ODDITIES

An Alaska man and two police officers have joined forces to rescue a baby moose that got stuck between a floatplane and a dock in a lake.

A strange monolith has been found jutting out of a remote mountain peak near Las Vegas.

Dozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig.

What stands out during a cicada invasion is the sound.

Photos of a white bison calf in Yellowstone National Park have generated excitement as well as questions: How does that happen.

Chinese state media say that a military history buff found a collection of confidential documents related to the country’s military in a pile of old papers he bought for under $1.

Social media influencers and candidates in jail have won seats in the powerful European Parliament, with social media playing an outsized role in many elections.

As a city kid, veterinarian Amy Attas had big dreams of roaming the countryside healing animals a la the classic “All Creatures Great and Small.”.

Cliff diving’s marquee event thrilled spectators in Boston as the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series made the 100th stop in its history.

A massive rare fish thought to only live in temperate waters in the southern hemisphere has washed up on Oregon's northern coast.

Called “Tokyo Futari Story,” the city hall’s new site is just that: An effort to create couples, “futari,” in a country where it is increasingly common to be “hitori,” or alone.

James Kane has used a magnet to fish all manner of junk from New York City waterways, but he says the stacks of $100 bills he pulled from a safe were something else entirely.

The British Army says that the five military horses that bolted and injured themselves as they ran loose through central London in April are all expected to return to duty.

Fifty years ago, cheap beer helped turn a routine major league game into a bloody riot.

New York City’s rat-hating mayor has once again been ticketed for a rat infestation at his Brooklyn property.

Twice per year, New Yorkers and visitors are treated to a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and sinks below the horizon framed in a canyon of skyscrapers.

Mexico's federal archaeology agency is accusing the conservative-governed city of Guanajuato of mistreating the country’s famous mummified 19th century bodies.

Dairy-loving daredevils threw caution to the wind Monday for one of Britain’s most extreme annual events: Cheese rolling.

The 2024 cicada emergence is underway in Illinois.

The canine star of “Dog on Trial” has been awarded the Palm Dog prize at Cannes.

A Thai town, run ragged by its ever-growing population of marauding wild monkeys, has launched an offensive against the simian raiders, using trickery and ripe tropical fruit.

The artist who created the Precious Moments figurines depicting angelic teardrop-eyed children has died.

It’s been a dog’s life at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — or should that be the Canine Film Festival.

When are 706 people named Kyle in the same place not enough.

Someone’s plans to harvest dozens of apparent marijuana plants grown on the Wisconsin state Capitol grounds have gone up in smoke.

A Vermont university has bestowed the honorary degree of “doctor of litter-ature” on a cat named Max who has become a beloved member of its community.

A first-year U.S. Naval Academy student has stood victorious on classmates' shoulders and placed an upperclassman’s cap atop the Herndon Monument after a grueling, slippery struggle.

Dorothy Jean Tillman's participation in Arizona State University’s May 6 commencement was the latest step on a higher-education journey the Chicago teen started when she took her first college course at age 10.

Punxsutawney Phil’s offspring have names that just might help the famed weather-forecasting groundhog to predict when spring will begin.

Officials say a tractor-trailer hauling about 15 million bees to be used to pollinate blueberry fields crashed and overturned on Interstate 95 in Maine.

A woman accused of serving her ex-husband’s family poisonous mushrooms with lunch has pleaded not guilty in an Australian court to three charges of murder and five charges of attempted murder.

A zebra that has been hoofing through the foothills of western Washington for days was recaptured Friday evening nearly a week after she escaped with three other zebras from a trailer near Seattle.

Airport security officers in Miami found a slithering surprise last week.

A Pennsylvania man says his emotional support alligator named Wally has gone missing amid the coastal marshes of Georgia.

A 6-year-old house cat from Utah likes hiding and playing with cardboard.

The Japanese town of Fujikawaguchiko has had enough of tourists.

There were many people doing double takes Sunday in North Bend, Washington, after four zebras got loose from their trailer and galloped into a neighborhood.

The British Army says the military horses that bolted and ran loose when spooked by construction noise in central London earlier this week “continue to be cared for and closely observed."

A U.K. government official says two riderless military horses that bolted and ran miles through the streets of London after being spooked by construction noise are in serious condition after undergoing operations.

Five military horses spooked by noise from a building site have bolted during routine exercises near Buckingham Palace in central London and ran loose through the heart of the city.

A new study suggests that the first animal that glowed in the dark was a coral that lived deep in the ocean about half a billion years ago.

Emerging cicadas are so loud in one South Carolina county that residents are calling the sheriff’s office asking why they can hear sirens or a loud roar.

The 20,000 fans walking toward the glowing Sphere in Las Vegas last week were there for a band that many visiting the Strip have no idea exists.

An artisan roastery based in the Finnish capital has introduced a coffee blend that has been developed by artificial intelligence in a trial in which it’s hoped that technology can ease the workload in a sector that traditionally prides itself on manual work.

A central Indiana man who won a primary election for a township board position while charged with killing his estranged wife has been found guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

Researchers in India have found fossils of an ancient giant snake that could have been longer than a school bus.

Hundreds of young dancers in white tutus and tightly coiffed hair gathered in New York’s Plaza Hotel to break the world record for dancing on pointe in one place.

The sound of a vehicle backfiring spooked a circus elephant while she was getting a pre-show bath in Butte, Montana.

Nine-year-old Cal Clifford had always wanted a pet octopus.

