The most common piece of advice ever given might be to just be yourself, to remain true to yourself despite the opinions and judgments of others. Social norms and expectations of how people should behave have led to anxiety in many individuals who feel the need to fit in. However, one country has always stood out in the crowd.

Russia has become famous for its unusual people, events, and traditions. Even when alcohol isn’t involved, the people of Russia seem more willing to step outside the norms of society than most other cultures. And as a result, their country is full of weird and surprising stories—here are only a few examples.

10 Winnie-The-Pooh Steals Tourist’s Money In Moscow

Russia has its own version of Winnie-the-Pooh, which has been a beloved cartoon character for decades. Whenever someone wanders around Central Moscow, they have a good chance of encountering people dressed up as Russian icons and cartoon heroes.

In 2017, one tourist visiting Moscow from Ulyanovsk ran into a group of such costumed characters and jumped at the chance to take some group photos. However, the pictures were not available for free. She paid 5,000 rubles (around $79) to a man dressed as Winnie-the-Pooh. The man promised to return with smaller bills and give her the change, but he never came back.^[1]

9 Town Hires Cat Chief To Attend To Strays

Around 80 applicants responded to an unusual job advert searching for a cat chief in Zelenogradsk in 2018. The job description stated that the worker has to take care of the town’s approximately 70 stray cats. The small town in the Kaliningrad region had also erected a cat statue and added a feline to its emblem to rebrand itself as Russia’s foremost cat-loving community.

Local resident Svetlana Logunova was ultimately appointed as guardian of the town’s felines. She was given a budget of 5,700 rubles (roughly $90) per month to ensure that all the community’s cats are happy, petted, and fed. Logunova was also given a bicycle and uniform, including a bright green jacket, black bow tie, and hat. She was to provide the cats with free rides in the bike’s basket.

“I alone cannot care for every single one and a helping hand would go a long way,” Logunova said.^[2]

8 Russian Orthodox Church Considers Ending Blessings For Nuclear Weapons

A committee on ecclesial law met in Moscow during June 2019 and recommended ending the practice of blessing missiles and warheads. They suggested that priests should instead bless only individual soldiers and their personal weapons. Blessing nuclear weapons is an ongoing Russian tradition, seen as a way of spiritually protecting the country. Bishop Savva Tutunov of the Moscow Patriarchate suggested ending this tradition:

One can talk about the blessing of a warrior on military duty in defense of the fatherland. At the end of the corresponding ritual, the personal weapon is also blessed—precisely because it is connected to the individual person who is receiving the blessing. By the same reasoning, weapons of mass destruction should not be sanctified.

But Tutunov’s view is not universally held in the Orthodox Church. Vsevolod Chaplin, a former spokesman for the Patriarch of Moscow, likened Russia’s nuclear arsenal to “guardian angels” of the country, needed to protect Orthodoxy.^[3] Religion News Service has quoted Chaplin once saying: “Only nuclear weapons protect Russia from enslavement by the West.”

There is another reason why the initiative to stop blessing nuclear weapons faces strong opposition among members of the clergy—Saint Seraphim. Reportedly, St. Seraphim’s remains were discovered in a Russian town housing several nuclear facilities. He is now the patron saint of Russia’s nuclear weapons and an important religious figure.

7 Cops Put Out Fire With Snowballs

Two police officers in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk were commended for averting a tragedy by rushing to help put out a fire with snowballs in November 2018. Lieutenant Yevgeny Lunin and Lieutenant Pavel Istomin noticed heavy smoke rising out of a garage next to a house while on patrol in the village of Kuragino. They alerted the fire department and helped residents to evacuate before the flames spread.

The fire started when a car parked in the garage short-circuited. The Krasnoyarsk regional branch of the Interior Ministry said, “The guardians of law and order continued to hurl snow at the burning fence and garage gates before firefighters arrived.” The statement also added that the police officers will be awarded for helping to prevent a tragedy.^[4]

6 Drunk Man Steals Car And Realizes He Doesn’t Know How To Drive

In 2014, police noticed the “strange behavior” of a man sitting in a car parked in front of a Kemerovo region cafe. When asked to identify himself, the man had no formal documents—no driver’s license and no registration for the vehicle he was sitting in. He also exhibited signs of intoxication, according to the police statement.

Police took the suspicious man to the local precinct, where another local resident soon appeared to report that his car had been stolen. It didn’t take long for the police to determine that the drunk, unidentified man had drilled a hole into the ceiling of the other man’s garage and stolen his vehicle.

However, the drunken thief had to push the stolen car 1 kilometer (0.6 mi) down the road when he realized that he did not know how to drive. The thief, whose identity was not disclosed, faced up to six years in prison.^[5]

5 Woman Rides Moscow Subway With A Live Fox On Her Shoulder

A video of a woman riding the Moscow subway with a pet fox nonchalantly perched on her shoulder went viral on Russian social media in late 2018. Commuters on the busy platform gave the fox strange looks as they waited for the train.

Because the fox did not seem concerned about either the other subway riders or the arriving train, it might not have been the animal’s first train ride. When the doors opened, the woman stepped inside while keeping her back straight so as to not affect the fox’s balance.

Although some social media users were worried about rabies and accused the owner of putting other passengers at risk by not muzzling the animal, most of the commenters found the video hilarious. A few even commended the woman for wearing real fur without harming any animals. “When you want a fur coat but you love animals,” joked one Twitter user.

Despite being a fairly bizarre sight, pet foxes are not that unusual in Russia. Geneticist Dmitry K. Belyaev started a breeding program to domesticate the animals in the 1950s, and a small population of domesticated red foxes still exists today.^[6]

4 Man Crashes Armored Vehicle Into A Shop And Steals A Bottle Of Wine

At the start of 2018, a Russian man was arrested after he stole an armored vehicle and crashed it into a shop in Apatity, a small town near the Arctic Circle. Reportedly, the culprit took the vehicle from a driving school, struggled to steer it, crushed a parked car, and crashed into the shop front.

Russian TV channel Vesti said the man was bored and took the tracked vehicle from the driving school operated by DOSAAF, a voluntary organization which cooperates with the armed forces in Russia. Witnesses described the thief as being drunk. After crashing, the man exited the vehicle through its hatch, briefly inspected the damage, and entered the shop through the broken window.

The man, in his late twenties, was later arrested in possession of a stolen bottle of wine. According to the RIA news agency, he did not resist arrest. The shop was not licensed to sell alcohol that early in the morning, the agency added.^[7]

3 Russian Official In Trouble After His Wife’s Twerking Caused A Massive Traffic Jam

In 2018, the wife of a Moscow region deputy shot a music video on the middle lane of one of the capital’s busiest highways. The footage of three women performing choreographed dances while blocking the traffic with an SUV quickly gained fame among social media users in Russia.

Oksana Yakovleva, 29, who performs under the stage name Yaxana, wrote on her Instagram: “I still have the jitters. My cameraman was almost run over, it was scary.” Moscow City Hall’s traffic control center said the performance delayed several ambulances, and Moscow police filed a traffic violation report against Yakovleva.

The incident also stirred up trouble for Yakovleva’s politician husband, Alexei Yakovlev from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.^[8] Yakovlev said that he planned to “scold” Yaxana once he returns from a trip. “I don’t need this PR. I think there are other more suitable places to film these kinds of performances,” he said.

However, while going through Yaxana’s Instagram page, Moscow Times reporters discovered that Yakolev has joined his wife in middle-of-the-street dancing on previous occasions. Yaxana stated that the trouble was worth it for the sake of her pop music career. “The modern world of show business is so cruel that it’s almost impossible to get there without money and connections,” she said. “I have neither.”

2 City Paints Snow White To Hide Pollution

Footage of a woman’s hands turning white after playing with snow was shared by media in late 2018. This led to accusations that the authorities were covering up snow with sticky white paint to hide signs of pollution in the coal-mining region of Kemerovo.

Dmitry Ivanov, the head of the town where the video was shot, ordered the removal of the paint and reprimanded the officials responsible for it. “I apologize to the townspeople whose New Year’s mood was spoiled by this,” said Ivanov.

The Prague Civil Society Centre, an organization that promotes social change throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, stated that black snow is common in some parts of Russia. On their website, the organization said: “Coal is big business for Russia’s Far East. Although trade in coal is providing a welcome boost to the region’s struggling economy, it is having a devastating effect on both the environment and health of its inhabitants.”

Russia is among the largest coal producers in the world, and their numbers are only expected to increase. The country’s Ministry of Energy predicts roughly 480 million tons will be produced annually by 2030.^[9]

1 Four Men Dress Up As A Bus To Cross Vehicle-Only Bridge

A clip taken in 2018 by a baffled motorist shows a group of Russian men hiding inside a yellow cardboard bus costume while trying to cross the Golden Bridge in the far eastern port city of Vladivostok. Unfortunately, a traffic guard saw through their disguise and asked them to make a U-turn.^[10]

The massive cable-stayed Golden Bridge was opened in 2012, linking the center of the city to the Pervomaiskyi district. Despite being a popular tourist site, the bridge was closed off to pedestrians in 2015. But locals have started complaining about the ban, claiming they are being denied access to the shortest route into the center.

According to a report by The Moscow Times, the woman recording the video was heard saying, “Where did they come from? This is beautiful, it’s art. Why are they kicking them out?” The video went viral on Twitter, and the comments were filled with laughter and praise for their creativity.

There are nearly 144 million inhabitants in Russia, putting it at ninth place in the list of countries by population. With a total land area of 16,376,870 square kilometers (6,323,142 mi²) and a population density of only nine people per square kilometer (23 people per mi²), there is plenty of space for people to do dumb and unusual things.

That might be why Russia has an unlimited supply of odd stories and events despite containing only 1.87 percent of the world population.^[1] Here are ten more examples of their weird news stories which can rival the famous “Florida Man.”

10 Stadium Blasts Dying Bird Noises To Scare Away Birds

If you think your neighbors are too loud, try living next to Gazprom Arena. Residents flooded police departments with noise complaints after a new bird-scaring system went live in the popular St. Petersburg arena in June 2019. Reportedly, the system emitted sounds of dying birds and gunfire.

One resident named Anastasia said: “Children either can’t fall asleep or wake up asking ‘why are the birds suffering?’ ” Football Club Zenit did not say whether any birds were harmed in the recording of the sounds. Another resident complained that the people in charge of Gazprom Arena promised to adjust the volume, but it only seemed to get louder.

St. Petersburg isn’t the only place dealing with troublesome birds. The Moscow metro recently installed nearly 300 bird of prey stickers at 21 station lobbies to scare away birds and prevent them from crashing into glass panes to their deaths.^[2]

9 Former Teacher Kills Friend Who Claimed That Poetry Is Not Real Literature

In early 2014, a 53-year-old man in Irbit, a town in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, was charged with the murder of another man, 67, said to have been a friend. They were drinking together in the friend’s flat when he said only prose was “real literature.”

According to federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk: “The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry. The literary dispute soon grew into a banal conflict, based on which the 53-year-old admirer of poetry killed his opponent with the help of a knife.”^[3]

The killer fled the scene and was later found hiding at an acquaintance’s house in a nearby village. He confessed to the murder and faced a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

8 Two Drunk Men Cut Off Their Ears For A Bet

Another odd news headline appeared in early 2014, when two intoxicated men in a Siberian mining region cut off their own ears after betting on an arm-wrestling contest. Police reported that the men were drinking to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and held an arm-wrestling contest, agreeing that the loser had to cut off his ear.

One man won the first match, but his opponent insisted on a second round, which he won. The men decided that according to their rules, both must cut off their ears. “The men voluntarily cut off their left ears. One completely, and the other half off. They were hospitalized with these injuries,” police said.^[4]

7 Naked Cheesemakers Take Photos In A Vat Filled With Milk

A group of cheesemakers celebrated the beginning of 2014 by swimming in the milk used for cheese processing. They posed and took pictures, which quickly went viral. An Artem Romanov posted the photos on the VKontakte social network with the caption: “Yeah, our job is really boring.” One man is even seen holding up his shorts for the camera.

Although the original images were removed, a wave of reposts and comments spread across the web. Some Internet users commented, “Now we know why the cheese is so salty.” Turns out that Romanov had previously posted other bizarre photos and videos. Earlier, he had posted a video of nearly naked men preparing dried braid cheese on the factory floor.

Their stunt may have caused some serious damage to the cheese industry in Omsk, a major Russian center for food processing. “If you plan to buy stringed-cheese the next time you go to the supermarket, you may want to check that it wasn’t made in Omsk,” warned The Moscow Times.^[5]

6 Man Fights Off Siberian Bear By Biting Its Tongue Off

In 2019, Nikolay Irgit, 30, and his two friends were collecting deer and moose antlers without the necessary permits in a forest reserve in the Tuva region. The antlers were used for making furniture as well as for medical purposes and often sold for a hefty price on the black market.^[6]

The men split up to cover more ground. Deep into the forest, Igrit stumbled across a brown bear. Weighing up to 600 kilograms (1323 lb), Siberian bears can rip an adult man apart. Igrit tried to scare away the beast by screaming, but the bear charged at him and repeatedly bit his face and head, also injuring the man’s hands and stomach.

As the bear was snapping at his face, the man bit the bear’s tongue off, scaring it away. Covered in blood, Igrit called for help, and his friends arrived to call an ambulance. Although the man survived the bear attack, he did not escape the law. Police launched an administrative case against him for illegal activities in the forest reserves.

5 Clairvoyant Purchases Psychic Cat For $84,000

An unusual news headline appeared at the start of 2017, when a clairvoyant bought a “psychic” cat in Russia. Dimitry, the cat’s owner, inherited the cat from his aunt when she died. He claimed that the cat could suddenly appear from behind locked doors and use mind tricks to make Dimitry go shopping for the cat’s favorite food in the middle of the night.

