ODDITIES

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has obtained an original 1858 photograph of the future president with an interesting backstory.

Some names are just the wurst.

A lion cub, only a few months old, has been taken to a zoo in northern Serbia after it was found wandering on a local road.

Israeli authorities are trying to figure out how a tank was stolen from a military training zone in northern Israel.

A woman was rescued Tuesday from an outhouse toilet in northern Michigan after she climbed in to retrieve her Apple Watch and became trapped.

Two bears have raided a Krispy Kreme doughnut van that was stopped outside a convenience store on an Alaska military base.

A Florida reptile park has taken in an alligator that lost its nose and upper jaw to a fight or boat propeller.

Police bodycam video from Springfield, Missouri, has filmed an unusual foot pursuit, as two officers tried to catch an escaped lemur.

Authorities say a wandering bull moose has been captured in downtown Santa Fe and relocated to a suitable habitat in northern New Mexico.

A tortilla chip maker’s decision to pull its extremely spicy product sold as a “One Chip Challenge” from store shelves following the death of a Massachusetts teen has renewed attention on the popularity — and risks — of similar dares marketed by brands and spread widely online.

It’s probably not the strangest item ever donated to a Goodwill store.

China’s Great Wall has been pierced by Genghis Khan, the Manchus, and now, allegedly, a couple of construction workers named Zheng and Wang who wanted a shortcut.

A fancy-looking French angelfish that was found one day with a funny float has its buoyancy back after taking some time out of its tropical trappings to get a CT scan at the Denver Zoo.

A car driving with a bull in it was pulled over in northeast Nebraska’s biggest city, but don’t worry, he didn’t steer.

Some 15,000 people, including many tourists, have pasted each other with tomatoes in Spain’s annual “Tomatina” street battle in the eastern town of Buñol.

The smell of marijuana has become a stink at the U.S. Open.

A group of hunters have captured the longest alligator ever to be recorded in Mississippi.

A neurosurgeon investigating a woman’s mystery symptoms in an Australian hospital has plucked a3-inch wriggling worm from the patient’s brain.

Intrepid athletes have donned snorkels and slithered through slime during the World Bog Snorkeling Championships in Britain.

Hundreds of riders in various states of dress -- or undress – are riding through some of Philadelphia’s main streets for the 14th Philly Naked Bike Ride.

Mystery hunters have converged on a Scottish lake to look for signs of the mythical Loch Ness Monster.

Former North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer has learned a lesson about locking his vehicle.

Norway is rebuilding a dilapidated reindeer fence along its border with Russia in the Arctic to stop the animals from wandering into the neighboring country.

A new study suggests that deep-sea “hot tubs” may help octopus eggs hatch faster.

A track for live horse racing in suburban Seattle turned prehistoric over the weekend as more than 200 people ran down the track cloaked in inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur costumes.

Police who found a kitten in a stolen car say they have ascertained that the animal belongs to a juvenile suspect who was arrested after the car crashed.

A large ice chunk fell from the sky and hit a house in Massachusetts on Sunday, damaging the roof of the home.

New research takes another look at the DNA of the famous glacier mummy to paint a better picture of the ancient hunter.

Like a scene out of a horror movie, Michelle Lespron returned to her Tucson, Arizona, home to find a snake camped out in her toilet.

ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots have become the go-to source for cheating in college.

An Iraqi airline says it's not to blame for a bear's escape from a crate in the cargo hold of one of its planes in Dubai.

Willy the rodeo goat has lassoed the hearts of residents in a rural South Texas county ever since she escaped from an animal enclosure July 15.

A newly studied species of ancient whale might be the heaviest animal ever found.

A zoo in eastern China is denying suggestions some of its bears might be people in costumes after photos of the animals standing like humans circulated online.

A New Hampshire man celebrating his birthday with his three daughters saw something so rare that even marine scientists are jealous: three whales leaping from the water in near perfect unison.

An American metropolis known for freeways and traffic has a newly discovered species named in its honor: The Los Angeles Thread Millipede.

In a story published July 24, 2023, about a peanut monument in Ashburn, Georgia, The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of the executive director of the Ashburn-Turner County Chamber of Commerce.

The release of “Barbie” is upon us, and the color pink is nearly inescapable.

An Alaska man on a paddleboard escaped a close encounter with a humpback whale that surfaced right in front of him.

A sea otter launched into the national spotlight after social media images circulated of her aggressively wresting surfboards away from surfers off the coast of Santa Cruz, California is building a fan club as she continues to evade capture.

The head of the Cyprus veterinarians association says that claims that a local mutation of a feline virus has killed as many as 300,000 cats on the island are a big exaggeration.

An unusual find in China suggests some early mammals may have hunted dinosaur for dinner.

A Florida neighborhood is having to deal with a growing group of domestic rabbits on its streets after a breeder illegally let hers loose.

The very online showdown between Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” all started with a date: July 21.

Hundreds of divers and snorkelers listened to an underwater concert that advocated coral reef protection in the Florida Keys.

A Massachusetts library is celebrating the return of a book more than a century after it was last checked out.

New York had its hot dog eating contest to celebrate Independence Day.

Static electricity might help ticks zoom through the air to grab onto people and animals.

As if the smoke and haze sweeping in from fires in Canada weren’t enough, some parts of New York City are swarming with flying insects.

From human ashes to cell phones, fans are taking their adoration for their favorite artists to dangerous new heights.

The presence of pinkish snow in the Rocky Mountains is piquing the curiosities of hikers, campers and photo-seekers this summer and raising a host of questions about nature, health and climate.

