16 stories
A Saskatoon woman who had brain surgery 14 months earlier went to the ER after a surgical screw began visibly pushing through her skin — only to be told by a doctor it was just a cyst. When the hospital sent her home without treatment, her boyfriend stepped in with a pair of tweezers and finished the job himself.
A Taiwanese man rode a famous roller coaster in Abu Dhabi, shrugged off the dizziness, and then spent the next seven months developing a slow-building brain haemorrhage before collapsing and requiring emergency surgery. His doctors traced the bleed back to the ride — and his cautionary social media post struck a nerve with middle-aged thrill-seekers everywhere.
Two teenagers in New Zealand's Southland region accidentally left a knapsack containing 43 grams of cannabis and NZ$3,700 in cash at a charity shop donation point while their car was being serviced nearby. A volunteer's nose did exactly what it was supposed to. The teens returned in a panic, found police instead, and it got considerably worse from there.
Myaku-Myaku, the disturbingly beloved many-eyed blob mascot of Japan's 2025 Osaka Expo, has released a gravure photo book — the softcore modeling tradition usually reserved for human idols. The 224-page opus, shot on the beaches of Okinawa, reportedly features "a slightly startling moment you've never seen before," which for a creature with multiple eyes and no discernible anatomy raises more questions than it answers.
A 70-something Japanese man drove his yakiimo (roasted sweet potato) food truck — fully engulfed in roaring flames — nearly two kilometers through downtown Kumamoto to deliver himself directly to the nearest fire station. Along the route he scattered flaming sweet potatoes across the road and ran several red lights. The Kumamoto Fire Department later confirmed that this is, in fact, not the recommended approach.
A 58-year-old Florida man was arrested after climbing into a moving ambulance — while paramedics were actively treating a patient inside — and driving it away because it was blocking his driveway. He then hit a paramedic with his own car while fleeing. Sheriff's office describes him as simply "impatient."
Andrew Giddens went missing on Valentine's Day after a breakup. Twelve days later, a worker at a Florida sand plant found him buried shoulder-deep in mud, camouflaged by surrounding grass, having survived days without food or water in freezing temperatures. It took three fire departments three hours to pull him out.
A routine fish tank clean in an Oxfordshire bedroom ended with a family of six and four firefighters hospitalised after disturbed coral released palytoxin — the second most deadly natural poison on the planet — into the air. One gram of the stuff can kill 80 people, it has no antidote, and it had been quietly sitting in a common hobbyist coral the whole time. The family survived, but the experience has turned homeowner Chris Matthews into an unlikely advocate for aquarium safety awareness.
Two Doctor Who episodes from 1965 — missing for sixty years — were discovered rattling around in a cardboard box inside a dead man's 'ramshackle' private film collection in the East Midlands. The episodes are part of The Daleks' Master Plan, an epic serial the BBC wiped after deeming it unprofitable, and survived only because a technician made copies. The 87-year-old actor who starred in them was lured to a Leicester cinema under false pretences to see them, describing his reaction as 'my flabber has never been so gasted.'
Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja spent twelve years living in a cave with wolves in the mountains of Spain after being abandoned as a child — and now, at 72, he says human society has been one long disappointment by comparison. He has tried returning to the mountains, but the wolves don't recognise him anymore. The reason, he explains with a frankness that stings a little: 'I smell like people. I wear cologne.'
Utrecht's canal has a live underwater camera where viewers worldwide press a virtual 'doorbell' to alert lock operators when fish are waiting to swim through. Since 2024, 2.7 million people have tuned in — and apparently, letting a fish through is a genuine thrill. Fish doorbell season is back for 2026, and the internet couldn't be happier about it.
A new zipline attraction in Guizhou Province, China, sends riders hurtling through a forest canopy suspended 280 meters above the floor of a massive natural sinkhole — and the internet has lost its mind over it. The ride has been dubbed a real-life version of Temple Run, which is accurate both in aesthetic and in the sense that participants look genuinely unsure they're going to survive.
Dave Billings, a 44-year-old engineer from Hilton, Derbyshire, has purchased a decommissioned Boeing 737 fuselage on Facebook Marketplace for £20,000 and is in the process of burying it in his back garden as a second nuclear fallout shelter. He already has a fully functioning underground bunker worth £50,000, but decided it was time for an upgrade. The new jet-bunker will come complete with a bar, bunk beds, a flight simulator, and three to six months of food and beer — because if the world ends, Dave intends to be comfortable about it.
Three glowing orbs were spotted over Corona, Queens on the night of March 8, appearing to chase each other across the sky in a loose triangular formation. A local man filmed the 18-second clip and posted it to Reddit, where it promptly went viral and triggered the full spectrum of internet speculation. The FAA confirmed it documents UAP sightings — though it pointedly declined to comment on whether New York's latest aerial visitors had filed a flight plan.
Two oarfish — the serpentine deep-sea creatures folklore has blamed for earthquakes and tsunamis for centuries — washed ashore on the same Cabo San Lucas beach on the same day, a double stranding scientists describe as nearly unheard of. A tourist and her sister rescued both animals, pushing them back into the ocean before the internet could finish catastrophising. Scientists wish to clarify, once again, that no: this does not mean the end is nigh.
The road known as Seven Devils in Bandon, Oregon lived up to its name last week when dozens of fish inexplicably spilled across the asphalt, creating a slick, scaly traffic hazard that stretched all the way to an intersection. A Coos County sheriff's deputy was dispatched to deal with it — and did his best, which is all any of us can do when confronted with a road full of fish.