The end of the year is fast approaching, and it’s the perfect moment to round up the most eccentric headlines you may have overlooked. In this roundup of 10 offbeat stories, we’ll travel from a mischievous reindeer‑themed burglary to a record‑breaking prime number, sprinkling in a few cosmic curiosities along the way. Buckle up for a whirlwind tour of the weird, the wild, and the wonderfully unexpected that defined the last week of 2018.
Why These 10 Offbeat Stories Matter
10 Rudolph Makes The Naughty List
Someone decided to tarnish the flawless reputation of Rudolph, the famed Red‑Nosed Reindeer. While the genuine Rudolph was busy guiding Santa’s sleigh, a woman in Fort Collins, Colorado, donned a oversized Rudolph head and slipped into a local business to pull off a burglary.
Police captured the culprit on security video – she was only wearing the large antlered mask, not a full costume, and at one point actually removed the headgear to peer directly into an overhead camera. That questionable choice made her identification a lot easier for investigators.
Armed with a clear picture of the perpetrator, officers posted a festive Facebook appeal that read like a holiday rhyme: “Oh how the camera caught her / As she committed burglary / Rudolph the Red‑Nosed Criminal / We need your help with her I.D.”
9 A Fortuitous Film
Scientists have captured, for the first time ever, a lizard actually breathing underwater. The unexpected footage emerged while a crew was filming an animal documentary for the Smithsonian Channel in Costa Rica.
The team recorded a petite river anole—a type of small lizard—submerged for nearly ten minutes. Initially, they assumed the creature was simply holding its breath, a feat anoles can manage for up to fifteen minutes.
Closer inspection revealed a minuscule bubble of air expanding and contracting on the lizard’s head, indicating a previously unknown capacity to extract oxygen from water. Researchers liken the mechanism to that of deep‑sea divers who recycle their own air supply, and the footage is now under review for a peer‑reviewed publication.
8 The Coldest Case Of The Year
For the first time on record, a bank robbery unfolded in one of the world’s most northerly settlements. The incident took place on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago perched roughly halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, famous for having more polar bears than people.
Longyearbyen, the archipelago’s main town of about 2,100 residents, is a tight‑knit community where everyone knows each other and the only airport is modest at best—hardly a haven for a quick escape.
A foreign gun‑armed robber stormed a local bank, only to be caught within minutes in the town center. He was subsequently transferred to Tromsø on the Norwegian mainland, with authorities keeping most details under wraps.
7 Prime For Discovery
A fresh record‑breaking prime number has been unveiled, stretching to nearly 25 million digits. For those less versed in mathematics, a prime is a whole number divisible only by itself and one; a Mersenne prime is a special form—one less than a power of two (2ⁿ – 1).
Enthusiasts worldwide chase ever‑larger primes through the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a volunteer‑driven project where participants run software on their personal computers to hunt for new candidates.
Since its 1996 inception, GIMPS has uncovered 17 Mersenne primes, 15 of which were the largest known at their discovery. The latest, found by Patrick Laroche of Ocala, Florida, on December 7, boasts 24,862,048 digits—surpassing the previous champion by a staggering 1.5 million digits.
6 That Doesn’t Go In There
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission released fresh data from its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which monitors roughly 100 hospitals for product‑related injuries. The report spotlights a bizarre assortment of objects that people have needed medical help to extract from various body cavities.
Ear incidents dominate the list, ranging from innocuous items like toy mice and googly eyes to more colorful reports such as a Q‑tip shoved in after a wall collision. Some victims have even required removal of a small transistor radio from their throats, while others presented with Christmas‑tree branches or mood rings lodged there.
Gender‑specific oddities also appear: men have been found with domino pieces, thin electrified rods, crack‑vial fragments, and even the back of a remote control lodged in their penises; women have presented with crayons, among other objects, in their vaginas. One case involved a woman who could not recall whether a crayon she inserted had been expelled.
The most eye‑catching category, however, involves the rectum. Reported items include assorted bottles, glasses, balls, an iPad stylus, a telescope leg, crayons, pencils, a broom handle, a cell phone, and even “crack cocaine with sex objects.” One particularly vivid account described a man who “took a soda bottle with Fireball whiskey via his rectum, stuck the bottle in his rectum and squeezed.” Some victims offered comical explanations, like “jumped on bed—toothbrush was on bed and went up patient’s rectum.”
