The standard article: the documented stock, assembled and re-tested item by item

this section's standard — every item strange, and every item carrying its document

This section's rule is printed first, because it is the article: a weird fact earns its place here only when a document carries it — a county history read first-hand, a gazetteer, a marker's own text, an official page caught in an error, a domain read first-hand. The banked stock of this build, re-tested item by item for this section, stands as follows. (a) The founder was a circus acrobat: Richard Risley Carlisle, who bought the townsite quarter from Lazarus Bourissa's children and platted New Carlisle on 15 August 1835, performed as "Professor Risley" and originated the Risley act — juggling with the feet — documented in circus history, including Frederik L. Schodt's Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe (2012). (b) The Methodist Collegiate Institute's grand building was bought for $1,500 against an $8,000 schoolhouse figure, 1859 — the county-history record, told whole in the institutional article below. (c) St. Mary's Episcopal church was moved by rail out of town in 1915 to become Good Shepherd, East Chicago — the built-environment article below. (d) The Death Crossing marker claims the route's largest victim toll, a number no record reached carries — an error-shaped fact, held as GAP-NC7-T1 and printed in the errors article. (e) The town's own About page printed "in 1852, the South Shore Railroad came through" — false, and dispelled in the build: the road that came was the 1851 steam road; the South Shore is a 1908 road. (f) Schuyler Colfax, a future Vice President, was a boy clerk in this town in 1836 — the civic-oddities article. (g) The Woods pump-ducking of the draft years — a resisted draftee ducked in a pump trough — stands in Chapman (1880). (h) The Jeremiah Service House was rescued by the historical society in 1998 — Historic New Carlisle's own record. (i) The Studebaker tree sign was listed by Guinness in 1987 as the world's largest living sign — the survivals article. (j) The domain hometowndays.org now serves gambling spam — found hijacked, read first-hand in November 2026; the festival's living address is hometowndays.net. (k) The town's name went to a film house, and the house's address is a standing conflict: the tour record gives the Prancer house at 304 E. Michigan, the Register gives 302 — printed whole, never harmonized, in the objects article. (l) The Dillinger robbery belongs to New Carlisle, Ohio — dispelled whole in this build's crime file and in the closing ledger below. (m) The one-paper town's Gazette is NOT publishing as of 2026; its last home paper, the News, ended in 2015. (n) Terre Coupee Lodge No. 204, F. & A.M., was organized over a store — T. L. Borden's, on 24 July 1856 (Chapman). (o) The Wiffle championship invented a curse — the Curse of Chief Wahoo — and a fake stadium prank, the 2007 "Jacobs Field" — the game's own published record, carried in Sports and tested again in the record-attempt article below. Fifteen items; fifteen documents or named gaps. Nothing else in this section is allowed to be stranger than its source.

Sources:

1. The banked stock of this build, item by item as cited in the articles below — Chapman (1880), the county histories, Polk's gazetteers, the marker record, the town's own pages and the society's record, each re-stated with its document.
2. Frederik L. Schodt, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe (Stonebridge Press, 2012) — the Risley act and its fame, at circus-history strength.
3. The domain hometowndays.org, read first-hand November 2026 (gambling spam served in the festival's old name); hometowndays.net, the festival's current site, read November 2026.