Strange tales of 2018
AHIVE of honeybees in the heart of New York City, a monkey with a photographer’s eye, a brothel featuring robotic sex dolls and a political candidate who carried the day from his grave were among the characters featured in the strangest stories of 2018.
One of the most inexplicable animal stories of the year unfolded on a hot August afternoon when a menacing horde of honeybees descended on a hot dog vendor’s umbrella, bringing Times Square to a standstill and drawing swarms of gawking tourists.
After a brief flurry of excitement, the buzzing interlopers were apprehended by a police officer armed with a vacuum cleanerlike device that sucked them up. The bees were then whisked away to safety.
Clearly, bees do not enjoy the right of free assembly in New York City.
In April, a California court ruled the animal kingdom does not have much in the way of property rights, either, in a case involving a Celebes crested macaque who took a selfie using a nature photographer’s camera.
The court rejected a lawsuit filed on the monkey’s behalf by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which argued the primate was the legal owner of all photos he took. In a decision that probably left the plaintiffs crestfallen, the court ruled that monkeys cannot sue for copyright protection.
Animal antics and weird human behaviour met up in New Hampshire in January, when a man bit a police dog whose team was investigating a reported shooting. Authorities were trying to arrest the man when he bit a state police dog, who bit back and then watched while the man was tasered.
In July, in Miami Beach, Florida, a homeless man with no arms was charged with stabbing a Chicago man with a pair of scissors, using his feet. The assailant claimed selfdefence, but the victim said he was only asking for directions when he was attacked.
A list of annual oddities would not be complete without a Texas entry, and Houston obliged as its city council moved quickly in October to derail the prospect of becoming the first US city to host a brothel featuring robotic sex dolls. Upon learning of the plan by Torontobased KinkySdollS to open in the city, it altered local laws. Henceforth, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, ‘‘you cannot engage in sexual activities with any inanimate objects at the business’’.
Lowtech brothels also made the news a month later when Nevada Republican Dennis Hof, who owned multiple brothels and strip clubs, won election to the state legislature thanks to support from evangelical Christian voters, who overlooked both his sex business and the fact he had died a month earlier.
In December, four months after the bees descended on Times Square, a British couple visited the famed Manhattan crossroads where the man asked his beloved for her hand in marriage. The woman, who had answered ‘‘Yes!’’, gasped ‘‘No!’’ as her engagement ring tumbled down a subway grate.
Police managed to locate the ring in the bowels of Manhattan and return it to them using Twitter. — Reuters