The owner reported that he hates fish and sausage, but the cat made him hungry for these foods. “He would wake me up at 5 am giving me a strong desire to eat fish or sausage,” said Dimitry. “So much so that I had to go out right then to buy it, and give it to the cat. And as soon as the cat started to eat, my hunger disappeared.”

The cat also stared into empty spaces, evidently seeing things humans could not. Even Dimitry’s marriage suffered, with his wife feeling uneasy around the “psychic” pet. That was until a clairvoyant from Novosibirsk, around 4,500 kilometers (2,800 mi) away, mysteriously heard about the cat and came to inspect it.

Labeled as a “witch” by local media, the woman paid five million rubles (around $84,000) for the cat, intending to put it to work in her seances. “She is a clairvoyant and came with all her paraphernalia. She closed the cat in the room, and then rapidly decided to buy it,” Dimitry said.^[7]

4 Cargo Plane Drops Three Tons Of Gold Over Siberia

For a brief moment on March 15, 2018, the gray skies of Siberia were filled with gold. A Cold War-era cargo aircraft took off from Yakutsk Airport in Siberia, carrying an estimated $378 million in gold, platinum, and diamonds on behalf of a private mining company. During takeoff, the cargo hatch tore open and spilled nearly 200 gold bars.

Most of the ingots immediately landed on the Yakutsk Airport runway, but the plane continued flying for another 16 kilometers (10 mi) to make an emergency landing and dropped more cargo along the way. A police spokesperson stated that nobody was injured, and the treasure was recovered. Apparently, the plane’s maintenance crew was to blame for improperly securing the cargo.^[8]

3 Dagestan Hosts Sheep Beauty Queen Contest

To celebrate the Muslim “Festival of Sacrifice,” known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic and Kurban Bayram in the Russian and Turkic-speaking world, the city of Dagestan held a sheep beauty contest in August 2018. Considered as one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, Kurban Bayram celebrates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son on a command from God.

An outdoor livestock market in central Dagestan held the contest to mark the occasion. According to the Buynaksk district website, “The jury faced a truly difficult task: To pick the most worthy candidate for the ‘Most Beautiful Sheep’ title out of 10 decorated and fairly good-looking sheep.”

They awarded the owner of the winning sheep, named “Princess Aisha,” with a traditional handmade dagger. Estimates say roughly 300,000 sheep are slaughtered on Kurban Bayram every year, but no words were given about the ultimate fate of Princess Aisha.^[9]

2 World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted And Aliens Invented Chess

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the world chess president from 1995 to 2018, defeating the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the job. He was also the president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia from 1993 to 2010.

However, one unusual claim sets Ilyumzhinov apart from the average politician. He says that aliens wearing yellow spacesuits abducted him from his Moscow home in September 1997:

I was taken [from] my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship, and we went to some star and after that, I asked them, “Please bring me back.” They are like people, like us. They have the same mind and the same vision. I talked with them and I understand that we are not alone in this whole world—we are not unique.

Considering Ilyumzhinov’s alleged otherworldly encounter and his long-term association with the World Chess Federation, it is not surprising that he made a connection between aliens and the game of chess:

My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules—64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa—the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.^[10]

1 Bag Of 54 Severed Human Hands Found In Siberia

A fisherman in Siberia made a grim discovery in March 2018. He was walking along the icy Amur River when he noticed a hand sticking out of the snow on a small island near the city of Khabarovsk. Soon, he discovered that there was an entire bag full of hands.

The bag contained 27 pairs of human hands, severed at the wrist. Photos of the 54 hands lined up in neat rows quickly gained media attention. But according to the Russian government, it was not the work of a hand-obsessed killer.

Medical bandages and plastic shoe coverings commonly used in facilities such as laboratories and hospitals were also found in the bag. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation determined that their origin was a Khabarovsk-based forensics laboratory, which disposed of its biowaste improperly.

“The biological objects (hands) found are not of a criminal origin, but were disposed of in a manner not provided for by law,” wrote the committee. However, it is not known why the laboratory severed the hands in the first place.^[11]

There are nearly 144 million inhabitants in Russia, putting it at ninth place in the list of countries by population. With a total land area of 16,376,870 square kilometers (6,323,142 mi²) and a population density of only nine people per square kilometer (23 people per mi²), there is plenty of space for people to do dumb and unusual things.

That might be why Russia has an unlimited supply of odd stories and events despite containing only 1.87 percent of the world population.^[1] Here are ten more examples of their weird news stories which can rival the famous “Florida Man.”

10 Stadium Blasts Dying Bird Noises To Scare Away Birds

If you think your neighbors are too loud, try living next to Gazprom Arena. Residents flooded police departments with noise complaints after a new bird-scaring system went live in the popular St. Petersburg arena in June 2019. Reportedly, the system emitted sounds of dying birds and gunfire.

One resident named Anastasia said: “Children either can’t fall asleep or wake up asking ‘why are the birds suffering?’ ” Football Club Zenit did not say whether any birds were harmed in the recording of the sounds. Another resident complained that the people in charge of Gazprom Arena promised to adjust the volume, but it only seemed to get louder.

St. Petersburg isn’t the only place dealing with troublesome birds. The Moscow metro recently installed nearly 300 bird of prey stickers at 21 station lobbies to scare away birds and prevent them from crashing into glass panes to their deaths.^[2]

9 Former Teacher Kills Friend Who Claimed That Poetry Is Not Real Literature

In early 2014, a 53-year-old man in Irbit, a town in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, was charged with the murder of another man, 67, said to have been a friend. They were drinking together in the friend’s flat when he said only prose was “real literature.”

According to federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk: “The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry. The literary dispute soon grew into a banal conflict, based on which the 53-year-old admirer of poetry killed his opponent with the help of a knife.”^[3]

The killer fled the scene and was later found hiding at an acquaintance’s house in a nearby village. He confessed to the murder and faced a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

8 Two Drunk Men Cut Off Their Ears For A Bet

Another odd news headline appeared in early 2014, when two intoxicated men in a Siberian mining region cut off their own ears after betting on an arm-wrestling contest. Police reported that the men were drinking to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and held an arm-wrestling contest, agreeing that the loser had to cut off his ear.

One man won the first match, but his opponent insisted on a second round, which he won. The men decided that according to their rules, both must cut off their ears. “The men voluntarily cut off their left ears. One completely, and the other half off. They were hospitalized with these injuries,” police said.^[4]

7 Naked Cheesemakers Take Photos In A Vat Filled With Milk

A group of cheesemakers celebrated the beginning of 2014 by swimming in the milk used for cheese processing. They posed and took pictures, which quickly went viral. An Artem Romanov posted the photos on the VKontakte social network with the caption: “Yeah, our job is really boring.” One man is even seen holding up his shorts for the camera.

Although the original images were removed, a wave of reposts and comments spread across the web. Some Internet users commented, “Now we know why the cheese is so salty.” Turns out that Romanov had previously posted other bizarre photos and videos. Earlier, he had posted a video of nearly naked men preparing dried braid cheese on the factory floor.

Their stunt may have caused some serious damage to the cheese industry in Omsk, a major Russian center for food processing. “If you plan to buy stringed-cheese the next time you go to the supermarket, you may want to check that it wasn’t made in Omsk,” warned The Moscow Times.^[5]

6 Man Fights Off Siberian Bear By Biting Its Tongue Off

In 2019, Nikolay Irgit, 30, and his two friends were collecting deer and moose antlers without the necessary permits in a forest reserve in the Tuva region. The antlers were used for making furniture as well as for medical purposes and often sold for a hefty price on the black market.^[6]

The men split up to cover more ground. Deep into the forest, Igrit stumbled across a brown bear. Weighing up to 600 kilograms (1323 lb), Siberian bears can rip an adult man apart. Igrit tried to scare away the beast by screaming, but the bear charged at him and repeatedly bit his face and head, also injuring the man’s hands and stomach.

As the bear was snapping at his face, the man bit the bear’s tongue off, scaring it away. Covered in blood, Igrit called for help, and his friends arrived to call an ambulance. Although the man survived the bear attack, he did not escape the law. Police launched an administrative case against him for illegal activities in the forest reserves.

5 Clairvoyant Purchases Psychic Cat For $84,000

An unusual news headline appeared at the start of 2017, when a clairvoyant bought a “psychic” cat in Russia. Dimitry, the cat’s owner, inherited the cat from his aunt when she died. He claimed that the cat could suddenly appear from behind locked doors and use mind tricks to make Dimitry go shopping for the cat’s favorite food in the middle of the night.

The owner reported that he hates fish and sausage, but the cat made him hungry for these foods. “He would wake me up at 5 am giving me a strong desire to eat fish or sausage,” said Dimitry. “So much so that I had to go out right then to buy it, and give it to the cat. And as soon as the cat started to eat, my hunger disappeared.”

The cat also stared into empty spaces, evidently seeing things humans could not. Even Dimitry’s marriage suffered, with his wife feeling uneasy around the “psychic” pet. That was until a clairvoyant from Novosibirsk, around 4,500 kilometers (2,800 mi) away, mysteriously heard about the cat and came to inspect it.

Labeled as a “witch” by local media, the woman paid five million rubles (around $84,000) for the cat, intending to put it to work in her seances. “She is a clairvoyant and came with all her paraphernalia. She closed the cat in the room, and then rapidly decided to buy it,” Dimitry said.^[7]

4 Cargo Plane Drops Three Tons Of Gold Over Siberia

For a brief moment on March 15, 2018, the gray skies of Siberia were filled with gold. A Cold War-era cargo aircraft took off from Yakutsk Airport in Siberia, carrying an estimated $378 million in gold, platinum, and diamonds on behalf of a private mining company. During takeoff, the cargo hatch tore open and spilled nearly 200 gold bars.

Most of the ingots immediately landed on the Yakutsk Airport runway, but the plane continued flying for another 16 kilometers (10 mi) to make an emergency landing and dropped more cargo along the way. A police spokesperson stated that nobody was injured, and the treasure was recovered. Apparently, the plane’s maintenance crew was to blame for improperly securing the cargo.^[8]

3 Dagestan Hosts Sheep Beauty Queen Contest

To celebrate the Muslim “Festival of Sacrifice,” known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic and Kurban Bayram in the Russian and Turkic-speaking world, the city of Dagestan held a sheep beauty contest in August 2018. Considered as one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, Kurban Bayram celebrates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son on a command from God.

An outdoor livestock market in central Dagestan held the contest to mark the occasion. According to the Buynaksk district website, “The jury faced a truly difficult task: To pick the most worthy candidate for the ‘Most Beautiful Sheep’ title out of 10 decorated and fairly good-looking sheep.”

They awarded the owner of the winning sheep, named “Princess Aisha,” with a traditional handmade dagger. Estimates say roughly 300,000 sheep are slaughtered on Kurban Bayram every year, but no words were given about the ultimate fate of Princess Aisha.^[9]

2 World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted And Aliens Invented Chess

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the world chess president from 1995 to 2018, defeating the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the job. He was also the president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia from 1993 to 2010.

However, one unusual claim sets Ilyumzhinov apart from the average politician. He says that aliens wearing yellow spacesuits abducted him from his Moscow home in September 1997:

I was taken [from] my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship, and we went to some star and after that, I asked them, “Please bring me back.” They are like people, like us. They have the same mind and the same vision. I talked with them and I understand that we are not alone in this whole world—we are not unique.

Considering Ilyumzhinov’s alleged otherworldly encounter and his long-term association with the World Chess Federation, it is not surprising that he made a connection between aliens and the game of chess:

My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules—64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa—the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.^[10]

1 Bag Of 54 Severed Human Hands Found In Siberia

A fisherman in Siberia made a grim discovery in March 2018. He was walking along the icy Amur River when he noticed a hand sticking out of the snow on a small island near the city of Khabarovsk. Soon, he discovered that there was an entire bag full of hands.

The bag contained 27 pairs of human hands, severed at the wrist. Photos of the 54 hands lined up in neat rows quickly gained media attention. But according to the Russian government, it was not the work of a hand-obsessed killer.

Medical bandages and plastic shoe coverings commonly used in facilities such as laboratories and hospitals were also found in the bag. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation determined that their origin was a Khabarovsk-based forensics laboratory, which disposed of its biowaste improperly.

“The biological objects (hands) found are not of a criminal origin, but were disposed of in a manner not provided for by law,” wrote the committee. However, it is not known why the laboratory severed the hands in the first place.^[11]

Irony, by definition, is a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what was or might be expected, an outcome cruelly, humorously, or strangely at odds with assumptions or expectations. Although Alanis Morissette’s 1995 hit track “Ironic” has sparked debate and reflection as to the nature of irony itself, there certainly are situations in the song that fit the definition of irony listed—winning the lottery only to die the next day and flying on an airplane for the first time only to have the plane crash.

While these situations are certainly not typical, what happens when reality begins to mirror the song lyrics in startlingly literal ways?

Imagine a person claiming their lottery winnings only to tragically die the next day, or a young doctor committed to finding a cure for a rare cancer, only to succumb to the same cruel fate he hoped to save his patients from, or someone robbing a bank to escape their spouse, only to be sentenced to home confinement due to a twist in legal proceedings. Naturally, such stories would seem to be nothing more than pure fiction. However, the real-life accounts in this list showcase the unpredictable ways that irony manifests itself in everyday life with both humor and tragedy.

Here are ten ironic (and tragic) news stories that could easily belong in an Alanis Morissette song.

