http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051218/od_afp/yearoffbeatstrange
The northern English city of Carlisle had second thoughts about an art project in which the text of an ancient local curse was set on a stone in the city centre. Not long after it was installed the city suffered disastrous floods, a bout of cattle disease and local factory closures.

Tourism authorities in Switzerland decided to wrap an entire glacier in PVC foam to try and stop it melting during the summer months.

A top official with the tennis tournament at Wimbledon, England took the opportunity of his retirement speech to complain about vocal grunting by female players, which he said was getting ever louder.

An Iraqi man who enjoyed a night of love with a British woman in Cyprus got into hot water because of his bad English. He had apparently decided to say "Yes" to whatever she requested -- which worked fine until she thought to ask him, after the fact, whether he had AIDS.

The German interior ministry said that people being snapped for ID photographs should no longer smile because it messed up their biometric recognition technology.

I like the one about not smiling. That's such a German thing to say, heh.

Christina Goodenow, 38, of Medford, Ore., was arrested in October for using a stolen credit card, but a conviction would be especially disastrous for her as she just won $1 million in the lottery with a $1 ticket she bought with the credit card, thus voiding the ticket.