Weird BUT true

Hope rings eternal. A woman who lost her wedding band during a 1992 ski trip on Mount Bachelor in Oregon has the heirloom back on her finger after it turned up more than 2,000 miles away.

Melisse De La Mare, of Portland, got the ring back after it was returned by an Alabama jewelry maker, who had a customer who found it while working at Mount Bachelor in the 1990s.

He’s in hog heaven. A Harley-Davidson fanatic gathered 3,497 motorcyclists in Texas to break the Guinness World Record for largest parade of Harleys.

Organizer Adam Sandoval said “it became a personal challenge” to bring the record home to the US after enthusiasts in Greece took the title.

It’s a money tree. Russian officials are being ridiculed for spending $280,000 on an 80-foot artificial Christmas tree in Kemerovo, a city surrounded by coal mines.

The holiday tree — sporting 239,000 LED lights — cost three times more than Russia’s main tree installed in the Kremlin.

Checkmate! A Canadian archaeologist believes he has discovered the oldest chess piece in existence, some 1,300 years old.

John Oleson, from the University of Victoria, says the sandstone object, which resembles a rook, was excavated in 1991 at the once-important trading post of Humayma in southern Jordan.

The piece could predate existing finds by at least 100 years.

There’s no bitter place than Home!

A 91-year-old man who had “had it” was arrested for blockading the front door of a Home Depot in Rhode Island with his pickup.

Edward Hayden said his crime had nothing to do with retail rage, but a disagreement over a portable generator he had purchased at the store. “I don’t like being stepped on,” he said.