The quirky stories of 2023

🎧 Listen to the podcast episode where Claire and Kate take you through the top quirky stories of 2023.

🧐 Noice, different, unusual

There was some wild weather this year, but none so strange as in the remote outback town of Lajamanu in the Northern Territory, which experienced fish tornadoes. The Weather Girls’ iconic song might need an update…

There was some cause for alarm after a patch of Venice’s Grand Canal turned bright green. Authorities figured out it was fluorescein - a non-toxic substance used to test wastewater. Hopefully the colour was a good sign…

Blackpool Zoo in England put out a call for staff willing to dress up as giant birds and put them to work chasing away seagulls. It truly is a weird jobs market right now…

🐨 Those wacky creatures…

A koala named Claude ate his way through $6,000 worth of eucalyptus seedlings at one NSW nursery. They were intended to be planted for a wildlife corridor, but the cheeky marsupial got in early…

China’s Hangzhou Zoo faced accusations their sun bear was actually a human in disguise. The viral video that sparked the rumour looks a little strange, but the zoo insists its bears are beary real…

For the first time since national population records began in the late 1850s, the ratio of sheep to people in New Zealand fell below 5:1. If you’re a sheep farmer, that’s baaad…

💕 Love is in the air

The San Antonio Zoo held a unique Valentine’s Day fundraising event… For a $5-150 donation, you could name a cockroach, rodent, or veggie after your ex and watch it be eaten by an animal.

There was a bit of love lost after Indian authorities failed in their attempt to rebrand this year’s Valentine’s Day to ‘Cow Hug Day’… “Hugging cows will bring emotional richness and increase individual and collective happiness”, a government agency said, leaving many udderly unimpressed…

Research from Queensland Uni found that there was no correlation between funniness and perceived attractiveness for either gender. They monitored more than 40 hours of dates, and the funny bone isn’t as alluring as you might have thought…

👍 Trending

The art of ‘bed rotting’ - aka relaxing under your quilt with no purpose whatsoever - gained momentum on TikTok earlier this year. Finally, a Gen Z trend we can get onboard with…

Bunnings had some great PR this year after Harry Styles made the Bunnings bucket hat cool on stage at one of his Aussie concerts. So you can imagine what he did for Daryl Braithwaite…

We're not ones for gender stereotypes, but we did get across the 'girl dinner’ trend. It’s “an aesthetically pleasing ‘lunchable’: an artfully arranged pile of snacks that, when consumed in high enough volume, constitutes a meal.” We were well ahead of the trend on this one…

🍝 What’s cooking?

With cost of living pressures mucking us around this year, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Giorgio Parisi found a cheaper way to cook pasta… He suggests turning off the heat halfway through cooking and covering it with a lid to finish it off, thereby cutting your fuel costs. So wrong…

Speaking of food fights, the UK’s food watchdog boss Professor Susan Jebb started one of her own after saying she thinks people should stop bringing cake into the office for their colleagues' health, likening it to passive smoking. To say it wasn’t a popular view is understating things a little…

And condiment giant Heinz put an age-old debate to bed after posting a grammatically confusing tweet: “FYI: Ketchup. goes. in. the. Fridge!!!” You've gotta admit they're a trustworthy sauce…

🍷 Bottom’s up

Rivers of red wine flowed through the streets of a small town in Portugal after tanks burst at a local distillery, spilling 2.2 million litres. Cheers?

Residents of Albury, NSW weren’t able to get their chilled caffeine fix thanks to a spat between a local shop and the supplier of DARE iced coffee, including an epic passive-aggressive note… Thankfully another supplier intervened before there was any more brew-ha-ha.

