In Alaska, it's legal to shoot a bear. But it's illegal to wake one up to take a photo. In the UK, it's technically an act of treason to place a postage stamp with the King's head upside down. These aren't jokes. These are real laws. And they're just the beginning.
Every country has laws that made sense at some point in history. But history moved on — and the laws didn't. They're still on the books, technically enforceable, and absolutely bizarre. We dug through legal codes from every continent to find the strangest laws that still exist in 2026. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you wonder who hurt the legislators.
Let's start in the United States, the undisputed champion of weird laws.
In Alabama, it's illegal to wear a fake mustache in church if it causes laughter. Apparently, someone once disrupted a service so badly they made a law about it.
In Arizona, donkeys cannot sleep in bathtubs. This dates back to a 1924 incident where a rancher's donkey fell asleep in a bathtub, a dam broke, and the donkey floated through town in the tub on a wave of floodwater. Instead of moving the donkey, they made it illegal.
In Georgia, it's against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. The fact that this needed to be specified raises several questions.
In Indiana, Pi is — well, almost was — legally 3.2. In 1897, a state legislator tried to pass a bill legally redefining the mathematical constant Pi. It nearly passed. A mathematics professor who happened to be visiting the statehouse intervened just in time.
And in Florida — because of course Florida — if an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the owner must pay the same parking fee as a car. The law is still technically enforceable.
The United Kingdom has centuries of laws piled on top of each other, and nobody's cleaned up.
It is technically illegal to be drunk in a pub. The 1872 Licensing Act makes it an offense to be drunk on any licensed premises. The very place designed to make you drunk... won't legally allow you to be drunk.
Under a 1986 law, it's illegal to handle a salmon under suspicious circumstances. What counts as suspicious? The law doesn't clearly define it. But if you're holding a fish and looking shifty, you could theoretically be arrested.
In the city of Chester, you're technically allowed to shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow inside the city walls after midnight. This medieval law was never officially repealed. Obviously, modern law overrides it, but it's still technically there.
And dying in the Houses of Parliament is supposedly illegal. The reasoning? Anyone who dies there would be entitled to a state funeral. While historians debate whether this is actually written law, the fact that it's widely believed says everything about British legislative history.
But weird laws aren't just an English-speaking phenomenon.
In Switzerland, it's illegal to flush a toilet after 10 PM in apartment buildings. Noise pollution laws are taken so seriously that flushing a toilet counts as a disturbance to your neighbors' peace.
In Thailand, stepping on money is illegal. Because Thai currency features the King's face, stepping on it is considered an act of disrespect to the monarchy — and lèse-majesté laws carry serious prison time.
In France, it was illegal to name a pig Napoleon. This stems from laws designed to prevent insults to past rulers. And reportedly, you technically need the government's approval to name your child — registrars can reject names they consider not in the child's interest.
In Japan, obesity is effectively regulated. The Metabo Law requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of citizens over 40. If your waistline exceeds the limit — 85 centimeters for men, 90 for women — your employer or local government could face financial penalties.
In Singapore, selling or importing chewing gum has been illegal since 1992. The prime minister banned it after gum was used to jam the doors of the new mass transit system. Therapeutic gum was later allowed, but only with a prescription.
Here's the thing most people don't realize. These laws aren't just funny relics. They reveal how lawmaking actually works. Laws are almost never removed from the books — they're just overridden by newer ones. The legal code in most countries is a geological record of every panic, incident, and cultural anxiety that was ever important enough to legislate.
Every weird law was once someone's emergency. And somewhere right now, a legislator is writing a law that will seem absolutely insane in 200 years.