-- Tough Times for Nike: The winner of November's New York City Marathon, John Kagawe, said he might have broken the race record except that his Nike shoes kept coming untied. And two weeks earlier, N... more

-- Tax Protests: Voters of Castlewood, Va., fed up with a local tax increase, voted 749-622 in November to disband the town and return $88,000 in taxes to residents. And in October in Phoenix, Larry N... more

-- Where's Barry Scheck When You Need Him? Malvin Marshall, 27, was finally released from jail in North Charleston, S.C., on Oct. 29 after being locked up for six weeks because a police field test had... more

-- In November, Paul Z. Singer, head of Singer Financial Corp. in Philadelphia, was sentenced to nine months in prison for an extreme reaction to what he called business pressures. One night in 1996, ... more

-- Sports Highlight Reel: In September, Susie Nelson, who lived across the street from Wrigley Field in Chicago, filed a lawsuit against the Cubs because she says a ballpark security camera was aimed ... more

-- The University of Minnesota was seeking more "specialists" to work on its three-year, $390,000 program to set an "odor emissions rating system" for regulating the state's 35,000 animal feedlots, ac... more

-- Among the many varieties of Tamagotchi toys (egglike, electronic "virtual pets" that must be fed and cared for lest they die) is "My Baby Dinosaur" manufactured by a company in China. An Associated... more

-- Protestant minister Hans Visser announced in August that he had lined up doctors, social workers and drug dealers to begin a social program of supplying heroin at discount to hopeless addicts in Ro... more

-- The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered 71 mining companies in Idaho to submit copies of all of the paperwork they have produced in the last 11... more

-- Murderer Joe Labriola, serving a life sentence at Massachusetts' Norfolk prison, told the Boston Globe in August that he would very soon legally register an inmates' political action committee to d... more

-- The New York Post reported in June that New York state has provided about 25 free organ-transplant operations (costing taxpayers about $1 million) for illegal aliens during the 18 months since Gov.... more

-- The Times of London reported in July on an 86-year-old woman living without electricity in her Sheffield, England, home for 20 years because she had interpreted a power failure in 1977 as her being... more

-- Reuters News Service reported in April that, increasingly, Chinese families along the border with North Korea are refusing to bury their recently dead relatives until the bodies seriously decompose... more

-- In 1993 India Scott dated both Darryl Fletcher and Brandon Ventimeglia when she lived in Detroit and moved in with Fletcher in 1994 when she was about to give birth. Neither man knew about the othe... more

-- In March, armed with evidence that a drug dealer had been killed with a single gunshot during a robbery by two men, Torrance, Calif., district attorney Todd D. Rubenstein obtained separate jury con... more

-- The first copies of the European Union's 24-page user's manual for boots recently hit the market in England, reported The Daily Telegraph in May. The booklet comes with the shoes and advises the co... more

-- In May, a San Francisco Chronicle feature alerted readers to the problem of people addicted to lip balm, and especially Chapstick brand. According to one addict who studied the problem, the Chapsti... more

-- April's annual religious fertility celebration in Nagoya, Japan, designed to improve the rice harvest, featured as usual a 12-foot-long, bright pink, plastic penis, carried through the street, foll... more

-- In April, commenting on the breakthroughs in cloning, Ann Northrop, a columnist for a New York lesbian and gay publication, argued that cloning could give women total control over reproduction: "Me... more

-- Life Imitates Monty Python: The Salem (Mass.) Evening News reported in March on an incident in which Ms. Carmen LaBrecque, 51, had to outrun a rabid skunk, which was literally snapping at her heels... more

-- In Milwaukee, the family of Robert Senz demanded shortly after his burial last July that Borgwardt Funeral Home dig up the body because his wallet was missing. Sure enough, the wallet containing $6... more

-- In March, a judge in York, Pa., sentenced a woman to a first-offender rehabilitation program for assaulting her 10-year-old son by giving him what she called a "titty twister." According to a polic... more

-- In February, Schenectady, N.Y., patrolman Robert J. O'Neill reportedly retired. He had been on sick leave since 1982, at full salary that now has reached $508,000, because of psychological problems... more

-- In January, Jack Petelui, 43, claiming to hear God, stripped down to his underwear, climbed the ornate facade of the Ansonia Hotel in New York City, resisted police efforts for more than an hour to... more

-- Japanese researchers at Tokyo University and Tsukuba University said they will begin in February testing a project to surgically implant microprocessors and electrode sets, and eventually microcame... more

-- In December, McDonald's opened restaurants in its 100th country, Belarus, amid about 4,000 eager customers and 500 protestors, and a few days later, in its 101st, Tahiti. According to New York Time... more

-- One Man, One Vote: Because of an obscure state constitutional amendment that few voters and politicians noticed, the terms of office of the four incumbents on the Loretto, Ky., City Council automat... more

-- After a trial in Alesund, Norway, in December, a 34-year-old man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for repeatedly molesting seven boys he was baby-sitting. Before now, no child molester in Norway... more