Odd & Interesting

A 74-year-old man leaped into a Florida pond and wrestled open the jaws of an alligator that lunged from the water to attack his 3-month-old puppy.

The tiny Saw-whet owl was named Rockefeller after it was found by a worker setting up the holiday tree Nov. 16 at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center.

Deep in the Mars-like landscape of Utah’s red-rock desert lies a mystery: A gleaming metal monolith in one of the most remote parts of the state.

A customer left a $3,000 tip for a single beer as a restaurant voluntarily closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A wealthy Chinese pigeon racing fan put down a record price of 1.6 million euros ($1.9 million) for the Belgian-bred bird, saying a lot more than merely what kind of money can be made in the once-quaint sport, which seemed destined to decline only a few years back.

An 81-year-old former Marine from suburban Chicago used his grandfather’s antique Irish walking stick to chase off three burglars and deliver one a thump in the head for his trouble.

The fossil skeletons of two dinosaurs intertwined in what looks like a final death match have been donated to a North Carolina museum.

Police officers in the mountains north of Santa Cruz responded to a suspicious figure in a roadway earlier this month and found Bigfoot.

A rapper who said he was making a tribute to a legendary New York City hip-hop group was recorded shooting a flamethrower from the top of an occupied city bus in an unsanctioned stunt a transit agency spokesman called “absurd, dangerous and just plain stupid.”

Police are stumped by the theft of a rare pine tree from the University of Wisconsin Arboretum.

A tiny owl that was found dehydrated and hungry in the branches of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is eating its way back to good health and is set to be released back into the wild Saturday.

Ariel Cordova-Rojas went to New York’s Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last week to celebrate her 30th birthday.

When families of banded mongooses prepare to fight, they form battle lines.

A hulking, never-occupied building sardonically likened to a robot’s head that has loomed over the Russian city of Kaliningrad for decades is to be demolished next year, the region’s governor says.

Police have jailed a woman in Georgia accused of pretending to be an FBI agent to score a free fast-food meal, saying she allegedly threatened to arrest restaurant workers if they didn’t serve her a complimentary bite.

A man who crashed his car into a Montana grocery store and fled the scene was later arrested after running nude through a nearby retirement home, police said.

Cooking chickens in a Yellowstone hot spring landed three people in hot water.

United Launch Alliance sent an Atlas V rocket into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida Friday. The launch service is delivering a satellite into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office.

A Michigan couple whose large family attracted attention by growing to include 14 sons has welcomed their first daughter nearly three decades after the birth of their first child.

A man who was in a traffic accident stole the car of a good Samaritan who had stopped to help him, Puerto Rico police said Thursday.

A cat who patrolled the highest peak in the northeast U.S. for a dozen years as its weather observatory’s mascot has died.

The International Space Station was a cramped, humid, puny three rooms when the first crew moved in. Twenty years and 241 visitors later, the complex has a lookout tower, three toilets, six sleeping compartments and 12 rooms, depending on how you count.

Baby Nancy, the first Black baby doll to have an Afro and other authentic features, was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday, along with sidewalk chalk and the wooden block game Jenga.

A flash of luck helped astronomers solve a cosmic mystery: What causes powerful but fleeting radio bursts that zip and zigzag through the universe?

The front carriage of a Dutch metro train that landed on a sculpture of a whale’s tail after plowing through the end of an elevated section of rails was painstakingly lifted clear of the artwork Tuesday and lowered to the ground.