Ten laws that sound invented and are still on the books

In England and Wales, a statute stays on the books until Parliament actively repeals it. There is no expiry date and no automatic cleanup, which is how a rule written for Victorian street traffic can still carry a fine today. Elsewhere the strange rule is deliberate: someone drafted it for a local problem and nobody has looked at it since.

Canada caps how much of a payment can be coins

Section 8 of the Currency Act sets a ceiling by denomination: 40 dollars for coins between two and ten dollars, 25 dollars for one-dollar coins, 10 dollars for anything from ten cents up to a dollar, five dollars for five-cent pieces, and 25 cents for pennies. Past those amounts the other party can refuse the coins. The section carries amendments applied in 2018 and remains the current text in the Justice Laws database. (Source: Currency Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-52, s. 8, Justice Laws website)

Beating a carpet in a London street is still an offence

Section 60 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839 lists what a person may not do in a thoroughfare within the metropolitan police district: burn cork, sift lime, hew timber or stone, beat or shake any carpet, rug or mat. Doormats get a single exemption, and it runs out at eight in the morning. The penalty is now level 1 on the standard scale, which means a maximum of 200 pounds. Elsewhere in the same section, keeping a pigsty at the front of a street without a wall or fence to screen it also counts as an offence. (Source: legislation.gov.uk, Metropolitan Police Act 1839)

Whales and sturgeon belong to the monarch

A statute dated to around 1324, the Prerogativa Regis, made whales and sturgeon royal fish: the personal property of the reigning monarch when caught in territorial waters or washed ashore. The Receiver of Wreck handles the formalities now, and failing to report a wreck find without reasonable excuse carries a fine of up to 2,500 pounds. In practice the Crown normally declines a beached whale, since disposing of one is nobody's idea of a gift. In 2004 a fisherman who landed a 120 kg sturgeon in Swansea Bay asked what he should do with it, was told he could use it as he saw fit, and gave it to the Natural History Museum in London. (Sources: GOV.UK wreck and salvage guidance; BBC News, 2004)

Smokey Bear has his own federal criminal statute

Under 18 U.S.C. section 711, manufacturing, reproducing or using the Smokey Bear character or name for profit without authorisation from the Department of Agriculture is a federal offence punishable by up to six months in prison. Congress passed it in 1952, after the wildfire-prevention mascot's image began showing up on merchandise nobody had licensed. The bear itself was real: a cub rescued after a 1950 fire in New Mexico, later kept at the National Zoo in Washington. (Sources: 18 U.S.C. section 711; U.S. Forest Service)

A feather on the ground is not yours to keep

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits possessing feathers, nests or eggs of most native North American birds without a permit, and the wording does not separate a plucked feather from one the bird simply dropped. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spells this out on its own website because the question comes up so often: a misdemeanour conviction can bring a fine of up to 15,000 dollars and six months in jail. The statute was written to stop commercial trade in wild birds. Its reach turned out to be much wider. (Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

South Australia makes it a crime to wreck a wedding

Section 7 of the Summary Offences Act 1953 states that a person who intentionally obstructs or disturbs a religious service, a wedding or a funeral is guilty of an offence. The maximum penalty is 10,000 Australian dollars or two years in prison. Funerals receive the same protection, which suggests how the drafters in 1953 ranked these things. (Source: Summary Offences Act 1953 (SA), s. 7)

Monza outlawed the round goldfish bowl

The council of Monza, the city north of Milan with the motor racing circuit, passed a ruling in 2004 banning goldfish bowls. Giampietro Mosca, the council official behind it, told reporters that a fish in a bowl has a distorted view of reality and that bowls generally have no filter, so the water never gets properly oxygenated. A councillor who objected sent him a goldfish in a bowl as a gift. The same measure banned dyed chicks at fairs and small animals handed out as competition prizes, and Rome later wrote a comparable ban into its animal welfare code. (Sources: ABC News, AFP report, July 2004)

Turin sets a minimum of three walks a day for dogs

Turin's city council passed an ordinance in the mid-2000s requiring owners to walk their dogs at least three times a day, with fines reported up to about 500 euros. Enforcement runs on neighbours, who supply most of the complaints. Rome had set a one-walk daily minimum a year earlier. Walking the dog stayed on the short list of legitimate reasons to leave home during the strictest phase of Italy's pandemic lockdown. (Sources: BBC News; Metro)

Switzerland treats a lone goldfish as a welfare problem

Animal welfare rules introduced in Switzerland from 2008 treat social species as needing company. Keeping a single goldfish, guinea pig or budgerigar amounts to keeping it in isolation, which the rules class as poor treatment. The same provisions ask cat owners to give the animal outdoor access or a window with a view of other cats, and failing that, to keep two. Coverage at the time pointed owners towards pet matchmaking websites when one half of a pair died. (Sources: Swiss animal protection legislation, as reported by Xinhua in 2016)

Japan wrote a waistline into law

From April 2008, employers and local governments in Japan have to measure the waist of every insured person aged 40 to 74 at the annual check-up. The thresholds are 85 cm for men and 90 cm for women, drawn from screening guidelines for metabolic syndrome. Anyone over the line with additional risk factors gets diet and exercise guidance, and organisations that miss their reduction targets face financial penalties. The national goal set in 2008 was a 25 per cent cut in the overweight population within seven years. (Source: Xinhua, citing Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare)

Most of these are enforced rarely, if at all. They stay because repealing a law takes more effort than ignoring it, and because a justification that seemed ordinary in 1324 reads very differently now.