Related: Ten Oddball News Stories out of Canada

10 Man Dies One Day after Claiming $2 Million Powerball Winnings

At one point or another, many of us have thought about just how different our lives would be if we won the lottery and dreamed of what we’d do with our winnings—buy our dream car, pay off debt, travel the world, or help those near and dear to our hearts.

Seventy-two-year-old Mark Krogman of Clinton, Iowa, was no different. He planned to use his lottery winnings to pay off his house, possibly add onto it, help his family with needed finances, and just enjoy life. The difference, however, between Krogman and everyday dreamers was that Krogman actually won a lottery prize. Unfortunately, in a tragic and ironic turn of events, he would never get to do all he hoped for with his winnings.

Krogman purchased a lottery ticket for the Powerball drawing on November 25, 2023. Players in a $2 Powerball select five numbers between 1 and 69 and another number—called the Powerball—from a separate set of numbers between 1 and 26. For an extra $1, a Power Play option is available, which can multiply non-jackpot prizes by 2, 3, 4, 5, or even 10 times the amount.

The winning numbers for that night’s drawing were 27-33-63-66-68 and a Powerball of 9. Krogman’s ticket matched the first five numbers drawn but did not match the Powerball number. However, Krogman had chosen to add the Power Play option to his ticket purchase, multiplying at the Match 5 level, meaning he won $2 million! In fact, Krogman’s ticket was the only one in the country to win a $2 million prize in that night’s drawing.

While it was known that there was a Powerball winner, the ticket went unclaimed for months, that is, until Krogman finally made his way to the Lottery headquarters on April 17, 2024. Unfortunately, the shock and joy of realizing he’d won was short-lived, as Krogman died on April 18, 2024, just one day after claiming his winnings. Although Krogman’s cause of death was not disclosed, his obituary stated he passed away peacefully at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics.^[1]

9 Elderly Woman’s Life Claimed by Medical Device Meant to Save Her

A medical alert system can be either an in-home or wearable device—such as a necklace or bracelet with a help button—that allows a person to call for help should they fall, get confused or injured, or have a medical or healthcare emergency. Should such a situation arise, the person in need can simply press a help button rather than call 911, and from there, the monitoring center can assess the situation, alert loved ones, and dispatch emergency medical services to the home.

Eighty-six-year-old Roseann DiFrancesco of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, had a medical alert necklace, but unfortunately, the device meant to save her life ultimately claimed it instead.

On February 15, 2016, a nurse came by to visit DiFrancesco but got no answer after knocking on the door. The nurse then entered the home but found DiFrancesco dead in her bathroom. The coroner later revealed that DiFrancesco was using her walker when she lost her balance and fell. Sadly, the lanyard of her medical alert necklace—which did not have a breakaway clasp—got caught on the handle of the walker, causing DiFrancesco’s upper torso to be suspended above floor level, strangling her to death.^[2]

8 Man Robs Bank to Avoid Wife but Is Sentenced to House Arrest

On September 2, 2016, 70-year-old Lawrence John Ripple walked into the Bank of Labor in Kansas City, Kansas, and handed a teller a note that read, “I have a gun, give me money.” However, unlike most bank robbers, Ripple’s goal was not money; rather, he was hoping to go to jail to avoid being at home with his wife. Therefore, after the teller handed Ripple $2,924 in cash, he simply sat down in the lobby of the bank and waited for the police to arrive.

It didn’t take long for the police to arrive, given that the bank was just a block from police headquarters. When confronted by authorities, Ripple returned the money and was arrested.

So, what exactly happened between Ripple and his wife that drove him to such extremes? Earlier in the day, an argument ensued between the couple when Ripple’s wife reminded him that the clothes dryer still needed to be fixed. Ripple later “wrote out his demand note in front of his wife and told her he’d rather be in jail than at home.” However, Ripple didn’t quite get the punishment he was hoping for.

While Ripple pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery, he told the judge that a multiple bypass heart surgery in 2015 left him depressed and not feeling like himself. Ripple could have been sentenced to a maximum of 37 months in prison, but both the vice president of the bank and the teller supported the request for leniency, given the state of Ripple’s mental health.

On June 13, 2017, Ripple was sentenced to 50 hours of community service, ordered to pay $227.27 to the bank—the billable hours for bank employees sent home on the day of the robbery—and pay $100 to a crime victims fund. Ripple was also sentenced to six months of home confinement—leaving him no choice but to be at home with his wife—and three years of supervised probation.^[3]

7 Doctor Dies from Rare Cancer He Was Dedicated to Cure

Clear cell sarcoma, or CCS, is a type of cancer that grows just under the skin. Although CCS tumors most often occur in the arms, legs, feet, and hands, they can also grow throughout the torso (including the stomach and intestines) and have even been found in the genitals and head. This extremely rare cancer is named because the tumor cells look clear under a microscope. Unfortunately, this also makes the cancer hard to diagnose as the cells resemble malignant melanoma of the soft tissues.

However, Dr. Edward Showler believed that he could make a difference in the lives of his patients with sarcoma through pioneering treatments in the field of medicine. Tragically, in a twist of “cruel irony,” the talented young doctor lost his life to the same rare cancer he was dedicated to curing.

Sholwer’s older brother, Laurie, is an emergency doctor in Australia and was the one who inspired Showler to pursue the field of medicine. Showler studied medicine at St. John’s College Cambridge for six years and graduated in 2013. As a doctor, he went on to work for several hospitals- the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Redding, and University College Hospital in London. As a doctor working in the Sarcoma Unit at University College Hospital, Showler saw first-hand the effects of this fatal disease.

Therefore, in 2016, Showler began training to become a consultant hematologist at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, but unfortunately, in September of that year, he was diagnosed with clear cell sarcoma. Knowing that there was no effective treatment for the disease, Showler chose to spend the next eight months making memories for those he was going to leave behind.

Sadly, at just 28 years old, Showler died on June 11, 2017. Showler’s family and friends later established the Edward Showler Foundation to make a difference for young people affected by sarcoma—CCS in particular—by increasing awareness, engaging with patients and families, and supporting research into the rare disease.^[4]

6 Former Crime-Fighter Finds Himself on the Wrong Side of the Law

In September 2011, John R. Morales was caught driving 50 mph (80 km/h) in a 35 mph (56 km/h) zone and was subsequently pulled over for speeding in Galveston, Texas. However, when the police officer—assisted by a drug-sniffing dog—searched Morales’s Infinity, they discovered diagrams of two indoor pot-growing operations sitting on the front seat and an abundance of marijuana seeds in the trunk.

This discovery led authorities to search Morales’s home, where they seized 1,000 marijuana plants and 9,000 rounds of ammunition for 27 weapons, which included a shotgun, pistols, rifles, and a military grenade launcher.

While Morales’s arrest may not seem to stand out given the abundance of crime-related news that can be found on television, the internet, and social media, what makes this news story ironic is the fact that Morales once played the role of a crime-fighting character named McGruff the Crime Dog—a cartoon bloodhound created in the 1980s for the National Crime Prevention Council. The cartoon figure was used by U.S. police to spread crime awareness and is perhaps best known for the tagline “Take a bite out of crime.”

Although 41-year-old Morales insisted that he was nonviolent and his attorney claimed he had only sold drugs to help sick relatives, on February 6, 2014, Morales was sentenced to 16 years in prison.^[5]

5 Reptile Show Focused on “Overcoming Fears” Ends in Death of Snake Expert

Fifty-three-year-old Dieter Zorn—a herpetologist and co-host of the Reptile Show—had worked with reptiles for 25 years. His goal in life was to help people conquer their fears about snakes and reptiles. In fact, Zorn’s Reptile Show invited audience members, both young and old, to handle a variety of creatures such as snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, and spiders to become more comfortable with them. Unfortunately, in an attempt to help others overcome their phobias, the German snake expert would ultimately die at the hands of the very creatures he urged others not to be afraid of.

Zorn and his colleague, Uschi Kallus, had been traveling to different villages across the region of southern France. However, as Zorn was performing his show in Faugeres on June 18, 2013, he was bitten several times by an Aspic viper—a highly venomous snake native to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. Despite being bitten, Zorn got the snake back into a cage, preventing it from attacking members of the audience.

Emergency services arrived on the scene and administered a blood thinner, but unfortunately, they were unable to save Zorn. The viper bite caused Zorn to suffer an “extremely rare allergic reaction,” which ultimately led to a heart attack.^[6]

4 Suicide Prevention Advocate Tragically Takes His Own Life

Peter Wollheim of Boise, Idaho, was described as “a man of enormous heart who would have been there for anybody at any time if they were struggling.” Unfortunately, despite Wollheim dedicating years of his life to helping others in need, in the end, he was unable to conquer his own demons. He did what he’d passionately urged others not to do—take their own life.

Wollheim taught in the Department of Communication at Boise State University from 1989 to 2012, retiring from teaching to pursue a career as a mental health counselor. Wollheim went on to serve as the co-chairman of the Idaho Commission on Suicide Prevention, helped co-found the Idaho Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN)—a non-profit dedicated to suicide prevention and survivor support—managed a local suicide prevention hotline for 15 years, presented at national and international suicide conferences, and established the nation’s first certified crisis worker preparation program on the Boise State University campus.

However, in light of all the outreach work Wollheim did, his sister, Ruth Wachter-Carroll, stated that Wollheim had been depressed for years but never sought professional help. Additionally, Wollheim began having bad dreams about the Holocaust and its effects on his Jewish parents—Norbert and Frieda Wollheim—who had survived the Nazi death camps in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, leading him to believe there was no way out and do the unthinkable.

On July 21, 2015, 67-year-old Wollheim was found in his home by a friend, several days after his death, with a note that said “he was tired of having Holocaust dreams” and that “he was done with life.”^[7]

3 Heart Attack Comes “Out of Nowhere”

Born in Los Angeles, California, on October 26, 1927, Warne Marsh came from quite a talented family—his father, Oliver Marsh, was a cinematographer, his mother, Elizabeth, was a violinist, and his aunt, Mae Marsh, was an actress. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Marsh would go on to find a love of music and performing.

Marsh played in a band called Teenagers, which performed on Hoagy Carmichael’s musical radio show in 1945 and then went on to serve in the U.S. Army in 1946.

Then, in 1948, Marsh became a student of Lennie Tristano, who was a blind American jazz pianist, a major figure of the “Cool School” jazz style, and an influential teacher of jazz improvisation. Tristano was the principal influence on Marsh’s art as a tenor saxophonist and jazz musician, and the two played together from 1949 to 1952.

Marsh went on to play with other students of Tristano, such as Lee Konitz and Ted Brown, in addition to leading his own small musical groups and teaching. However, Marsh gained even more exposure in the 1970s as a member of Supersax—a saxophone-centered ensemble (Link 40) that played orchestral arrangements of Charlie Parker solos. He later recorded albums such as Jazz of Two Cities, Quartet, and Warne Marsh under his own name.

Unfortunately, on the night of December 17, 1987, as 60-year-old Marsh was in the middle of playing the tune “Out of Nowhere” at Donte’s club in Los Angeles, he slipped off his stool and collapsed. Marsh was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and pronounced dead in the early hours of December 18, 1987, after suffering a heart attack.^[8]

2 Drunk Driver Had Warning Against Drunk Driving on Car

Around 4 a.m. on February 24, 2019, officers spotted a dark-colored sedan weaving across three lanes of traffic in Berkeley, California. The unnamed male driver was stopped by the California Highway Patrol and found to be well over the legal blood-alcohol limit of 0.08 percent.

While driving under the influence is certainly no laughing matter, what makes this news story ironic is that the car featured a sign sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Administration that read: “I should probably get a ride home” (with the word “probably” crossed out) and “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.”^[9]

1 Man Dies Trying to Set Record for “Buried Alive”

Twenty-four-year-old Janaka Basnayake’s mother, L.D. Leelawathi, stated that from the time her son was young, he enjoyed performing unusual acts. In fact, Leelawathi claimed that Basnayake had even been buried alive on two previous occasions—once for two and a half hours and once for six hours. Basnayake was, however, apparently unimpressed with his prior feats and decided on a third daredevil attempt to break a world record for spending the longest time being buried alive. Unfortunately, it would lead to his demise.

With the help of family and friends, Basnayake was buried underground around 9:30 a.m. on March 3, 2012, in a 10-foot (3-meter) trench sealed with wood and soil in the town of Kantale, which is approximately 137 miles (220 km) north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. At 4 p.m., six and a half hours after he was buried, Basnayake was pulled to the surface but found unconscious. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival, although no official cause of death was given.

Following the news of Basnayake’s death, the Guinness World Records issued a statement on March 5, 2012, which offered condolences to Basnayake’s family but also stated that “record attempts related to being buried alive are not authorized, monitored, or adjudicated by Guinness World Records.”^[10]

Welcome back to another week of strange stories, curious chronicles, and aberrant anecdotes. If you missed last week’s list, you can catch it here.

There are two poop stories this week, although they are significantly different. One highlights a pigeon with great comedic timing while the other explores a scientific experiment designed to see if it is possible to make a usable knife out of frozen feces.

We also have a few strange crime stories for you: two Amish men run from the law, a Mummy Marauder is on the loose, and thieves make off with a solid gold toilet.

10 The Three Gorges Water Monster

Videos started surfacing earlier this week showing a long, black figure slithering across China’s Yangtze River. It immediately drew comparisons to the infamous Loch Ness Monster, leading to speculation that China might have its own version of “Nessie” prowling its waters. However, this mystery was put to bed rather quickly and, unfortunately, the truth is far less exciting.

