It was the best of times, the worst of times, and the weirdest and wildest of times.
We’re taking a look back at 2024’s craziest, kookiest, and most confounding stories, including a melted statue of Abraham Lincoln, a guy body slamming an Orca, and a woodpecker playing ding-dong-ditch.
First, the good news.
The world’s most famous wooly weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil, took a break from prognostication to do some procreating, becoming a dad to not one but two little ones.
One creative little girl’s solar system project took her to galactic viral superstardom! Alice Hayes used Barbies to represent the planets through fashion flairs like sassy solar rings and such. A TikTok video of her work garnered over a million views and even a surreal shoutout from the mothership herself, Barbie.
A surreal-but-welcome sight captured by an aerial drone allowed rescuers to breathe a sigh of relief after a 10-year-old Louisiana girl went missing in the middle of the night. It turns out she had sleepwalked out of her home and into nearby woods, where she was spotted hours later from above and collected safely on the ground.
But it wasn’t all good news.
For one, the infamous Chicago rat hole is no more. You see, the internet got rat splat fever after a rodent seemingly made an impression in some wet cement, which cemented the Chi-town sidewalk as a new tourist attraction. But no amount of selfies and-or weird sidewalk shrines could save it from being dug up after the city deemed it was damaged and needed replacing. Rats.
One man’s day went from bad to worse after he was late for a court hearing while facing a charge of driving with a suspended license and dialed in via Zoom to said court hearing while driving -- still without a valid license. The lawyers couldn’t even keep a straight face and the judge threw the book at him, proving two wrongs still don’t make a right.
Bad news went from out of this world to right through one guy’s living room when what was later identified by NASA as piece of space junk from the International Space Station came rocketing through his roof, just narrowly missing his son. Everybody was OK, and NASA later reclaimed the one-pound metal projectile.
There were just plain ugly headlines, like a man called out by authorities Down Under after being caught on camera trying to body slam an Orca. New Zealand’s Department of Conservation fined the guy, then threw him to the social media wolves by re-posting the video online.
Or this Willy Wonka-inspired event that was more wonk-y than Wonk-a. For $44 a ticket the Scotland event promised “optical marvels” and “extraordinary props” but delivered a sparsely decorated warehouse and quarter cups of lemonade. The social media mockery was ruthless, comparing it, at best, to the infamous “Fyre Festival” and at worst, to a meth lab.
A historically hot summer took a very visual toll on a wax statue replica of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., causing Honest Abe to lose his cool and his head.
As far as crazy and kooky stories there were just way too many, so here are a few highlights:
- A puppy born lime green
- A creepy zombie fungus spider
- Robot grins through living skins
- Bats running on treadmills
- A guy running marathons while drinking wine
- A woodpecker playing ding-dong-ditch
- Hamsters smuggled in pants
- Snakes smuggled in pants
- And a burglary suspect caught with his pants down