre old law seem to be unknown. There are stories that it was created by a state senator in an attempt to break up his daughters relationship with a skydiver, as he did not approve of the guy. Unfortunately this story cannot be confirmed.

I cannot find any cases of this being enforced. The only reason why it would be, could be in court if the prosecutor or defendant had no case and was clasping at straws. As for most of these strange laws, the reason that they are still around today is that the process of dismissing them takes a lot of effort, and this effort is not really worth the end result.