An escaped mountain goat that somehow got stuck under a Kansas City bridge has survived a rocky rescue effort and now may be reunited with the owners who suspect he was stolen from their farm.

MLB and its history are dotted with men who played out of their natural handedness, a phenomenon that is seen occasionally in other sports but is a regular occurrence on the diamond.

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook New York City on Friday as the Yankees went through batting practice before their home opener.

Feral cats have long wandered the gardens and elegant halls of Mexicos' presidential palace.

The world’s oldest man says the secret to his long life is luck, moderation — and fish and chips every Friday.

A passenger has been fined for urinating in a cup during a delay in deplaning after landing at Sydney Airport.

Pretty soon it will be beach season again at the Jersey Shore.

A dog missing in California since last summer turned up more than 2,000 miles away in Michigan.

Just in time for the 50-year anniversary of Hank Aaron's record 715th home run, Charlie Russo is making available footage he shot of the homer.

Thai wildlife officials have a plan to bring peace to a central Thai city after at least a decade of human-monkey conflict.

The periodical cicadas that are about to infest two parts of the United States aren’t just plentiful, they’re downright weird.

Trillions of evolution’s bizarro wonders, red-eyed periodical cicadas, are about to emerge in numbers not seen in decades and possibly centuries.

It has been raining marshmallows in suburban Detroit.

Start handing out those groundhog-size cigars: Punxsutawney Phil is a father.

A shortage of eggs in shops during Holy Week has led Norwegians to flock to supermarkets across the border in Sweden and hoard the traditional Easter food.

A British comedian has been ordered to remove a picture of a hot dog from a poster in London subway stations for his new standup show.

Firefighters in southern New Jersey came to the rescue of a dog who got stuck in a spare tire.

Welcome to New Jersey, known around the world for Tony Soprano, Turnpike tolls, chemical plants, and.

An angler in northeast Tennessee caught a surprise when he was fishing at a lake.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has ordered a ban on musical horns, after videos posted on social media showed people dancing on roads and roadsides as passing trucks blasted rhythmic little tunes.

A top-of-the table English Women’s Soccer League game with a crowd of nearly 33,000 has suffered a delayed kickoff in London because the teams had matching socks.

A swarm of bees forced a nearly two-hour disruption to the quarterfinal match between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev at the BNP Paribas Open.

Employees of the Richmond Wildlife Center in Virginia are doing their best to act like mother foxes as they feed and care for an orphaned kit that found her way into their care.

A Nebraska woman allegedly found a lucrative quirk at a gas station pump — double-swipe the rewards card and get free gas.

Some Bellgium soccer players in the European Championship this summer could resemble a world famous reporter.

What do you get when you cross rodeo with skiing.

Researchers and citizen scientists will observe how animals' routines at several zoos are disrupted during the April 8 total solar eclipse.

Two Ohio lawmakers are sponsoring a bill that seeks to ease the financial burden on law enforcement agencies that will have to replace their marijuana-sniffing dogs.

A small earthquake hit the small Connecticut town of East Hampton on Wednesday, but that's nothing new.

In Hollywood, actor Kevin Bacon is a big star.

Luck struck twice for a Kentucky couple who thought they lost a winning Powerball ticket.

The Academy Awards honor many things in movies but not some of the most important.

Tumbleweeds, the gnarled icon of the Old West, rolled in over the weekend and kept rolling until blanketing some homes and streets in suburban Salt Lake City.

British police have recovered a Ferrari stolen from Formula One driver Gerhard Berger in Italy almost three decades ago.

The Philadelphia Phillies have scrapped their popular $1 hot dog nights for the 2024 season.

Satirical French newspaper La Bougie du Sapeur only comes out on Feb. 29, once every four years.

Pilots lined up on a runway in Dubai and fired up their seven jet engines with an ear-splitting roar.

It's a showdown that treats evading police and wrestling over beer like they were Olympic sports.

Plunging into a frozen lake and swimming laps may not be everyone’s good time but it is for some winter swimmers.

A stingray that has lived for years in a North Carolina aquarium without a male companion is pregnant.

For centuries, women in one English town have run a pancake race to mark the day before the start of Lent.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection says one of its dogs sniffed out something unusual in a traveler's luggage in Boston — dead monkeys.

Sheriff's deputies corralled a wayward kangaroo after it was spotted hopping around in the pool area at a Florida apartment complex.

Sheriff's deputies corralled a wayward kangaroo after it was spotted hopping around in the pool area at a Florida apartment complex.

Police say an inert Cold War-era rocket of the type used to carry a nuclear warhead has been found in the garage of a home of a deceased resident in Washington state.

Punxsutawney Phil has forecasted an early spring from the largest and best-known Groundhog Day celebration in the United States at an overcast Gobbler’s Knob in western Pennsylvania.

Under cover of darkness a year ago, someone slipped into the Central Park Zoo, cut a hole in a cage and freed a majestic Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco.

Indian police cleared a suspected Chinese spy pigeon after eight months’ detention and released it into the wild Tuesday, news agency Press Trust of India reported.

The spotlight returns to Gobbler’s Knob in western Pennsylvania this week, when handlers of a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil will announce his verdict — six more weeks of winter or an early spring.

Travelers in northwestern Minnesota can shake off their trepidation about hitting the winter roads knowing Taylor Drift is clearing a path ahead of them.

With their purple, gold and green colors and toy babies hidden inside, king cakes are staples of Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.