Why would a woman grease her car axle with bananas? I'm Colton from Ripley's.com and this is your Weird Minute. Aloha was born Idris Galcia Welsh on October 13th, 1906. She grew up on a steady diet of adventure tales by WHG Kingston, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more. Aloha attended a strict French convent school. In the convent, Aloha chafed against the self-denying rigors. She longed to run away to explore the world she'd read so much about.
She got her chance when Captain Walter Wanderell placed an ad in the paper looking for brains, beauty, and breeches to go on a world tour with him. Aloha loved record breaking. In the 1920s, she traveled 380,000 miles, traveling across 80 countries, becoming the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a Ford Model T. Just 16 years old at the time, the epic journey took seven years to complete.
A female Indiana Jones, she was the first woman to fly Brazil's Mato Grosso and document the Bora Bora people of Brazil. Her journeys were arduous, forcing her to improvise axle grease with bananas and use kerosene for fuel at times. She married her traveling companion, but he later died under mysterious circumstances. Becoming known as the Rhinestone Widow, the public was taken aback by her apparent apathy at her husband's death, and his murder was never solved.
For more about Aloha, visit Ripley's.com. Rate the Weird Minute if you haven't already, and tune in tomorrow for another Minute of Odd.