And if you’re looking for a new way to ring in the New Year, Hollywood A-Lister Tom Hanks has a cocktail suggestion: 'Diet Cokagne' - a mix of Diet Coke and champagne…

Pantone has announced the colour of 2024 - and it's [insert drumroll...] Peach Fuzz. To get it on your feet, Cariuma has partnered with Pantone to release their limited edition sneaker collab. Loved by celebs and with over 40K 5-star reviews, these comfortable shoes are made with better-for-the-planet materials. Squizers can use the code SQUIZ25 to get 25% off, but you'll need to move fast 'coz these sneakers sell out each year...

👀 AIl is not what it seems

An AI-generated image of the Pope wearing a white puffer jacket duped a few too many of us after it went viral. We were so ready for ‘Swaggy Pope Francis’ to become a fashion icon…

Muso Nick Cave wasn’t impressed when a fan sent him AI tool ChatGPT's attempt at writing lyrics in his trademark style. “The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks,” he said.

There was shock galore when Sony World Photography Award winner Boris Eldagsen revealed his submission was made by artificial intelligence. His black and white portrait of 2 women that appears straight out of the 1940s became the first AI-generated image to win such a competition.

🤓 Weird and wonderful science

Colossal Biosciences - the US-based company that has generated headlines with its plans to bring the likes of the woolly mammoth and the Tassie tiger back to life - set its sights on resurrecting another extinct creature: the dodo. Because the world really needs more stupid birds…

Speaking of wooly mammoths, the genetic sequence from the long-extinct creature was used to create a mammoth meatball. Creator Tim Noakesmith says it's not for eating but to "get people excited about the future of food". We were just scared…

An Israeli study suggested that thirsty/stressed/recently trimmed plants make high-pitched “airborne sounds” that are like cries for help. We’ll never look at our house plants the same way again…

💅 It’s called culture, sweetie

‘Bey-flation’ was the term coined for the phenomenon that saw Beyoncé blamed for Sweden’s higher-than-expected inflation results. That happened after the singer’s world tour kicked off there, sparking demand for hotels and restaurants that left the economy a bit Heated…

Residents in the Tassie town of Penguin pushed to have their iconic rubbish bins heritage-listed in an Aussie first. They were concerned that their 12 super cute garbage receptacles could be consigned to the dustbin of history after the council announced "new bin infrastructure", but their bid was unsuccessful. 

Celebs and at least 2 felines descended on the red carpet at the Karl Lagerfeld-themed Met Gala this year - but it was a gatecrashing cockroach that stole the show and launched a thousand memes. It was squashed but not forgotten…

🏆 By the numbers

Tennessee’s Tami Manis got herself a Guinness World Record for the world’s longest mullet on a female. She hadn’t trimmed her mane for 33 years, and it sure paid off…

More than 1,300 dachshunds and their owners congregated in Melbourne to snag a Guinness World Record for the largest dog walk by a single breed. Super cute, too…

A study from NSW Uni's Time Management Institute found that people who leave a party without saying goodbye get 2 days back in their year. Consider that permission…

💪 Modern-day heroes

Proving he is the ultimate accidental hero, Aussie Winter Olympic hero Steven Bradbury has received a bravery award for rescuing 3 teenagers from dangerous surf. The legend lives on…

Last year we told you about the plight of an Edinburgh woman who was forced to repaint her bright pink door by the local council - and the saga ain’t over yet… There’s been a kerfuffle over her interpretation of ‘off-white’...

South Australia’s honorary UK consul Ian Smith impressed singer Rita Ora with his signature dance move - the worm - at an event in New York. She put a call out on her socials to “find this man”, leading former pollie Natasha Stott Despoja to ‘fess up that he’s her hubby…

😎 And just in case you missed it…

Our 2023 Year In Review newsletter landed in your inbox yesterday - if you missed it, there's no need to look like Ben Affleck at the Grammys... You can find it all on our website here.

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Feeling hungry?

Only all the time… If there’s one thing we know, it’s that you enjoy a good recipe recommendation. Which suits us because we like giving them… Rounded up into one easy page, click the image below to check out the recipes that went off with Squizers in 2023.