Clips of the Three Gorges Water Monster, as it was nicknamed, first circulated on Chinese social media platforms where they garnered tens of millions of views and, eventually, made their way to the West. After one professor opined that, if real, the creature was likely a large water snake, there was talk of the animal mutating to gigantic size due to the pollution in the river.

A few days later, the “serpent” was discovered to be just a piece of floating debris, although its exact nature is still unclear due to conflicting reports. One Chinese news outlet claimed it was a long piece of rubber tubing which detached itself from a shipyard. Meanwhile, state broadcaster CCTV said it was a mesh sunshade that got dislodged from the nearby ferry terminal and got wrapped up in such a way that it formed a snake-like figure.^[1]

9 Pigeon Poop Problem Provokes Politician

A Chicago lawmaker was doing an interview discussing the pigeon poop problem at an infamous bus station when one of the birds made a bold statement to highlight the issue—the pigeon pooped on him.

The Irving Park Blue Line station has a reputation among Chicago residents as the “pigeon poop station”. Located underneath the Kennedy Expressway, the entrance has an underpass right above the commuter path where the birds sit and defecate at will.

There is, at least, one official who is trying to do something about it. State Representative Jaime Andrade has been trying to secure funds to deal with the problem since last year. Recently, he was doing another interview with a local TV station on the matter. Just as he was bad-mouthing the pigeons, one of them pooped right on his head.^[2] Not one to miss an opportunity, he pointed out that this is exactly what his constituents have to deal with.

Delays in settling the matter seem to be caused by a technicality over who is responsible for the pigeons. Last year, Andrade secured money from the state budget, but those funds went to the Chicago Transit Authority which has purview over the bus station as it is part of the Kennedy Expressway. The underpass, however, is not considered part of the station and falls under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Transportation, while the sidewalk where the birds poop is the responsibility of the City of Chicago.

8 Cattle Semen Lost In Fire

A fire at a genetics lab in Yarram, Victoria, Australia, led to the destruction of 100 cryogenic cylinders of cattle semen.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the storage facility for Yarram Herd Services caught fire. It took firefighters two hours to contain the blaze but, by then, it was too late: everything inside the building had been destroyed.

The biggest loss was 100 receptacles which stored cattle semen. The company offers herd testing, artificial insemination (AI), and other services to many farmers in the region who often choose to store the genetic material from their own animals at the facility.

The value of the destroyed goods is particularly high right now as we just entered AI season. The cylinders themselves were worth between $500 and $1,000 each while their contents were considerably more valuable. Bull semen is worth anywhere between $5 and $95 per straw.^[3]

This blaze proved to be a unique challenge for firefighters. Initially, they had to remain in a defensive position. The heat caused the fluid inside the cylinders to expand which, in turn, prompted the lids to fly off as high-speed projectiles. Investigators are still looking into the cause of the fire.

7 The Hunt For The Mummy Marauder

While everyone was focussed on newly discovered photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in blackface (which he, weirdly, blamed on “white privilege”), they missed this curious tale of a guy in white face!

On Friday the 13th, a criminal robbed the First Convenience Bank in Harris County, Texas, near Houston. He threatened the teller and left with an undisclosed sum of money, speeding away in a black Mitsubishi Montero SUV. To conceal his identity, the man wrapped himself in white gauze. To further obscure his likeness, he also wore sunglasses, a wig, and a baseball cap. However, it really was the linen wrappings that stood out and subsequently earned the criminal the moniker of the “Mummy Marauder”.

According to the FBI, the culprit was a black male in his early 20s, around 1.8 meters (5’11”) tall and medium build. They released images of the suspect in the hope that someone could help identify him. A $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest was offered by Crime Stoppers of Houston.^[4]

6 Don’t Drink & Jive

Police in Ohio are on the lookout for two Amish men who fled the scene after being stopped by deputies for drinking while driving their horse buggy.

Last Sunday night, an officer from Trumbull County observed an unusual scene as a buggy drove past him. It was fitted with a sound system with giant speakers and there was an open case of ultra-light beer on the roof. Inside were an older Amish man and a teenager who were drinking spiked ice tea while riding in the carriage. A horse & buggy is considered a vehicle which means that the same drinking and driving laws apply so the deputy went to pull the carriage over.

As soon as the vehicle stopped, the men inside made a run for it into the wooded area on the side of the road.^[5] At the same time, the horse sped off pulling the empty buggy. The deputy decided to pursue the horse to make sure that the carriage came to a safe stop.

The Amish men got away and, as of this moment, remain unidentified, but they will have to come forward if they want their horse & buggy back.

5 How Viable Is A Poop Knife?

In a new study published in the anthropological journal Sapiens, a scientist experimented to see if it is possible to make a usable knife out of frozen feces.

Back in the 1990s, popular anthropologist Wade Davis from the University of British Columbia told an anecdote of an elderly Inuit man from the 1940s or 50s who refused to leave his igloo out in the wild and relocate to a modern settlement. Even when his family took away all his tools, he made do with what he had. Specifically, he took his own feces and modeled it into a knife, sharpening it using only his hands and saliva. Then, he left it to freeze and ended up with a solid blade which he used to kill a dog.

Experimental archaeologist Metin Eren from Ohio’s Kent State University was one of the people fascinated by Davis’s story. Back then he was still a teenager, but now he had everything he needed to put the tale to the test.

He ate a high-protein diet rich in salmon, beef, and turkey for eight days. He obtained multiple “raw materials” which he shaped into blades both using his hands and with a mold. He even used a metal file to sharpen some of the knives and give them the best chance of success, but it was no use. None of them could cut through hide, instead simply melting and leaving streaks “like a brown crayon”.^[6]

4 Neutron Star Too Big To Exist, Almost

Astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) in West Virginia have found the most massive neutron star ever detected and it might remain that way for the foreseeable future. It is right at the theoretical limit of how big a neutron star could be without collapsing into a black hole.

Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that went supernova and might be the second-most dense objects in the Universe after black holes. To put them into perspective, GBO scientists say that one sugar cube of neutron star matter would weigh 100 million tons on Earth.

Researchers from the NANOGrav Physics Frontier Center were using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to observe a rapidly-rotating pulsar called J0740+6620 located 4,600 light-years away from us. They soon realized that it might be, in fact, the most massive neutron star ever detected. It crammed 2.17 solar masses into a sphere just 30 kilometers (18.6 mi) in diameter.^[7]

Moreover, scientists believe that neutron stars can’t get much bigger than this. Recent research suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be the limit before a neutron star would crush itself into a black hole.

3 A Lint Ball For The Record Books

A Guinness record six months in the making took place on Thursday as Michigan was briefly the home to the world’s largest ball of lint before it was burned to ashes.

The event was half promotional stunt/half public service announcement courtesy of the Farmington Hills Fire Department and Dryer Vent Wizard, a business that offers dryer vent cleaning and repairing services.

Since April, the company has instructed its employees across 95 franchises to keep the lint they collected on the job in order to save up for the record. The giant fiber ball topped up at 313 kilograms (690 lbs).^[8] There was no previous record-holder but, in order to qualify, the ball had to be, at least, 45 kilograms (99lbs) according to Guinness guidelines. After officials certified the record, firefighters set the ball ablaze.

Part of the reason for this move was to show just how flammable lint is and to raise awareness to the importance of regularly cleaning dryer vents. Failure to do so is the leading cause of dryer fires in residential buildings.

2 Storm Area 51, Finally

The date to “storm Area 51” is here. After months of publicity and a successful viral campaign, this weekend will play host to a bizarre event that started out as an online joke to “see them aliens” and turned into a music festival.

This whole thing began back in June when a man named Matty Roberts created a Facebook event to raid the site in search of alien life. Of course, it was all a prank and Roberts has since disavowed it as the U.S. Government warned people against actually trespassing onto the military base.

Even so, over two million people said on Facebook that they will be attending so the even got turned into two music festivals which were supposed to be held in the nearby towns of Rachel and Hiko, Nevada. Roberts has since dropped out completely, but it seems that the concerts will go on without him.

According to Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee, around 1,500 people showed up early Friday morning as music group Wily Savage were getting ready to perform their set.^[9] There is concern that the arrival of a giant crowd would generate chaos for the tiny towns that have a population of less than 200 people combined. Lincoln County emergency manager Eric Holt estimated that local authorities could handle a group of 30,000 people, but anything larger than that would cause problems.

It remains to be seen how many people will attend, although it is fair to say that most of the two million Facebook “attendees” only signed up as a joke.

1 Thieves Make Off With Gold Toilet

A solid gold toilet worth $6 million was stolen from the Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, in a burglary reminiscent of a “heist movie”.

The toilet is an “art” installation called America by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Made in 2016, the item is part of the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but was on loan to the stately home of the Duke of Marlborough which is also the birthplace of Winston Churchill. The 18-carat gold toilet is fully functional and, in fact, visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to use it for its intended purpose.

The theft was discovered in the early morning hours of last Saturday. Blenheim Palace had a sophisticated security system which the criminals managed to bypass. Although investigators are not sure yet how the heist went down, they believe the thieves made their getaway in two separate vehicles.

The first arrest in the case came quickly. That same day, a 66-year-old man was held on suspicion of burglary. Subsequently, a 36-year-old man was also brought in under the same circumstances.^[10] Both men have been released, but they are still under investigation. Police are keeping tight-lipped on their progress. They say the main priority is to retrieve the artwork, although they are not discounting the possibility that it could be melted down.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan was “mortified” when he first heard the news, but later tried to look on the brighter side. He enjoyed being part of a real-life “heist movie”.

A nice way of relaxing during the weekend is by taking a look at the stranger side of news with a few peculiar or amusing stories. If you missed last week’s list, you can check it out right here.

This week there are quite a few bizarre crime-related tales that involve a wrathful walrus, a camel with sore testicles, and 25,000 pills of ecstasy. Unfortunately, those three are not part of the same story. In other news, a French woman discovers she has a 700-year-old masterpiece in her kitchen and we look at prostitution in the notorious frontier town of Deadwood.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre And Offbeat Stories Involving Serial Killers

10 What You Can Find In Your Kitchen

An elderly woman from France discovered that the painting she had hanging over her hotplate for years was a genuine 13th century masterpiece worth millions.

Until a few months ago, the woman who is in her 90s and wished to remain anonymous lived in the French town of Compiègne. She decided to sell her house and move. Her family asked an auctioneer to come take a look at her 1960s home to see if there was anything worth selling. The expert, Philomène Wolf, told newspapers that she almost didn’t come because of her busy schedule, in which case everything would have went to the dump.

As soon as she entered the home, one small painting located between the open-space kitchen and the living room attracted the auctioneer’s attention. It was “Christ Mocked” by early Renaissance artist Cimabue. It is worth between €4m-€6m.^[1] Even more surprisingly, it was still in good condition despite sitting above the hotplate the woman used to cook her food.

As far as how exactly the elderly lady ended up owning a painting from 1280, that remains a mystery. She always thought it was an average Russian religious icon and claims to not even remember how or when she obtained it. Other art experts have confirmed the work is genuine and it will go at auction next month.

9 The Walrus Offensive

A protective walrus mother attacked and sunk a Russian boat attempting to explore the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.

Scientists from the Russian Geographical Society (RGO) were onboard the Altai, a tugboat of the Russian Navy staffed by servicemen from the Northern Fleet. The researchers were recreating famed expeditions from the past and conducting biological surveys along the way. They had recovered artifacts dating all the way back to the first mapping of the archipelago during an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1874.

The scientists had deployed a rubber landing craft to reach Cape Heller, but this didn’t sit well with a mother walrus who was protecting her calves. The large animal attacked the expedition boat, but the navy men managed to steer it towards shore before it sunk.^[2] They landed safely and neither human nor walrus were injured during the incident.

8 A Mild Bout Of Hangover

Just in time for Oktoberfest, a German court has ruled that a hangover is an illness.

The decision was passed down by the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt. Despite how it may first appear, the ruling was not made to give people an excuse to have a few too many and then take a sick day off work. Instead, the court took this stance against an unnamed firm which has been accused of making illegal health claims regarding the anti-hangover products it sells.

The German court took an illness to mean “even small or temporary disruptions to the normal state or normal activity of the body”.^[3] A hangover usually comes with headaches, nausea, and tiredness and, therefore, qualifies.

More to the point, food products like the drink powders the company sold cannot say or imply that they can prevent or treat human illnesses so the firm can no longer distribute anti-hangover beverages.

7 Prostitution In Deadwood

The infamous city of Deadwood, South Dakota, is opening a new museum to tell the history of prostitution from its frontier days all the way to the 1980s. Due to open in 2020, the museum will, fittingly, be located inside a former brothel called the Shasta Room.^[4]

The city of Deadwood came to prominence during the Gold Rush in the late 19th century. Many legendary figures of the Old West like Seth Bullock, Calamity Jane, and Wyatt Earp called it home or, at least, passed through the city. “Wild Bill” Hickok was killed and buried there. In modern times, interest in Deadwood was renewed thanks to the TV show of the same name.

Prostitution was a part of Deadwood for over a hundred years: since it was founded in 1876 all the way up to 1980 with only a brief time-out during the 1950s. A non-profit called Deadwood History Inc. aims to put a spotlight on it in the new brothel museum because it had a “huge impact” instead of simply “sweeping it under the rug” due to its uncomfortable nature. The exhibits will feature historical furnishings alongside clothes, artifacts, and memorabilia to tell the story of one of the city’s most enduring and successful industries.

