Z is for Zero Day

On August 11th, 1958, at exactly 12:01 AM, every human being on the planet Earth blacked out for exactly 24 hours. Oddly, this did not result in great loss of life or property damage. In fact, everyone was just fine. Planes that had been in the air were on the ground safely, all cars were stopped, ships were ok, medical procedures were still at the exact point where the staff and/or patient blacked out...everything was fine except for the missing 24 hours.

Well, that and...

The cities of Novosibirsk, Adelaide, Long Beach, Stockholm, Cusco and Hong Kong were gone. In their places were terrain and ecosystems that should have taken at least 200 years to arise.

There were real live leprechauns in Ireland and the equivalent little faery folk in many other lands.

Portions of deserts all over the world had been changed into grasslands, complete with ponds and lakes that were fed by artesian springs.

Apes, pigs, dolphins and elephants could all speak human languages. They had a lot to say, most of it not good and directed at humans.

All of the nuclear weapons were gone.

Some people slowly, over the course of about a month, changed sex or ethnicity or both.

There has not been a single case of multiple human births since that day. The last set of human twins was born 2 minutes before the blackout in Toronto, Canada.

To this day (present date: March 3rd, 2018) nobody knows what the hell happened on Zero Day or why it happened. Well, maybe the apes, pigs, dolphins and elephants do, but they aren't telling.