South Korea has adopted a new law that changes how people count their ages.

Space disco cowboy.

A California man is going to prison for running a cow dung-to-green energy scheme that authorities say was a load of manure.

A new study has found that dolphin mothers also use a kind of high-pitched baby talk with their kids.

A pod of killer whales bumped one of the boats in an endurance sailing race as it approached the Strait of Gibraltar.

A California man has been found guilty of illegally importing an ancient mosaic from Syria.

A Florida sheriff’s deputy and a motorist are lucky to be alive after they were sucked into a storm drain during a torrential downpour.

A famous Dutch tattoo artist is inking sketches by Rembrandt van Rijn onto the skin of visitors to the building the Golden Age master once called home.

A British man has been detained after climbing more than half way up the world’s fifth-tallest skyscraper in Seoul with only his bare hands.

Conor McGregor knocked out the Miami Heat mascot in a midgame bit that went wrong.

Indonesia’s authorities are set to deport an Australian surfer who apologized for attacking several people while drunk and naked in the deeply conservative province of Aceh.

An Australia surfer who was jailed for attacking several people while drunk and naked in Indonesia’s deeply conservative Muslim province of Aceh will be deported to his country after he agreed to apologize and pay compensation.

“The Eric Andre Show” is ostensibly not a series that lends itself to longevity.

A woman taking a Memorial Day weekend stroll on a California beach found something unusual sticking out of the sand: a tooth from an ancient mastodon.

Dozens of reckless racers have chased a 7-pound (3 kilogram) wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down the near-vertical Cooper’s Hill near Gloucester in southwestern England.

Police say a 17-year-old boy slipped and fell to his death this weekend while climbing a Los Angeles bridge in an apparent social media stunt.

Famous Danish painters may have gotten supplies from an unusual source: breweries.

For decades, a giant, inflatable rat with beady eyes, sharp teeth and a pustule-covered belly has been looming over union protests, drawing attention to construction sites or buildings with labor disputes.

A metallic object that punched a hole in the roof of a central New Jersey home this week, smashing into a hardwood floor and bouncing around a bedroom, was a meteorite.

Footage of a plump snapping turtle relaxing along a Chicago waterway has gone viral after the man who filmed the well-fed reptile marveled at its size and nicknamed it “Chonkosaurus.”.

Poland is reverting to using its historical name for Kaliningrad, the Russian city and administrative region that sits on its border.

Doe-eyed dachshunds, push-faced French bulldogs and other nonsporting breeds circle the hallowed rings at one of the world’s biggest dog shows.

Authorities in a central New Jersey town say they're no longer noodling over the mystery of how hundreds of pounds of pasta were dumped near a stream.

If you're eager for another nude bike ride through the City of Brotherly Love, keep your shirt on — for now.

Karl Lagerfeld’s fluffy pampered cat, Choupette, was a star in her own right.

It's not unusual in Idaho to see a herd of sheep bleating as ranchers move them to higher elevation.

He is a senior at 16.

A seventh-grader in suburban Detroit is being hailed as a hero.

Officials in Nevada say a desert tortoise that is the focus of schoolchild predictions and local lore about the start of spring has emerged from its winter burrow at a nature preserve in Las Vegas.

The “giant pothole” that Arnold Schwarzenegger filled on a street in his Los Angeles neighborhood was actually a trench dug for utility work.

A pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies is criticizing some Major League Baseball teams for extending alcohol sales with games running around 30 minutes shorter due to the sport’s new pitch clock.

A 1-year-old Australian shepherd took an epic trek across 150 miles of frozen Bering Sea ice before being safely returned to his home in Alaska.

Somewhere in a remote stretch of forest near Maine’s border with Canada, rocks from space crashed to Earth and may be scattered across the ground — just waiting to be picked up.

Fed up by an enormous pothole in his Los Angeles neighborhood, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up a shovel and filled it himself.

Meet Percy, the police rabbit.

So this moose walks into a medical building.

Japanese police have arrested two men who posted a clip in which one of them is eating ginger from a communal container with his chopsticks at a famous beef bowl restaurant.

Volunteers in the state of Maine have reclaimed a world record in a category that few people know exists: The biggest ice carousel.

A giant red spoon that was stolen from an Arizona Dairy Queen and sparked a mystery on social media was found and it’s partly thanks to Pokémon GO.

Tampa police officers were called to a commercial part of town because of a disturbance, but it wasn’t a public brawl or anyone behaving in a disorderly manner.

The owners of a Dairy Queen in Phoenix remain perplexed — and slightly amused — as to why someone would steal the giant red spoon that adorned their restaurant.

The classic image of Tyrannosaurus rex flashing giant teeth might be wrong.

A recent scientific study showed that German cockroaches — the nuisance of households across America — have found a new way to mate amid the everyday use of insecticides.

An Australian company has lifted the glass cloche on a meatball made of lab-grown cultured meat using the genetic sequence from the long-extinct mammoth.

It was the stuff of novels: For years, a con artist plagued the publishing industry, impersonating editors and agents to pull off hundreds of literary heists.

Scientists have pulled DNA from Ludwig van Beethoven's hair to look for clues about his many health problems and hearing loss.

Conservationists want South Carolina to make the Venus fly trap the state’s official carnivorous plant.

Authorities in Thailand have expanded their search for a metal cylinder with radioactive contents that has gone missing from a power plant, warning the public that it poses a danger to health.

Scientists have figured out what makes a small see-through fish sometimes shimmer in the light.