 A few years ago, the Museum of Curiosities, Fine Arts and Natural History in Hackney in London acquired an object called the world's longest standing erection. Yes, it is exactly what you think it is. It is a preserved penis with an erection, but here's the weird thing. This penis was taken from the very last man to be hanged in England in the 18th century, and weird as still. According to the curator, whenever somebody is hanged, they nearly always get an erection. Apparently the phenomenon is known as angel lust, and it is often attributed to the pressure on the cerebellum, created by the noose that stimulates the nerves. Now, when I first heard this story, I was really weirded out because for goodness sakes, why would you chop off the penis of a man that you've just hanged and then preserve it for so long? But apparently this was a real tradition amongst executioners because they believed that the different body parts of somebody who had been hanged actually contained magical properties. So for instance, there was something called the hands of glory, which was the mummified hands of an executed person because these were considered to be extremely powerful. This world is a very strange place full of very strange stories.