6 Camel Gets Sore Injury

A camel had to be prescribed antibiotics after being bitten on the testicles by a woman who was trying to escape from underneath the animal.^[5]

The Tiger Truck Stop in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, has a camel named Caspar which it keeps around as a mascot/attraction. Florida couple Gloria and Edmond Lancaster were visiting the truck stop and playing with their unleashed dog. They threw some treats into Caspar’s enclosure and the dog went in after them. Gloria Lancaster then also entered the pen to retrieve her pet by crawling underneath barbed wire. Before she could get up, the 272-kilogram (600 lbs) camel sat on top of her.

Desperate times call for desperate measures so Gloria Lancaster bit Caspar’s testicles to get him to stand up. Subsequently, a veterinarian administered antibiotics to the camel to make sure he avoids infection.

When police arrived, the couple argued that they reacted because the camel attacked their dog. However, deputies concluded that the two provoked the animal by swatting at it and shoving it before it sat on Mrs. Lancaster. They were cited for a leash law violation.

5 Surprise Delivery

A middle-aged couple from Linz, Austria, ordered some dresses online. They were accidentally sent 25,000 ecstasy tablets worth over half a million dollars.

The unnamed 58-year-old woman received two packages which were supposed to contain dresses she bought online from a retailer in the Netherlands. While one of the parcels did, indeed, contain two garments, the other one had 24,800 pink tablets.^[6] At first, she thought they were decorative stones, but her husband realized that they were pills.

The couple returned the package to the post office in Linz where employees were equally surprised and called the Austrian police. An investigation revealed that the drugs were supposed to be shipped to Scotland and the matter has been turned over to the UK’s National Crime Agency and Police Scotland who are conducting a joint investigation.

4 Newest Member Of The Sourtoe Cocktail Club

Nick Griffiths from Bolton, England, traveled all the way to Dawson City in Yukon, Canada, to drink a cocktail with his own amputated toe in it.

We have mentioned this bizarre tradition before. At the Downtown Hotel, you can order the bar’s infamous “sourtoe cocktail” which consists of the drink of your choice, usually whiskey, with a human toe floating in it. House rules say that “you can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe”.

This custom dates back almost half a century and over 100,000 people have joined the “Sourtoe Cocktail Club” since then. The original toe is long-gone and the bar relies on donations for new ones. Nick Griffiths is an endurance athlete who, at the start of the year, lost three toes to frostbite in the Yukon Arctic Race. He kept one as a memento, but donated the other two to the Downtown Hotel.

This happened around June, but, due to his convalescence, Griffiths never actually got to accompany his digits to Dawson City until this week. On Monday night, the bar held a special ceremony where Nick finally joined the club by taking a shot which contained his big toe.^[7]

3 A New Kind Of Referee Attack

A referee was shot in the head with a cannon blast during a football game at Maine Maritime Academy.

Right off the bat, let’s just say that the official will be alright since the artillery was, obviously, not loaded with an actual cannonball. He was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

During the maritime school’s homecoming football game last Saturday, an alumnus brought his cannon along to fire it. The academy already had its own cannon which it traditionally fired whenever its team scored but, on this occasion, it made an exception since most fans rarely provide their own artillery. Normally, school officials load their shot with a blank shotgun shell. This time, though, the cannon was loaded improperly with a shot that contained black gunpowder and a “wad”.^[8]

As soon as the blast shot out, the referee caught in its line of fire immediately fell to the ground grabbing his head. The sheriff’s department is investigating the matter and may file criminal charges with the district attorney.

2 The Cheddar Conundrum

A celebrated French chef is taking the Michelin Guide to court after his restaurant lost a Michelin star over allegations of using cheddar in his cheese soufflé.

Marc Veyrat runs “La Maison des Bois” restaurant in Haute-Savoie in the French Alps. The eatery earned its third Michelin star, the highest grade possible, last year. However, when the latest edition of the Michelin Guide was published at the beginning of this year, Veyrat was dismayed to discover that his restaurant was back at two stars.

The chef says that the downgrade came without warning or explanation. When he inquired with Michelin officials, he was only given vague responses which included an accusation that he had served cheddar.^[9]

Veyrat claims to have been “dishonored” by the actions of the Michelin Guide, especially since they were not warranted. The chef has built a reputation for using products from the Savoyard region of France. According to him, he definitely used Reblochon or Beaufort or another French cheese variety in his soufflé. He added saffron, though, which turned it yellow and caused the Michelin inspector to think it was made with cheddar.

The chef has asked for Michelin’s bills and notes to prove that the inspector truly ate at his restaurant. Unsurprisingly, his request was denied. The case will go to court in November.

1 Lunch For A Black Hole

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was only launched a year-and-a-half ago, but already it observed one of the rarest sights in the Universe: a supermassive black hole shredding a star apart.^[10]

Officially, this phenomenon is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). When a star gets too close to a black hole, it cannot escape its powerful gravity. Instead, it gets pulled apart and, while some material gets ejected into space, the rest is “devoured” by the black hole and added to its accretion disk. In this case, the event which is known as ASASSN-19bt occurred in a galaxy 375 million light-years away from us in the constellation Volans. The black hole in question was about the size of six million solar masses while its “snack” was roughly the same as our Sun.

Scientists first managed to confirm the observation of a TDE last year based on an event witnessed a decade-and-a-half ago. However, we caught that episode near the tail end when the black hole was “burping” out the extra material it didn’t consume. This new TDE, however, was discovered just a few days after it started to brighten and was located directly in TESS’s “continuous viewing zone”. Consequently, scientists received observations of the event every 30 minutes for almost 80 days, capturing all the essential stages.

In today’s hyperfast political environment, keeping on top of the news can seem a Herculean task. So why not let us do the hard work for you? Every Friday, we rounds up the most essential stories from the week, from the world-changing, to the shocking, to the inspiring.

After a six month hiatus, Morris M. returns to guide you through the miasma of media noise in search of the elusive beast we call “news”. This week – in our first retitled reboot of the sorely-missed “Mind-Blowing Things that Happened this Week” column – we’re journeying to Bolivia to watch the president flee into exile; wading into the Hong Kong protests to try and make sense of it all; and checking in on the UK as windbag of the people Nigel Farage does a deal with the devil. Strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride.

10 Bolivia’s President Fled into Exile

Not so long ago, Evo Morales was an international darling. Bolivia’s first indigenous president, he came to power on a wave of popular support, then used his constitutionally-mandated two terms to improve the lives of his nation’s poorest.

Then Morales’ second term ended and he decided he wanted another. And another. Following a constitutional amendment in 2016, Morales finally ran for his fourth term this year. When he was declared victor following widespread voting irregularities, Bolivians decided they’d had enough. The streets exploded in weeks of protests and rioting that only ended when Morales resigned on Sunday. He has since fled into exile in Mexico, along with most of his cabinet.

In the aftermath of Morales’ flight, opposition senator Jeanine Áñez has assumed the presidency, becoming Bolivia’s first female leader. She now has 90 days to call fresh elections. Quite what shape the post-Morales years will take will be the burning question hovering over the ballot box.^[1]

9 Brazil’s Former President was Released from Jail

Sticking south of the border for a moment, the weekend also saw another major story involving a Latin American leader. But while the news for Morales was 100 percent bad, the news for Brazil’s ex-president Lula was nearly all good. After being jailed for 12 years some 18 months ago on corruption charges, the leftist firebrand was freed on Friday following a Supreme Court ruling (LINK 2).

The jailing of Lula was a massive turning point in modern Brazilian history. At the point judge Sérgio Moro slammed his gavel down, Lula was preparing for a presidential run, and was the firm favorite to win. Instead, he was locked away, and rightwing populist Jair Bolsonaro was given a clear run at the presidency. The fact that Bolsonaro subsequently made judge Moro his justice minister meant it was all sorts of easy for Lula’s lawyers to argue his conviction was political. Hence his now being a free man.

The re-emergence of Lula throws Brazilian politics into a spin. Although other charges are still pending against him, he’s perhaps the only figure on the left with a popular movement to equal Bolsonaro’s rightist one. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.^[2]

8 Chile’s Violent Protests Continued

On October 14, a fare hike for the Santiago metro in Chile exploded into nationwide protests against inequality and pampered elites. When the protestors refused to disperse after the fare rise was reversed, the police responded with extreme violence. This, in turn, led to widespread riots and the normally-stable nation turning into a very unstable battleground.

This week, the news coming out of Chile just got grimmer and grimmer. A New York Times video report found an “epidemic” of protestors being blinded by police. At the same time, a separate report from Chile’s human rights institute declared that 20 had been killed in the protests so far, and over 2,000 wounded, included 1,000 who’d been shot.

But by far the worst news related to the nearly 300 civilians who claim to have been tortured by the police and military. In Chile, allegations of police torture carry weighty memories of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, when 40,000 were kidnapped and brutalized by the security forces. Hopefully, we’re not witnessing a return to a much darker time.^[3]

7 Spain Held its Second Useless Election in a Year

After three entries in Latin America, it’s time to head north to yet another Spanish-speaking nation (yeah, Brazil doesn’t speak Spanish. No, we’re not letting it affect this otherwise smooth transition). This time, we’re looking at Spain itself, where the country went to the polls on Sunday, following a previous election in April that failed to return a workable government. So people once again voted. And, once again, everyone lost.

Socialist Worker’s Party leader Pedro Sánchez called the election after winning the April vote, but falling short of enough seats to form a government. His calculation had been that voters would give him enough of a boost to propel him across the finishing line. Instead, his party lost three seats for a total of 120, painfully far short of the 176 needed for a majority. Still, it didn’t look too good for his rightwing rivals, either. The conservative People’s Party grabbed 22 extra seats, but still languished in second with a total of 88. About the only party able to celebrate was the far-right Vox which came third with 52 seats, a 28 seat increase.

Sánchez has now signed a coalition agreement with the populist party Unidas Podemos. However, this still leaves him 21 seats short of a majority. The smart money is on Spain having yet another election within a year.^[4]

6Venice Drowned

As a city built atop a lagoon, Venice is no stranger to flooding. But there’s regular flooding, and then there’s whatever the heck happened this week. Following atrocious weather on Tuesday, the water level started rising in Venice. By the time it stopped, the waters had risen 187cm, the second worst flood the city has ever experienced.

The result was a city that was basically drowning. Historic plazas were flooded, while centuries’ old buildings sustained heavy damage. Images were broadcast around the world of people forced to walk across precarious wooden walkways to avoid the floodwaters. Despite this, at least two deaths have so far been recorded.

The waters still didn’t reach the heights of the infamous 1966 flood, but they came close. The mayor of the city has blamed climate change for the disaster. If that’s the case, we can probably expect more floods like this in the future.^[5]

5 Australia Burned

While Venice sank below the waves, down in the southern hemisphere, Australia watched in horror as flames consumed swathes of the east coast. Over the course of the last week and a bit, huge wildfires ripped through the bush, engulfing suburbs and surrounding isolated towns. As firefighters battled to stop the multiple blazes, some 300 homes were turned to ash, and at least four people killed. The worst part? That the worst is yet to come.

Parts of Australia are currently suffering under a spell of extremely dry weather that has turbocharged the ability of bushfires to spread. On Tuesday, things got so bad that the greater Sydney area was issued with its first “catastrophic” fire warning in history. Unfortunately, with temperatures due to soar again this weekend, its thought the fires could get worse.

As in Venice, many – such as a group of former fire chiefs – have blamed climate change for the current catastrophe. The government of Scott Morrison disagrees.^[6]

4 We Spotted a Hyperfast Star Being Ejected from our Galaxy

Ahh, space. Both the final frontier, and a reliable escape from the stream of disasters endlessly afflicting Earth. This week, the major news from the heavens involved scientists detecting a superfast star escaping our galaxy at 1,700km per second (by way of comparison, a bullet might max out at a mere 1.5km per second). But the story of this star wasn’t a peaceful one. It’s current trajectory was the result of an almost unimaginable disaster.

The star, S5-HVS1, is thought to have been part of a binary system that wandered too close to the galactic center. This is an issue, because at the center of the galaxy is a great, big black hole. At some point, S5-HVS1’s partner star was pulled into the black hole, and the force was enough to slingshot S5-HVS1 away at mind-melting speeds.

This is the first proof we’ve ever found of something known as the Hills mechanism, which posits a method by which stars can be ejected from the Milky Way by black holes. As for S5-HVS1 itself, it is now doomed to forever wander the empty spaces between the galaxies until it finally burns itself out.^[7]

3 The UK’s Brexit Party Threw the Tories an Election Lifeline

“Brexit party to contest more than 600 seats” blared the headlines on November 4. That day, professional pub bore Nigel Farage eagerly declared that his brand new political party would fight nearly every seat in the upcoming UK general election. In reference to the idea of standing down his prospective MPs to give the Conservative Party a clear run in Leave-voting areas, he declared “What kind of conceited arrogance is this?”

Well, a week is a long time in politics, and breathtaking hypocrisy never dies. On November 11, Farage made a new speech so tonally different that to listen to it was to experience the audio equivalent of whiplash. The Brexit Party would no longer be contesting 317 seats across Britain. The reason? Um… to give the Conservative Party a clear run.

The pact is the result of the wild unpredictability of the UK’s first winter election in decades. Farage clearly sees a Boris Johnson win as the best way to secure a hard Brexit. Still, his decision caused anger in some quarters – not least among some of his own party, who accused him of betrayal.^[8]

2 Hong Kong’s Protests Flared Up Again

Since August, 2019, Hong Kong has been in the grip of mass protests originally triggered by an extradition treaty with China and Taiwan, but since grown to encompass a much broader fight for democracy. Since the protests are still ongoing, and since this column has been on hiatus since they began, now seems as good a time as any to cover them.

