Weird BUT true

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a penis.

The Navy Times has reported — two years after the fact — that the skywriting phallus that suddenly appeared above Washington state was created by two bored Navy pilots.

“Draw a giant penis, that would be awesome,” one of them said. “I could definitely draw one,” the other replied, saying he would use the plane’s exhaust.

The cockpit hijinks got both of them disciplined.

A jury in Philadelphia could not reach a verdict in the case of a man fingered for amputating the thumb on a $4.5 million statue.

Michael Rohana was at the Franklin Institute for a Christmas party featuring ancient Chinese terracotta statues of soldiers.

The jurors turned thumbs down on a verdict after the defense lawyer argued his client had been charged under the wrong statute.

It’s the perfect hotel for a couch potato.

The Idaho Potato Hotel weighs six tons, is 28 feet long and 11½ feet tall.

The hotel, in the shape of a potato, is made of steel, plaster and concrete.

It traveled across the country as a promotion for Idaho potatoes, until it was recycled into a hotel in Boise.

New Jersey finally has a state microbe.

The microbe, Streptomyces griseus, was discovered in New Jersey soil in 1916.

In 1943, researchers from Rutgers University used the microbe to create the antibiotic streptomycin.

It was a big success in treating tuberculosis. Death rates from the disease plummeted.

An Iowa teenager searching for arrowheads found something much bigger — the prehistoric jawbone of a mastodon.

The 30-inch bone belonged to a young mastodon, an elephant-like animal believed to have lived in Iowa some 34,000 years ago.