In the last days of 2024, police officers in Iowa arrested an intoxicated man for walking down the middle of the street with a sword and crossbow, police officers in California pulled over an allegedly intoxicated driver and discovered his passenger was a spider monkey dressed in a baby’s onesie, and police officers in Wales pulled over a scientist who co-designed the Breathalyzer and arrested him for drunk driving; on New Year’s Eve, a drunk driver in Canada was arrested after attempting to apprehend a sober driver he erroneously believed was intoxicated, a man in Texas was arrested for threatening to “show up” at a Capital One location “with a machete and gasoline” after a collection agency contacted him in pursuit of a $543 dollar debt, it was reported that the police in New Orleans collected 94 guns from residents by exchanging them for video game consoles, six children and four adults were injured when a toy display collapsed inside a Massachussets arcade and fell onto a crowd gathered beneath it, nearly 90 percent of people in Puerto Rico lost power, and a police officer in Zambia was arrested after allegedly getting drunk and releasing 13 suspects from jail, informing them that they were “free to cross over into the New Year”; and on New Year’s Day, a U.S. Army veteran in New Orleans killed 14 people when he drove his car into a crowd of revelers in the French Quarter, a U.S. Army veteran in Las Vegas killed himself before exploding his Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks outside a Trump International Hotel, a man in the Montenegrin town of Cetinje killed 12 people when he shot into a crowd after a bar fight, four shooters in Queens, New York, injured 10 teenagers when they opened fire at a vigil for a 16-year-old who was shot and killed in October, and researchers observed an orca carrying the body of her dead newborn calf across the ocean for the second time in seven years.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
A man in Maryland was arrested outside a Catholic church after dropping an onion in the aisle on his way to the altar, pouring whisky in the holy water, and throwing tangerines at the congregant who escorted him out of the mass; and a man in Connecticut was arrested for riding his bicycle past an Evangelical church while yelling and wearing a helmet with a dildo that he’d attached to it in an attempt to evoke a World War II–era German helmet, his second such offense in two weeks.17 18 The oldest living Olympic medal winner, who was also a Holocaust survivor, died at 103 in Budapest; the Dutch government released the names of almost 500,000 people suspected of having collaborated with Nazis.19 20 A man was arrested after he allegedly called 9-1-1 17 times to ask for a ride to a Wawa location, a woman in North Carolina went to the hospital after she mistook her nail glue for contact solution and glued her eye shut, and a man pronounced dead at a hospital in the Indian state of Maharashtra woke up when the ambulance returning his body to his family hit a speed bump.21 22 23 The governor of Texas responded to the death of the 39th U.S. president by sending condolences to the former leader’s wife, who has been dead for more than a year; the current U.S. president declared the bald eagle to be the country’s official national bird; and an eagle flew into an Alaska Airlines jet plane.24 25 26
Four hours into a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Manila, one passenger urinated on another sleeping passenger and then begged him not to press charges; a city council member in Brazil who lost her bid for reelection returned a toilet she had removed from her office.27 28 A judge in Arkansas struck down a law allowing librarians to be jailed for shelving controversial books; the city council of Kansas City, Missouri, considered an ordinance to jail motorcyclists who pop wheelies; the governor of Ohio signed into law a bill requiring residents to pay $75 an hour to obtain police body and dash camera footage; police in Tempe, Arizona, released body camera footage showing that officers shot the wrong car with a grappling hook and punctured its gas tank while a child was inside; and a sailor off the coast of Brazil came across an eight-year-old boy adrift inside a plastic bubble.29 30 31 32 33 A new law in California will require manufacturers to specify the amount of lead contained in baby food; the EPA permitted a company to use radioactive material shown to cause lung cancer to pave roads in Florida; about 200 dinosaur footprints made 166 million years ago were found in a limestone quarry in England; and game park rangers in Zimbabwe followed “fresh little human footprints” and discovered a lost seven-year-old boy who had spent five days living among 40 lions.34 35 36 37 A donkey named Perry who worked as an emotional support animal for polo ponies before modeling a character in the animated film franchise Shrek died peacefully at his home in California, and a goat named Willie competing at a fair in Texas was poisoned to death by the 17-year-old owner of his rival.38 39 In the Mexican town of Coalcomán, residents thanked a drug lord for giving holiday gifts to children.40 —Joe Kloc