After months of clashes and destruction of property, the protests in recent weeks have focused on several university campuses, where protestors have built fortifications and effectively taken over the buildings. On Tuesday, the Chinese University of Hong Kong was the site of the worst violence since the protests began with police unleashing a hail of over 1,500 tear gas cannisters. For their part, the protestors are reported to be stocking up on petrol bombs. In China, state media has taken to warning Hong Kong that it’s on “the edge of doom”.

With the violence showing no signs of abating, many expats and international students are now fleeing the territory. At the same time, the economy is reportedly taking a battering as tourists stay away.^[9]

1 The First Day of Impeachment Hearings Dropped a Bombshell

And so they’ve finally arrived. The first public impeachment proceedings since Bill Clinton sat in the White House. When this column last signed off (under its older, less sexy name), barely any Democrats were willing to even whisper the “I” word in public.

But times change and scandals involving Ukraine explode out of nowhere. So it was that, this Wednesday, the first public hearings of Donald Trump’s impeachment were held. Barely had the cameras begun rolling than the first bombshell was dropped.

During his testimony, former top US diplomat to Ukraine William Taylor declared that one of his aides had overheard a phone conversation between Trump and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland. Reportedly, this involved Trump fretting about Ukraine opening in investigation into Hunter Biden, a quid pro quo the president allegedly demanded in return for restarting military aid. Taylor claims that Sondland subsequently told his aide “President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden” than Ukraine.

At this stage, every day seems to bring more bad news for Trump, and adds to the whiff of scandal completely engulfing him. While it seems very unlikely the Senate will actually convict him, the emergence of more details like this could damage his reputation. Expect to see more from these hearings in future columns. Ah! It sure is wonderful to be back.^[10]

Another week has gone by, and with it, more horrible news of COVID-19 has spread across the world. The United States passed the one million infection mark, and more than 60,000 people have died in that country alone. It has not been a good week.

With that being said, there was a news item or two that offered a little bit of hope in this ever-worsening crisis. COVID-19 does continue to dominate the news landscape, but it’s not the only thing happening right now — it’s just the giant elephant in the room that enjoys sitting on people.

Here’s some stuff that happened you may have missed, and happily, it does include some good news.

10 Saks Fifth Avenue Latest Department Store Closing

Shopping malls in the United States were once ubiquitous, but in recent years, they have been in a steady state of decline. Often, they are bought by corporations like RackSpace and converted into massive office compounds, or they are bulldozed and replaced with something completely different. While most shopping is still done in stores, more and more is done online, and brick & mortar stores are feeling the pinch. Anchor stores in malls are being hit by the changes in consumer spending more than most chains, and yet another brand has taken the bankruptcy path.

Saks Fifth Avenue has joined Macy’s, JCPenny, and Neiman Marcus in bankruptcy filings, which spells doom for malls in America. An anchor store is one of those big ones like Sears (bankruptcy)^[1] and the aforementioned, which act as the primary go-to for shoppers. Typically, they would head into the mall for other things, which made the anchor stores vital to a mall’s overall survival, but they are heading the way of the Dodo bird. Saks was forced to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy after missing payments on at least two commercial mortgage-backed securities, which originated in 2015. That missed payment impacted 34 properties, which include 10 Saks and 14 Lord & Taylor stores.^[2]

9 Win For Gun Rights In New York

The US Supreme Court released several important decisions this week, with one decision about the Affordable Care Act resulting in a loss for the GOP. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued the majority opinion with the following statement, “We conclude that §1342 of the Affordable Care Act established a money-mandating obligation, that Congress did not repeal this obligation, and that petitioners may sue the Government for damages in the Court of Federal Claims.” Essentially, this means that the government owes more than $12 billion to insurers in accordance with the law.

The decision came with an 8-1 majority, leaving Justice Alito as the sole dissenter.^[3] Another decision made by the court was important in the world of gun rights, though it was more of a lack of decision than anything else. In a 6-3 vote, the court opted to issue an unsigned opinion related to a gun rights law in New York City and state that limited a person’s right to carry a weapon outside the city to shooting ranges. Since the challenge was issued to the court, the law was changed to allow exactly that, so there wasn’t a need for the case to tie up the court, leaving the issue of gun rights in America an ongoing issue for the future.^[4]

8 Prime Minister Boris Back To Work

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was infected with COVID-19 last month, and he had to spend nearly the full six-week lockdown in self-isolation with some of that time spent in intensive care. Fortunately, the PM did not succumb to the disease, and on Monday, he was back at work. Johnson was mostly absent during the lockdown period, so the news of his return is a signal of better things to come in the United Kingdom, as he was one of the highest-profile cases in the country aside from Prince Charles, whose bout with COVID-19 wasn’t as severe.

There’s more good news for Johnson, as he and his fiancé, Carrie Symonds, announced on Wednesday that Carrie had given birth to a baby boy. A spokesperson for the couple reported that both the mother and baby are doing “very well.” The birth marked the second time in less than two months that Johnson publically thanked England’s National Health Service, and for good reason. Johnson personally thanked the “fantastic NHS maternity team” for their work in helping the as-yet-unnamed baby boy into the world. This is Johnsons’s sixth child, and Symond’s first.^[5]

7 New Zealand Has “Eliminated” COVID-19

Some rare good news about COVID-19 came out this week on Monday, thanks to an announcement made by Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health. It has been reported that New Zealand “eliminated” the coronavirus in the country, which isn’t to say it’s completely gone. What it does mean is that the number of cases has dropped so low, New Zealand has been able to lift restrictions from the nation’s “level four” to “level three.” It’s been able to do this because of strict contact tracing and other mitigation efforts.

The number of new cases in the country has dropped to the single-digit territory. Through contact tracing, the government made the call to relax restrictions to hopefully bring daily life back to normal. Bloomfield elaborated on how the low number “does give us confidence that we’ve achieved our goal of elimination, which — that never meant zero, but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from. Our goal is elimination. And again, that doesn’t mean eradication, but it means we get down to a small number of cases so that we are able to stamp out any cases and any outbreak that might come out.”

The relaxed restrictions will open up gatherings to ten people or less, and the beaches will be opened. Museums, gyms, and libraries will remain closed until a reassessment is made on May 11th.^[6]

6 US GDP Crashes

One of President Donald Trump’s key successes leading into 2020 was the economic growth the country has seen during his time as President. In fact, the US had a record period of growth, but COVID-19 has completely derailed it, and as the numbers rolled out on Wednesday, it seemed clear the trend would continue in a downward trajectory. The estimates being thrown around before the release were between -4% to -11%, and in the end, the GPD for the US shrank by 4.8%, which is fortunately on the lower end of expectations.

That’s the sharpest decline since the Great Recession more than a decade ago, and it brings to a close the longest period of economic expansion in the nation’s history. Unfortunately, Wednesday’s numbers don’t include the full impact COVID-19 has had on the economy, as it only takes into account the first quarter, which saw the beginning of lockdowns that continued through April. Once those numbers are factored into the second-quarter GDP, the economy may shoot through recession territory and head straight for a depression. The biggest impact on the GDP came with the loss of consumer spending, which dropped 7.6% during the first quarter.^[7]

5 Kim Jong-Un MIA . . . Kinda

Last week, it seemed as if the reclusive leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea had succumbed to a botched surgery, but new details have emerged, which suggest otherwise. Granted, the information gleaned from the secretive state is limited, and much of what is being reported is hearsay and should be taken with a grain of salt, but the news media is working with what they have available. In an address to the nation, Trump was asked about the leader, whom he’s bragged about having a good relationship with, and he answered with the following:

“I can’t tell you exactly. Yes, I do have a very good idea, but I can’t talk about it now. I just wish him well, I’ve had a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”

While that doesn’t tell the public much about what the US President knows, there have been other indications that the North Korean leader is alive and well. A satellite image released by Maxar Technologies shows a compound on April 21st, which depicts activity at the Wonsan luxury complex, where his yacht and other indications of his presence could be seen. Kim was last seen publicly on April 11th, and rumors of his status have been circling ever since.^[8]

4 US To Recognize Annexation Of West Bank Territory

On Monday, the United States signaled that it was ready to officially recognize Israel’s annexation of occupied territories in the West Bank. In doing so, the US requested that the new unity government negotiate with the Palestinians, who have been staunchly opposed to the plan. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has worked with President Trump to make the two-state solution a reality and has indicated that he will continue with the drive for annexations now that he has been able to form a government following a deal made with his opposition.

The Palestinians have said they will close off any option of a two-state solution if the plans for annexation continue their present course. Palestinians have been vocally unsupportive of the plan outlined as Trump’s Middle East “vision,” which he unveiled in January. Despite the opposition, the US is moving forward, and released the following statement via the US State Department on Monday, “As we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognize Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the vision foresees as being part of the State of Israel.”^[9]

3 Pentagon Released UFO Videos

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released declassified footage of three UFOs. The footage was taken by US military personnel in 2007 and 2017, and the release included three short and grainy clips. The footage was previously leaked, and this release by the Pentagon is an official confirmation of their authenticity. What’s so interesting about the footage isn’t the strange aerial maneuvers, which seem unworldly; it’s the fact that the release garnered very little attention from the public or media.

This is the first time the US Department of Defense has released footage of objects it classified as UFOs, and that should have been big news. The release came with a statement justifying it, in which the Pentagon said, “After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or system […] DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real.”

The videos aren’t confirmation of the existence of aliens, but they certainly do appear to depict unearthly aerial movements, which defy a more terrestrial explanation.^[10]

2 Lockdown Unleashes Mega-Unemployment In US

Every week, the US Labor Department releases a report, which includes the number of new unemployment claims made, and Thursday’s report puts that number at 3.8 million. That number pushes the six-week total of new unemployment claims to 30.2 million. The nation hasn’t seen such an increase in unemployment since the Great Depression, which saw the jobless rate rise to 25%. While the numbers this week are high, they do show a decreasing trend, as last week’s jobless claim topped out at 4.44 million.

Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, noted that the current jobless rate has reached “double digits” when the numbers for March are taken into consideration. The current reported rate is 4.4%, but that number doesn’t include the continued increase in claims seen through March and April. Powell said the number would likely rise above 10% into the second quarter, but there is a possible break in the storm on the horizon. With several states beginning to relax restrictions, furloughed employees are beginning to return to work, which should see jobless claims declining into May and June.^[11]

On the other hand, not everyone is struggling . . .

1 America’s Rich Are Getting Richer

One of the first things to impact Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic was the immediate loss of work and income. Millions of people were suddenly fired or furloughed, as their places of employment were shut down to stop the spread of the virus. Congress acted relatively quickly in passing the CARES act, which issued economic stimulus payments to citizens with the hope that the money would help people get through to the end of the lockdown, but some see it as too little, too late, and many people are struggling. That’s true for many Americans, but according to a report from the Institute for Policy Studies, not all citizens are facing such economic hardship.

The report, titled, “Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers” was published on April 23rd,^[12] and it showed an increase in net worth for America’s billionaires in excess of $282 billion over a period of just 23 days during the nationwide lockdown. The report further analyzed several billionaires’ tax burdens and concluded that between 1980 and 2020, the tax obligations for billionaires in America dropped by 79%. When compared to the median household wealth, which saw an increase of less than 5% in the past 30 years, billionaires’ wealth increased by 1,110%, which collectively accounts for $2.95 trillion. Thank God ultra-luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman isn’t one of the shops shutting down in New York!^[13]

+ McDonald’s Begins Rationing

Due to the Coranvirus, abattoirs and slaughterhouses around the world have shut down. This would be find if the various lockdowns were brief . . . but they are starting to go on just a little too long for the meat supply chain.

Today, as the US supply of meat begins to dwindle, McDonald’s placed a number of goods on “controlled allocation”; the goods being rationed are primarily burgers, bacon, and sausage. McDonald’s CEO has said that the state of the meat industry was “concerning” and that the company was “monitoring it, literally, hour by hour.” Meanwhile, beef prices have risen 62% since February. If you have a hankering for McDonald’s and your state hasn’t locked you in your home, you better get to a fast food joint pronto!^[14]

Lots of planning and research goes into arranging the perfect holiday. Itineraries are mapped, flights and accommodations are booked, and we wait patiently to arrive at our dream destination. Finally, the big day arrives and we excitedly head off on our much anticipated trip.

However, despite the best-laid plans, things sometimes go wrong. Often, we make simple mistakes like leaving something at home, booking the wrong hotel, or missing transportation connections. Occasionally, mishaps occur that are beyond our control, and we often see tourists taking silly risks to get the perfect Instagram photo.

But a few travelers have recently had holiday mishaps that were so funny that they not only made the news but also went viral on social media. Many of these would be unbelievable if we didn’t have the photos, Youtube videos, and social media shares to prove them.

10 Long-Distance Water Taxi, Anyone?

Organizing transportation connections is a vital part of planning any overseas holiday. When arranging a visit to a foreign country, the local geography can understandably become a little confusing. However, simply looking at a map or using one of the many online tools available can usually help to clarify things.

Not so for one tourist from India. His question on an online travel forum would have to be one of the funniest “dumb tourist” questions the site has ever seen, going in the news and on social media. The responses must have been plain embarrassing.

The tourist was finalizing his itinerary for a planned road trip in Australia and New Zealand. “What’s the best way to drive from Sydney to Auckland?” he asked bemused fellow travelers.

Evidently, he had failed to consult an atlas before posting his query. It is 2,155 kilometers (1,339 mi) and a three-hour plane journey across the Tasman Sea between the two cities.

Submarine or water taxi were cited as his best travel options if he didn’t want to fly.^[1]

9 An Unexpected Stowaway

Many of us have packed things in our suitcases by mistake for the trip home. The odd bath towel, book, or article of clothing can find its way into our luggage.

