World without an end

Well, the world was supposed to end this year. Turns out it was the biggest flop show since Columbus goofed up trying to find India. It was a widely disseminated myth that the Maya had predicted some kind of apocalypse on December 21, 2012, reinforced by disaster movies like 2012. But in the words of Nasa: Naah!

In Turkey, thousands of tourists flocked to Sirince, a picturesque village near the Aegean Sea, where visitors gathered in the town square to await the return of Noah's Ark on a nearby hill. They counted down from 10 and applauded when the vessel failed to appear and the world did not end. Most of the rest of the world laughed while some breathed a sigh of relief, happy that the world had decided to die another day.

Monkey business

Earlier this month, a monkey with immaculate fashion sense was found walking aimlessly around an IKEA store in Toronto, Canada. He was dressed in ... wait for this ... a fur coat. And we are not referring to his natural fur coat either. Oh, and the monkey's name is Darwin. Clearly, it's the evolution of the species. So Darwin, who also became an internet sensation, apparently escaped from his owner's parked vehicle before strutting his stuff in a designer fur coat. One newspaper headline said it all: "Stylish but illegal monkey found roaming Toronto Ikea".

By George, it's a chicken

What came first, the chicken or the egg? The answer is George Washington. Don't even think of asking why he crossed the road. A threeyear-old frozen chicken nugget bearing a slight resemblance to the first US president attracted over 70 bids on eBay during a contest between patriotic Americans earlier this year. The nugget, which the internet dubbed "presidential poultry", eventually attracted an offer of £5, 000 before the highest bidder chickened out.

Chicken soup for the lost soul

A Russian man landed himself in soup after a row with his wife over. . . errr. . . soup. Siberian Yuri Ticuic must have wished he had kept quiet after a row with his wife over cold soup as he stormed out of his house in a huff, walked deep into the heart of a dense woodland and soon got lost. "I walked and walked but after a few hours I didn't have any idea where I was and I couldn't find my way back, " Ticuic explained when he was found weeks later by farmers. This is one man who won't complain about his soup again.

A toast to cats

What's the best way to treat bread? Knock out the centre, place the slice around a cat's face. Take a photo and post it on the internet. It's called breading and it took the internet by storm. Pictures of cats dressed in wholemeal, plain and multi-seed bread are popping up across the web, being promoted by blogging sites and posted on Twitter.

Double trouble

One flew over this cuckoo's head. A Brazilian was arrested for attempting to open a bank account using a photograph of actor Jack Nicholson on a false ID. It's not clear if he used Nicholson's famous quote: "You can't handle the truth!" Brazilian police later confirmed: "There is no resemblance between the suspect and actor. " Cynical readers were heard asking: "Really?" Nicholson has won an Oscar four times. His impersonator was not as good.

The promiscuous squid

Women, it seems, have to be extra careful while eating promiscuous squids. A South Korean woman got quite a mouthful when a semicooked squid she was eating reportedly inseminated in her mouth. The woman suffered "severe pain" and a "prickling, foreign-body sensation" in her mouth after a bite of the partiallycooked seafood. She spit the squid out immediately but not before the cephalopod injected its sperm bags into the mucous membranes of her tongue and cheek. Moral of the story: Don't bite off more than you can chew.

Lights, camera, auction

Sex sells. But can virginity sell? It can and in the case of Catarina Migliorini, it went exactly for $780, 000. That's how much this 20-year-old Brazilian woman received in an internet auction for her virginity. She initially claimed she was donating the proceeds to the poor in her country, and didn't consider the stunt an act of prostitution. A Brazilian prosecutor said he was considering filing criminal charges for people involved in this enterprise. On the brighter side, if Migliorini was part of a Zulu tribe, her virginity would have cost a few cows.