In Depth
Year in review 2007
Oddest stories of the year
The 10 stories that had us scratching our heads or laughing out loud
Last Updated December 13, 2007
CBC News
Porno pizza
Sign atop cars delivering for Porno Pizza in Winnipeg, which provides racy pictures in every pizza box.
(CBC)
In an effort to make the act of pizza eating more exciting and to increase pie sales, a Winnipeg company is offering up pornographic images inserted under each pizza. Porno Pizza has raised more than a few eyebrows for its racy gimmick and even claims many of its customers are women. It's all above board, too: customers must show ID proving they are 18 or older.
Vancouver's own Vulcan
Doctors at Vancouver's St. Paul's Hospital were shocked in June when a patient began oozing green blood. While putting in an arterial line before operating on the 42-year-old man, doctors expected to see some blood, which should appear as a vivid red. What they found instead was more Vulcan than human. After several tests, doctors concluded there was nothing wrong the man, and it is believed his migraine medication may have been the culprit behind the oddly coloured blood.
How would Jesus drive?
The Vatican released its 10 commandments of driving in June urging motorists to take the high road while in their cars. The "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road" instruct drivers to practise Christian virtues including abstaining from drunk driving and supporting the families of accident victims.
Merry Christmas. Ha, ha, ha!
According to a November story in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Santas in Australia have been warned against saying "ho, ho, ho" this Christmas. One of the would-be Santas claims a hiring firm cautioned other St. Nick trainees about the possibly offensive term and advised they use the less sexually demeaning – and decidedly less festive – "ha, ha, ha" instead. Westaff, the company that trains the Santa stand-ins, denied the report.
Are you smarter than a five-year-old chimp?
Five-year old chimpanzee Ayumu beat university students at a short-term memory test.
(Current Biology)
Young chimpanzees outperformed university students in a series of short-term memory tests. Japanese scientists from the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University matched up three five-year-old chimps and their mothers against adult humans in a test that asked participants to recall a sequence of numbers from one to nine. In both tests conducted, one of the chimps came out on top.
Miracle duck
Think you could survive being shot twice? How about frozen for two days? A Florida duck beat both odds and stunned at least one Tallahassee couple. After Perky the duck was shot by a hunter, he was presumed dead and thrown in the family's refrigerator by the hunter's wife. Two days later the wife opened the fridge to a very much alive and quacking duck.
- CBC Radio's As It Happens: "Lazarus Duck"
That's a pricey paperweight
Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted platinum skull sculpture fetched its asking price of £50 million (about $107 million Cdn).
(Getty)
A diamond-encrusted platinum skull created by British artist Damien Hirst sold for over $100 million in August. The artwork, called For the Love of God, is cast from the remains of an 18th century man, incorporates the skull's original teeth and is covered with over 8,000 diamonds, including a stone worth over $8 million embedded in the forehead.
The worst 80 some-odd minutes of their lives
Lindsay Lohan appears on MTV's Total Request Live show on May 8 in New York.
(Jeff Christensen/Associated Press)
It was a big year for celebrity prison sentences, though not necessarily for actual hard time served. Actor Lindsay Lohan spent 84 minutes in a Los Angeles jail in November after pleading guilty to drunk driving and cocaine possession. She'd been sentenced to one day in prison. In August, Nicole Richie was in jail for only 82 minutes of a four-day sentence for driving under the influence of drugs.
The Netherlands' next top organ
A controversial Dutch reality TV show that purported to pit contestants against each other to compete for an organ donation turned out to be fake. Dutch doctors and politicians condemned The Big Donor Show until it was revealed in the finale to be a hoax. The producers claim they were hoping to draw attention to the lives and problems of people waiting for organ donations.
Outed
J.K. Rowling, shown in July, told a New York audience she has always regarded her books as a 'prolonged argument for tolerance.'
(Ian West/Associated Press)
In an odd literary move, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling revealed that one of the series' main characters is gay. In response to a question about Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore's finding true love, Rowling said she always thought of Dumbledore as gay. That response drew a round of applause at New York's Carnegie Center, where Rowling was speaking in October as part of a book tour.