Imagine the shock one Scotswoman received when she was unpacking her cases to find that a large Australian reptile had stowed away in her luggage. The woman had been visiting family in Queensland, Australia, when a 60-centimeter (24 in) spotted python had appeared in her bedroom during a storm. A snake catcher was called, who searched for the reptile to no avail. It was assumed that the snake had slithered outside.

A few days later, the woman packed up and returned home to Scotland. After a 40-hour flight from Brisbane to Glasgow, imagine her surprise when she unpacked her luggage and found the snake curled safely in one of her shoes.^[2]

The snake had survived the 18,000-kilometer (11,200 mi) journey unharmed and had shed its skin during the hibernation. Fortunately, the Glasgow snake catcher was more successful in catching the python. He removed it to a wildlife sanctuary.

8 Pretty Venomous Sea Life

Anyone who plans a trip to Australia is aware that they have some seriously dangerous wildlife. In fact, the fear of being attacked by some of their killer critters is often the number one concern for many potential tourists.

Really, though, as long as you take a few sensible precautions and take heed of the warning signs, you are usually fairly safe. Which is why an Asian tourist’s holiday snap holding “a pretty octopus” went viral. Not for the insta-worthy shot but for her breathtaking ignorance of how much danger she had put herself in.^[3]

The woman posted photos on social media holding a “pretty orange-and-blue octopus” she had found in a rock pool. The unsuspecting tourist was actually handling one of the Pacific region’s most venomous creatures, the blue-ringed octopus. A bite from this creature can cause paralysis and death within an hour. The octopus carries enough venom to kill 26 adults within minutes.

Amazingly, the tourist was able to shake the octopus from her hand before it had a chance to sting her.

7 How Much Can A Koala Bear?

It isn’t just tourists who have funny interactions with the local wildlife. A South Australian winegrower recently had his car hijacked by a koala bear that seemed to have become a little hot under the collar.

It was a scorching day when the man drove out to inspect his vineyards. He left his dog in the car with the door open so that his pet didn’t get too hot. When the man returned, he was astounded to find that a koala had jumped into the car to take advantage of the air conditioning.

Even the loud howls of protest from the dog were not enough to persuade the koala to move on. The marsupial ensconced himself firmly in the front seat, taking full advantage of the air conditioning vents.^[4]

The driver eventually gave up trying to remove the cool koala and drove the hijacker to nearby bushland. There, the intoxicating lure of delicious eucalyptus leaves eventually saw the koala take off into the bush.

6 Boxing Kangaroo

Soaring with the eagles gives paragliders a bird’s-eye view of the world, often captured on the GoPro cameras attached to their helmets. Most experienced paragliders are aware of the risks associated with changes in weather conditions, inappropriate landings, and unfortunate encounters with birdlife.

However, one Australian paraglider’s GoPro film went viral as he captured an unexpected encounter when touching down. After a morning paragliding near Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, the man floated into a nearby national park to land. He was initially delighted to see a couple of kangaroos hopping over to say hello. Or so he thought.

Unfortunately, the ‘roos weren’t as pleased to see the man invading their territory. One of them came over to deliver a few well-timed punches to the unsuspecting paraglider before retreating into the bush.^[5]

A good example of where the term “boxing kangaroo” came from.

5 Have I Forgotten Something?

We’ve all left something behind in the airport when traveling. The umbrella, the duty-free bags, maybe even a suitcase.

In early 2019, flight controllers in Saudi Arabia initially thought the cabin crew was joking when they made a request to turn back. The flight from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia was forced to turn around when a passenger realized she had left her baby in the boarding terminal.

Imagine going through the check-in, settling into your seat, listening to the safety procedures, and taking off before it occurred to you that you may be missing something?^[6]

Reportedly, the flight was in midair when the mother realized she had forgotten to bring her baby with her and requested that the flight be turned back. The child was still sitting safely in the boarding area when the flight landed. Fortunately, the child was unharmed and mother and baby were reunited.

4 Landing In Hot Water

Many major tourist attractions around the world do pose potential safety risks. These usually have prominent warning signs, and protective barricades are often put in place as an additional safety measure.

However, a tourist in Yellowstone National Park stunned onlookers when he crossed the barricades and strolled up to a steaming geyser to use it as a foot spa. Apparently oblivious to the fact that the boiling waters can cause serious or fatal burns, the man proceeded to remove his shoes and socks and attempted to wash his feet in the geyser.

Fortunately, the man was relatively unharmed. He put his shoes and socks back on before heading on his way.^[7]

3 Modern-Day Jonah

We’ve all heard the biblical story of the prophet Jonah who was eaten by a whale after being cast overboard from a ship during a storm. Jonah spent three days in the whale’s belly before being regurgitated onto the shore unharmed.

In early 2019, an experienced South African diver snorkeling off the coast of Port Elizabeth had a closer encounter with the marine life than he was expecting. Rainer Schimpf was well aware of the need to be vigilant for sharks chasing schools of fish.^[8]

However, when he was suddenly engulfed in darkness, he suspected that he had just been mistaken for a small fish that was part of a large bait ball. A huge Bryde’s whale had taken Schimpf headfirst into its massive jaws.

Unlike Jonah, Schimpf was fortunately too large for the whale to swallow whole and apparently not to the creature’s taste that day. The whale spat out its victim, who swam away unharmed.

2 Ice Queen

When we are on holiday, we are always on the lookout for that spectacular photo opportunity. One Texas grandma’s great holiday snap recently turned into a major rescue operation which went viral on social media.

While vacationing in Iceland, she and her son were strolling along the beach when they came across a large chunk of ice shaped like a throne. This looked like an ideal photo opportunity.

The woman perched herself regally on the ice chunk to pose for the shot. A freak wave suddenly broke around her, sweeping the iceberg out to sea with the grandma clinging precariously to her perch.^[9]

Her family initially thought it was a prank when her son posted photos of granny floating out to sea on her ice throne and the rescue attempt which followed.

Mounting an operation to save the woman from the sea, the coast guard returned her safely to shore.

1 We’ve Reached Our Destination?

We’ve all made travel mistakes—getting on the wrong train or bus, missing our stop, or missing the plane altogether. But at least we expect our aircraft crew to get it right, don’t we?

Not so in the case of a planeload of surprised Londoners headed for Dusseldorf in Germany.

Many of the passengers aboard the British Airlines flight noted the unusual scenery below. Some took to Google Maps and were confused to see that they were headed north toward Scotland.

It wasn’t until the plane landed in Edinburgh that the mistake became apparent. Incorrect flight details had been provided, and the crew had believed they were headed to Edinburgh.

A show of hands indicated that everyone aboard had expected to land at Dusseldorf. After several hours delay, the flight was redirected to the correct destination.^[10]

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper journalist now providing travel stories for online publications and her travel blog Empty Nesters’ Travel Insights.

The year 2010 recorded some of the worst natural disasters in history. The events have had a strong impact on people as we move into 2011. Many of the disturbances have been blamed on the world’s current global weather disruption. In researching various articles on the internet that explore the most shocking news stories from 2010, Sandra Bullock’s name was far too frequent. You won’t find any updates on celebrity relationship status in this article. All of these news stories have had a direct impact on world societies. Some important stories that were deserving but left out of the list are: the 2010 earthquakes that hit Haiti and Chile, Typhoon Megi, the Phnom Penh stampede and the death of Néstor Kirchner.

In the early 1980s, a collection of black women began to turn up dead in the alleyways and dumpsters of South Los Angeles, California. On September 23, 1985, the police announced that they believed a single individual, labeled the Southside Slayer, was responsible for the crimes. The case turned cold until May 2007, when the murder of Janecia Peters, 25, was linked by DNA analysis to 11 unsolved murders attributed to the Southside Slayer. The attacker was soon dubbed the Grim Sleeper by the local press, because he supposedly took a 14-year hiatus from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002. In August 2008, the LA Weekly conducted an extensive interview with the sole survivor of the Southside Slayer attacks and she provided several important details, describing him as a “thin, neat, polite and well-groomed African-American guy.”

The killer documented his attack with a Polaroid camera. The female victim blacked out, but was startled awake by the bright flash of the camera. On July 7, 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that an arrest had been made in the Grim Sleeper case. The suspect is Lonnie David Franklin Jr., who is 57 years old. Originally, the police had not been able to obtain a DNA match between evidence found at the crime scenes and people in California’s DNA profile database. However, officials located similar DNA belonging to Lonnie Franklin’s son, Christopher, who was convicted of a felony weapons charge. Ultimately, the police used a piece of discarded pizza with Lonnie Franklin’s DNA to make the link.

In order to obtain the evidence, a federal detective pretended to be a waiter at a restaurant where the suspect ate. He collected dishes, silverware, glasses, and pizza crusts to obtain DNA. Saliva found on the victim’s breasts was used to obtain a DNA match linking Lonnie Franklin to the murders. Along with the DNA evidence, the police discovered a large collection of circumstantial evidence against Franklin when searching his home. On December 16, 2010, the Los Angeles Police Department released 180 photos of women found in Franklin’s home. Officials released the images after unsuccessful attempts to identify the people, who are possibly additional victims.

In all, investigators found over 1,000 photos and several hundred hours of video in Franklin’s home. The images show mainly African American women of a wide age range, from teenagers to middle-aged and older, often nude. Police believe Franklin took many of the pictures, which show both conscious and unconscious individuals, and date back up to 30 years. As the history of serial killers has taught us, the number of linked murders to a specific DNA specimen does not indicate the entire murder count. The photographs suggest that Franklin may have killed hundreds of unidentified women. Currently, Lonnie David Franklin Jr. is charged with 10 homicides and 1 attempted murder. He is being held without bail and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Nodar Kumaritashvili was a Georgian luger, who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition in Vancouver, Canada. Georgia is a sovereign state that is situated at the juncture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The country is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Nodar Kumaritashvili first began to compete in the sport of luge when he was 13 years old. He came from a family of seasoned lugers. In 2010, Nodar qualified for the men’s singles event at the 2010 Winter Olympics, which would be his Olympic debut. On February 12, 2010, he was killed in a crash during a training run at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

Kumaritashvili lost control in the final turn of the course and was thrown off his luge and over the sidewall of the track, striking an unprotected steel support pole. He was travelling at 143.6 km/h (89.2 mph) at the moment of impact. The luge course at Whistler is notoriously fast and, before the competition, Josef Fendt, president of the International Luge Federation (FIL), publicized his concerns about the Sliding Centre. Nodar Kumaritashvili was the fourth athlete to die during Winter Olympics preparations, after British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, Australian skier Ross Milne (both Innsbruck 1964), and Swiss speed skier Nicolas Bochatay (Albertville 1992). He was the sixth athlete to die in the long history of the Olympic Games. During the opening ceremony, a moment of silence was held to honor the young man’s memory, when both the Canadian and Olympic flags were lowered to half-staff.

Eyjafjallajökull is one of Iceland’s smaller ice caps, located in the far south of the island. It is situated to the north of Skógar and to the west of the larger ice cap, Mýrdalsjökull. Eyjafjallajökull covers the caldera of a volcano, with a summit elevation of 1,666 meters (5,466 ft). The volcano has erupted relatively frequently since the last ice age. Before 2010, the most recent major event was in 1920. The 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruptions weren’t the largest ever recorded, but the subsequent ash clouds that were released caused an enormous disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe over a six day period in April 2010. It was the highest level of air travel disruption since the Second World War.

The most severe explosion occurred on April 14, 2010, and resulted in an estimated 250 million cubic meters (330,000,000 cu yd) of ejected tephra. The ash plume rose to a height of approximately 9 kilometers (30,000 ft). The subsequent air traffic closures caused millions of passengers to be stranded, not only in Europe, but across the world. Between the months of April and May, 2010, various regions, including Ireland, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, northern Italy and Austria, had to completely close their airspace. The volcano was able to inject its ash plume directly into the jet stream. The ash was then carried over Europe into some of the busiest airspace in the world.

Previous eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull have historically been followed by eruptions of its larger neighbor, Katla. In the past 1,000 years, all three known eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull have triggered a subsequent Katla event, often times within months of each other. Katla is one of the largest and more dangerous volcanoes in Iceland. On April 20, 2010, Icelandic President Ólafur Grímsson said “the time for Katla to erupt is coming close, we [Iceland] have prepared. It is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over Europe and the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption.” The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that the airline industry worldwide lost €148 million (US$200 million, GB£130 million) a day during the air travel disruptions.

Bedbugs are small parasitic insects that survive by feeding exclusively on the blood of warm-blooded animals. In many nations, bedbugs were largely eradicated as pests in the early 1940s, with the help of pesticides. The insects were common in the U.S. before World War II, but became rare after the widespread use of DDT. Beginning in the summer of 2010, a large collection of bedbug infestations began to spread across the United States. The national media conducted daily updates on the situation, and reports of the insects occurred in thousands of homes from New York to Ohio. Besides houses, the pests showed up in malls, restaurants and hotels.

Contrary to what many believe, the infestations were often reported in clean, upscale hotels. The 2010 outbreak caused the first-ever bedbug summit in Chicago, where experts convened to discuss the invasion. The tiny bugs are not only hard to get rid of, but their expansion is all but impossible to prevent. A few tiny bugs clinging to a piece of clothing can lead to an infestation of not just your bed, but your sofa, your closet and your carpets. A number of health effects can occur due to bedbugs, including skin rashes, psychological effects and allergic symptoms.