5 Do You Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas?
Just in time for the holiday season, Earth received a visit from a cosmic “space hippo.” NASA released images of asteroid 2003 SD220, which, when photographed, bore a striking resemblance to the exposed torso of a hippopotamus wading in water.
The rock measured roughly 1.6 km (about a mile) in length and passed Earth at a distance of 2.9 million km (1.8 million mi) on December 22. This was the closest approach in over four centuries, and the asteroid won’t draw so near again until 2070.
Although the object posed no impact threat, its proximity allowed NASA to capture remarkably detailed photographs, showcasing the uncanny hippo‑like silhouette of the asteroid as it glided past our planet.
4 A Barrel At Sea
A French adventurer has embarked on a daring Atlantic crossing inside what can only be described as a barrel‑shaped orange capsule. Jean‑Jacques Savin launched from the Canary Islands, aiming to reach the Caribbean in as little as three months.
The so‑called “barrel” is actually a meticulously engineered capsule made of resin‑coated plywood, reinforced to endure relentless wave battering. Inside the six‑square‑meter (about 65 ft²) interior, Savin installed a kitchen, a sleeping bunk, storage space, and a solar panel to power communications and GPS. Construction costs hovered around €60,000, most of which was raised via crowdfunding.
The vessel has no propulsion of its own; Savin is counting on ocean currents to carry him the 4,500 km (2,800 mi) journey. Along the way, he plans to release markers to aid scientists studying Atlantic currents. While his intended destination is Barbados, he would gladly settle for a French island to avoid excessive paperwork.
3 Banksy Under Attack
A fresh piece from the enigmatic street artist Banksy recently appeared on a residential garage in Port Talbot, Wales. Local police immediately feared the artwork might become a target for a “some idiot who wants to make a name for themselves.” Their worries proved warranted when a drunken individual attempted to vandalize the mural on a Saturday.
Banksy confirmed the work on Instagram, naming it Season’s Greetings. The piece wraps around the garage corner: on one side a child tries to catch a snowflake on his tongue, while the opposite side reveals that the “snow” is actually ash drifting from a dumpster fire.
Thousands flocked to view the new Banksy, overwhelming the local council’s capacity to manage the crowds. Volunteers stepped in to protect the piece, and actor Michael Sheen, a native of Port Talbot, funded a protective screen and hired a security guard. The guard successfully chased away the would‑be vandal, who tore down part of the plastic screen before fleeing, leaving the artwork untouched.
2 The Bright Lights Of New York City
New Yorkers were treated to a spectacular blue glow over Queens on a Thursday night, prompting speculation about an extraterrestrial invasion. The reality turned out to be a transformer explosion at a Con Edison substation in Astoria, just a few kilometers northeast of the Empire State Building.
The utility company attributed the incident to a brief electrical fire, which was contained within an hour. The NYPD later tweeted that there were no injuries, no fire beyond the transformer, and “no evidence of extraterrestrial activity.”
Con Edison continues to investigate the cause, while LaGuardia Airport experienced brief delays as flights were grounded while the facility switched to backup generators. Governor Andrew Cuomo reported that crews were working to restore full power, noting that the outage was limited to the airport area and that the blue glow was simply the result of a blown transformer, not alien tech.
1 An Ancient Relic From The Big Bang
We close the year with a groundbreaking discovery that could unlock fresh insights into the universe’s birth. Astronomers at Hawaii’s Keck Observatory identified a “fossil cloud” of gas dating back to the moments following the Big Bang.
The research team, led by two Australian scientists from Swinburne University of Technology, will publish their findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. While gas clouds are common throughout the cosmos, most have been contaminated by heavy elements forged in stellar explosions. This particular cloud, however, remains pristine—untouched by such metals.
The find was serendipitous: the cloud was spotted because a brilliantly luminous quasar lay directly behind it. Spectroscopic analysis revealed the cloud’s extremely low density and lack of heavy particles. Astronomers now consider it a true relic of the Big Bang, and they suspect many more such untouched clouds await discovery, potentially shedding light on why some gas clouds birthed stars and galaxies while others remained dormant.