Weird News

A man blamed a low-flying pelican and a dropped cell phone for his veering his million-dollar sports car off a road and into a salt marsh near Galveston. The accident happened about 3 p.m. Wednesday on the frontage road of Interstate 45 northbound in La Marque, about 35 miles southeast of Houston. Read More

Only one animal got credit for a record Thursday, the same day Norway registered the world's largest gingerbread man; the most people hugging in one minute were in the U.K.; Italy set the mark for the fastest consumption of a bowl of pasta; Finland had the most nationalities in a single sauna; and a team from Mexico assembled the world's longest paper clip chain. Read More

A British man broke the world record for pulling a double-decker bus with his hair. Manjit Singh broke the Guinness World Record on Thursday by pulling the bus weighing 8.5 British tons for 21.2 meters (69.55 feet) across Battersea Park in London with ribbons attached to his hair. Read More

The world's tallest living man has unveiled the world's largest gingerbread man at an Ikea outlet in Norway's capital, Oslo. Guinness Book of World Records spokeswoman Justine Bourdariat says 8-foot-1-inch tall Sultan Koesen of Turkey displayed the 1,435-pound (651-kilogram) biscuit. Baked locally in the traditional gingerbread-man shape, it beat the previous gingerbread cookie record of 1,307 pounds set in 2006 in Smithville, Texas. Read More

A young Cincinnati Bengals fan has been penalized for clipping. Dustin Reader got the NFL team's stripes and "B" insignia cut into his hair as a tribute to the team's good season. When he showed up to school in the southwest Ohio city of Hamilton on Monday, officials put the eighth-grader into in-school suspension. The school said its code of conduct prohibits extreme and distracting hairstyles. Read More

A former home improvement store clerk in West Virginia has been charged with discounting $20,000 worth of merchandise to win a man's heart. Nitro police arrested 20-year-old Katie Lynn Smith Thursday on a fraudulent schemes charge. She had worked at Lowe's. Read More

When Ricky Butler went to sleep on a rural, East Tennessee roadside, he didn't have to worry about comfort but apparently he was feeling insecure. McMinn County deputies found the 31-year-old Decatur man sleeping on his back in a roadside ditch, with a loaded rifle on his chest and an almost empty jar of moonshine in the bib of his overalls. Read More

A Pasco County man was bitten by an alligator that had parked itself under his car. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said 38-year-old Joseph Cannistra saw something lying under his car early Sunday morning. Thinking it was his dog, Cannistra reached underneath and was bitten on his hands by an alligator. Read More

Two western Pennsylvania residents need attorneys and, perhaps, a plumber. Police in Ambridge said they arrested 32-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman after the couple were seen standing _ soaking wet _ in an alley about 1 a.m. Wednesday. Read More

Topeka police said a man who was trying to rob a discount cigarette store got stuck in a vent and had to be rescued by firefighters. Police said the man was stuck in a ventilation pipe for about three hours early Thursday. He eventually managed to call his daughter, who called 911. Read More