To make the situation worse, recent tests have determined that the insects responsible for the 2010 outbreak have undergone a genetic restructuring. The new bedbugs have developed immunity to many chemicals. They also have a better ability to protect nerve cells and thicker shells. All of this research has determined that we are being confronted with an entirely different species of insect. Bedbug infestations across North America haven’t spared London, where the city-run public housing agency’s pest-control budget has increased 10-fold for 2011. Officials are trying to find an effective way to track and kill the bedbug populations. Some of these methods include bedbug-sniffing dogs and a wide range of treatments that involve both extreme heat and cold.

Chile has a long tradition of mining, which began during the 20th century and has made the country the world’s top producer of copper. Since 2000, approximately 34 people a year have been killed in mining accidents in Chile. On August 5, 2010, a cave-in occurred at the San José copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert near Copiapó, Chile. The accident left 33 men trapped 700 meters (2,300 ft) underground, approximately 5 kilometers (3 mi) from the mine entrance. The initial rock fall caused a thick dust cloud that blinded the miners for up to six hours, and created lingering eye irritation and burning. The trapped miners initially tried to escape through a ventilation shaft system, but all attempts failed.

To find the miners, rescuers used percussion drills to make eight exploratory boreholes about 15 centimeters (5.9 in) wide. The effort was complicated by out-of-date maps of the mine shafts. While underground, the crew’s supervisor, Luis Urzúa, helped organize the workers meager resources. The men gathered in a secure room called a “refuge.” On August 22, the eighth borehole broke through a ramp, located 688 meters (2,257 ft) underground. Approximately 20 meters (66 ft) from an emergency shelter room where the miners were staying. The crew heard the drills approaching for days and prepared notes which they attached to the tip of the drill. The engineers thought they heard tapping on the drill tip, but were surprised to discover the notes, as the miners had survived for 17 days, which was much longer than expected.

The note read “We are alright in the shelter, the 33 [of us].” The words became an emblem of the miners’ survival and the rescue effort, appearing on websites, banners and t-shirts. Video cameras were soon sent down the borehole capturing the first grainy, black-and-white, silent images of the skinny, dirty, shirtless and unshaven men. The miners survived underground for a record 69 days. All 33 people were rescued and brought to the surface on October 13, 2010. After the last trapped miner was winched to the surface, the rescue workers held up a sign stating “Mission accomplished Chile” to the estimated more than 1 billion people watching on live television around the world. The event was one of the most watched programs of the 21st century.

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization that publishes submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources. The WikiLeaks website was launched in 2006. An Australian journalist named Julian Assange is the founder, spokesperson and editor in chief of WikiLeaks. Since 2006, the site has published material exposing extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals and Guantanamo Bay procedures. However, WikiLeaks made international headlines in 2010 when they posted classified details surrounding the American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks and its five media partners began publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

The WikiLeaks website began to gain mainstream recognition when they released a video showing an American airstrike that occurred on July 12, 2007 in Baghdad, which still remains on the website. The classified U.S. military footage shows a series of attacks by a U.S. helicopter that killed 12 people, including two news staff, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. After gaining military clearance, the helicopter fired a series of 30 mm calibre cannon shells into a group of ten men alleged by the U.S. Army to be Iraqi insurgents. In fact, the American soldiers had mistaken a collection of cameras for guns. The video is extremely graphic, especially the initial shooting when a group of people are instantly killed.

The second airstrike, using 30 mm fire, was directed at a man who pulled up in a van and attempted to help the wounded. In the third airstrike, the “Bush” helicopter team deployed three AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, which destroyed a building. An undisclosed number of civilians were killed in the explosion. It was the first time that the American public had been exposed to such a war video. After WikiLeaks released a series of logs surrounding the Iraqi War, the Pentagon referred to the exposure as “the largest leak of classified documents in its history.” Media coverage of the documents focused on claims that the U.S. government ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi authorities.

In October 2010, Assange told a leading Moscow newspaper that “The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia.” In 2010, Assange told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another “megaleak” for early in 2011, which would be from inside the private sector and involve “a big U.S. bank.” Following the announcement, Bank of America’s stock price fell by 3%. During the interview, Assange commented on the possible impact of the leak. “It could take down a bank or two.” In December 2010, Julian Assange’s lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that WikiLeaks had information that it considers to be a “thermo-nuclear device” which it would release if the organization needs to defend itself.

On October 4, 2010, approximately one million cubic meters of red mud was released from an alumina plant near Kolontár, in western Hungary. The ecological disaster occurred when the northwestern corner of the caustic waste dam at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant collapsed, releasing liquid waste from the red mud lakes. Red mud is a solid waste product of the Bayer process, which is the way industries refine bauxite to produce alumina. Alumina is then used in the production of aluminum metal. The toxic material presents one of the industry’s most challenging disposal problems. In most countries where red mud is produced, it is pumped into holding ponds, which need to be contained with large dams.

Due to the Bayer process, the red mud is highly basic with a pH ranging from 10 to 13. During the 2010 Ajka accident, the red mud was released as a 1–2 m (3–7 ft) wave, flooding several nearby localities, including the village of Kolontár and the town of Devecser. The high pH levels of the mud caused severe chemical burns to humans and animals, killing life in rivers and contaminating soil. At least nine people died and 122 people were injured. The chemicals extinguished all life in the 100 km (62 mi) long Marcal River.

On October 7, 2010, the red mud reached the Danube River, prompting countries, such as Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine to develop emergency plans in response. The Danube is Europe’s second longest river. It is notable for being classified as an international waterway. On October 11, the Hungarian government announced that the managing director of the company involved with the disaster had been arrested, to be charged with “criminal negligence leading to a public catastrophe.” After the spill, emergency teams began pouring plaster and acetic acid (vinegar) into the Raba-Danube meeting point to lower the pH value.

After a government inquest, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán released a statement that indicated the cause of the spill was, presumably, human error. The Hungarian government has also said that the mud is “not poisonous” to humans. It has been suggested that the heavy metal concentrations are not continuing to impact the environment. On the hierarchy of industrial wastes, red mud is not as toxic as most. However, recent studies of the soil have indicated that a high level of salt in the ground is negatively impacting plant life. The ecological disaster remains one of the worst in the history of Hungary. Following the accident, a second dam was build directly behind the original to prevent the weakened wall from a complete failure.

Since the middle of 2010, the world has experienced a series of bizarre events surrounding the mass death of various animal species. Large groups of wildlife, predominately birds and fish are dying off in large numbers. The isolated events have received a significant amount of media attention and created internet buzz. The scientific world is yet to release information describing the potential cause of many of the strange occurrences. However, it appears that a wide range of potential factors are disturbing the world’s animal life. The mass death events are alarming because they might indicate a problem in the Earth’s natural cycle, possibly stemming from the global climate disruption we are experiencing.

Let’s examine some of the mass death events that have been reported in 2010 and 2011. The U.S. Geological Service’s website has listed 90 mass deaths of birds and other wildlife from June through December 12, 2010. On December 29, 2010, 100,000 freshwater drum were found dead across 17 miles (27 km) of the Arkansas River bank. The fish were reported along the Ozark Lock and Dam downstream to River Mile 240, directly south of Hartman, Arkansas. The exact cause of the mass death is yet to be determined, however, state officials have suggested that a disease may be at fault. Residents have been advised not to eat the fish.

In research on the Arkansas River incident, it has been noted that earthquakes may be a contributing factor. In 2009, the state of Arkansas registered 38 earthquakes. Since September 20, 2010, the area around Guy, Arkansas, has been plagued by more than 500 earthquakes. The temblors, ranging from 1.8 to 4.0, have been described as abnormal for this area. Beginning in early 2011, the string of unexplained animal deaths began to be referred to in the media as the “aflockalypse,” provoking comparisons to a cataclysmic event such as the apocalypse.

On New Year’s Eve, 2010 more than 5,000 dead red-winged blackbirds and starlings were found in Beebe, Arkansas, USA. The incident has been attributed to mass collisions and stress caused by fireworks. On December 30th, three young whooping cranes and hundreds of grackles, cowbirds, starlings and red-winged blackbirds died in Kentucky. The cranes were first seen flying low and crashing into objects in the streets. It appears that in many of the various descriptions of bird fatalities, the animals are becoming confused and running themselves into poles, signs, buildings and other objects.

Between the dates of December 28 and January 3rd, 100 tons of dead fish washed ashore the Brazilian coast, near the port of Paranagua. On January 3rd, an estimated 2 million fish died in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. This event has been attributed to the cold weather. On January 5th, thousands of dead turtle doves were found in Faenza, Italy. The birds were discovered with a noticeable blue stain on their beaks. The Italian government was shocked by the deaths and noted the rarity of the event. On January 8th-9th, thousands of dead gizzard shad fish turned up in the harbors of Chicago. During the month of December, more than 100 pelicans died under suspicious circumstances along the beaches of Topsail Island, North Carolina. The list goes on, spanning many areas of the world.

Beginning in late 2010 and early 2011, a series of floods have devastated certain areas of the world, most notably Australia and Rio de Janeiro. In December 2010, a great flood hit the state of Queensland, Australia, including its capital city, Brisbane. The floods forced the evacuation of at least 70 towns and over 200,000 people were affected. The December 2010 Gascoyne River flood was the one of the most severe floods to ever take place along the Gascoyne River in Western Australia. It was triggered by record-breaking rainfall, amounting to over 6,000% of the monthly mean in just four days. The flood caused widespread damage in the region, most notably the coastal town of Carnarvon.

A high intensity of rainfall between January 12 and 14, 2011, caused major flooding across much of the western and central parts of the Australian state of Victoria. The question has been raised. When will the rain stop? Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser said it is not possible to put a figure on the damage, but a rough estimate is currently putting lost revenue from Australia’s GDP at about A$30 billion. The floods damaged a large portion of Australia’s coal mines and cotton plantings, among other resources. The 2010 La Niña weather pattern, which brings wetter conditions to eastern Australia, was the strongest since 1973.

Record or near to record sea surface temperatures were recorded off the Queensland coast in late 2010. The month of December, 2010, was Queensland’s wettest on record. 2010 was the Australian continent’s third wettest year ever. Communities isolated by floodwaters have experienced food shortages, and a rise in the cost of fruits and vegetables. On January 11, the Wivenhoe Dam in South East Queensland filled to a level equivalent to 191% of its supply capacity. The dam can hold the equivalent of 225% of its supply capacity. As of January 14, 2011, 30 deaths have been attributed to the Australian floods, 15 of which are from the Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley area. Additionally, 14 people are listed as missing.

Starting on January 11, 2011, a series of floods and mudslides struck the Mountainous Region in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. The floods have caused at least 763 deaths so far, including 367 in the Nova Friburgo area and 310 in the city of Teresópolis. In a 24-hour period between January 11 and 12, 2011, this area of Brazil registered more rainfall than was expected for the entire month. Following the downpour, many areas in the region flooded. The disaster caused widespread property damage. Around 2960 people had their homes destroyed. The Brazilian local media has claimed that the combination of floods, mudslides and landslides in Rio de Janeiro has become the worst weather-related natural disaster in the country’s history. However, a similar flooding event occurred in 1967 when 1,700 people lost their lives.

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit experienced a large explosion and fire, while drilling in the Macondo Prospect oil field about 40 miles (60 km) southeast of the Louisiana coast. The blast caused an underwater wellhead to erupt and started a massive offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which flowed for three months. The environmental disaster is considered the largest in U.S. history. In all, the event resulted in the release of approximately 4.9 million barrels or 205.8 million gallons of crude oil. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. The spill continues to cause severe damage to marine and wildlife habitats, as well as the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries.

By late November 2010, 320 miles (510 km) of the Louisiana shoreline was closed because of the spill. In January 2011, eight months after the explosion, an oil spill commissioner reported that tar balls continue to wash ashore, wetlands are fouled and dying, and crude oil remains visible off the Gulf of Mexico coastlines. Scientists have reported immense underwater plumes of dissolved oil not visible on the surface, as well as an 80-square-mile (210 km) “kill zone” surrounding the damaged BP well, where it looks like everything is dead on the seafloor. The disaster has put hundreds of endangered animal species at risk.

The North Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, prized for sushi and sashimi, regularly travels across the Atlantic seaboard to spawn in the Gulf of Mexico. Five of the world’s seven sea turtle species live, migrate and breed in the Gulf region. Kemp’s ridley is the world’s most endangered species of sea turtle. Ten days after the accident, scientists recorded 156 sea turtle deaths, most of the victims were Kemp’s ridleys. The grass beds south of the Chandeleur Islands are very close to the oil spill. These grasses are a nursing area for a large number of shark species. Oil spills pose an immediate threat to marine mammals because they need to surface and breathe. Some other notable creatures at risk are Louisiana oysters, shrimp, blue crab, and a huge collection of birds, including the Brown Pelican.

One of the biggest unknown factors surrounding the spill is related to the dispersants BP used to fight the oil. Dispersants are a collection of chemicals that rapidly disperse large amounts of certain types of oil from the sea surface by transferring it into the water column. The oil is effectively spread over a larger volume of water and taken off the surface of the ocean. Dispersants can delay the formation of persistent oil-in-water emulsions. The problem is that laboratory experiments show that dispersants have increased the toxic hydrocarbon levels in fish by a factor of up to 100 and may kill fish eggs. Some people believe that BP used these chemicals because they wanted the oil out of sight and mind.

BP didn’t want people to see the oil collecting on the surface of the water, so they made the premature decision to use the dispersants. A dispersant was used in an attempt to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. During that spill, fisheries didn’t see a dramatic decline in business right away. However, four years after the disaster, the herring market made a strong decline. Since that time, there has been a steady downward trend of the salmon fisheries in the area where the Exxon Valdez spill occurred, which is Prince William Sound, Alaska. This has concerned environmentalists who have predicted that the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is only beginning to impact the world economy and sea life.