Woman wakes up to discover her yard is overrun by gnomes

Gnome invasion!
There's something unsettling about garden gnomes. Sure, they can be cute, but they never stop staring at you. Imagine waking up to find dozens of the little buggers standing in a phalanx on your front walkway, as if preparing to lay siege to your house.
 
Such is the situation which a woman in Devon, England faced recently when she awoke to discover 107 gnomes had appeared in her front yard overnight. The gnomes had been placed sometime between the hours of 9:30PM and 1:30AM, and gave Marcela Telehanicova quite a start.
 
Telehanicova reported the invasion to the local police department, because she worried they had been stolen, and that she would be an accessory to the theft. The officers contacted a local garden center, which verified that the gnomes had not been stolen from their property.
 
The provenance of the gnomes, as well as the identity of the gnome deployer, remains a mystery. (Or perhaps they simply walked there on their own volition?)

"Love locks" to be removed from Paris bridge

It was inevitable
It was a grand, romantic gesture that turned ugly and eventually dangerous: love locks, the relatively new tradition where a couple writes their names on a padlock, attaches the lock to a bridge, then throws the key into the Seine. Love everlasting! Or until city officials remove the bedecked railings with a crane.
 
This is your basic "tragedy of the commons" in action. It's fine if one couple locks a padlock discreetly to a bridge. It's not very visually attractive, but most people will probably never notice it. But when tens of thousands of visitors lock padlocks to a bridge, it's not only ugly, but the combined weight of the padlocks eventually threatens the bridge itself.
 
Such is the case for the Pont des Arts Bridge in Paris, which is the epicenter of the love lock phenomenon. Last summer the weight of the padlocks broke a railing. This week, the city council announced that they would remove all of the be-locked railings, and replace them with a padlock-attachment-proof railing with panes of glass.
 
Meanwhile, love locks are turning up everywhere. Please stop!

Beware the dangers of snake people!

Funny Millennial meme
Tired of the media and internet articles constantly talking about Millennials? Feeling the need to spice things up a little? Interested in participating in a more dramatic world? Then you need the Chrome extension that automatically changes all instances of the word "Millennials" to "snake people."
 
This extension creates hilarious headlines like "7 facts every business should know about snake people" and "Whole Foods plans new chain to court snake people."
 
All jokes aside (and make no mistake, it is hilarious) this extension mainly serves to highlight the media's endless fascination with talking about Millennials, and how terrible they are.  There is very little positive news about Millennials, and I have a theory about that. 
 
Who reads the news? Old people. What do old people hate? Young people. So obviously the news is going to cater to that demographic by constantly bemoaning our nation's fate at the hand of snake people. I mean, Millennials.
 
We won't get anywhere by demonizing an entire generation of people, and it does everyone a disservice to pretend that all Millennials are alike. I urge you to consider each snake person on his or her own merits, and be less judgmental about snake people as a whole.

Remains of King Henry I may be under a parking lot

Isn't everything, these days?
Not long after the remains of Richard III were uncovered beneath a parking lot, researchers have announced that they believe the remains of King Henry I may be similarly interred beneath a concrete field of convenient parking spaces.
 
The woman who found the remains of Richard III has turned her skills to the hunt for King Henry I, and believes his remains may be found beneath a school. The difficulty in tracking him down is that he was buried at an abbey which was destroyed some 400 years ago, and records from the time are spotty at best.
 
King Henry I was crowned after his brother (the former king) died in a suspicious hunting accident. He allegedly died after eating too many lampreys. 

Take the Charlie Charlie Challenge and summon a Mexican demon

Or maybe don't
Over the holiday weekend a new paranormal trend swept Twitter: the #CharlieCharlieChallenge, in which you use two pencils as a sort of makeshift Ouija board in order to speak to a Mexican demon named Charlie.
 
To make the board, draw an X on a sheet of paper to divide it by four. Write "YES" in two opposite corners and "NO" in the other two. Then put the two pencils in the middle, crossed over each other, in a plus sign, balanced so that the middle pencil can spin. 
 
Now ask aloud, "Charlie, Charlie, are you there?" and wait for your reply. Chances are, the top pencil will nudge in one direction or another, simply because of the balance. You can now proceed to ask Charlie questions. 
 
One catch: when you are ready to stop, you can't just quit. You have to ask Charlie if HE is ready. "Charlie, Charlie, can we stop?" If Charlie doesn't say no, then you have to keep playing!
 

Fairy photographed in England?

Probably not, but it's fun to imagine!
When photographer Lisa Wildgoose examined her pictures from a recent photo shoot of wildflowers, she found a special surprise hidden in one of them. Hovering near a bluebell was what appeared to be a tiny fairy. 
 
Wildgoose posted the photo to her Facebook page, and asked people to "identify what insect this may be before I think I've really lost the plot." Wildgoose is not claiming that it is a fairy, although she points out that it "actually looks like it has blonde hair, a jacket, trousers, and little shoes."
 
This photo was taken in Northampton, England, a part of the world with a long history of fairy tradition and lore. England is also a hot spot for contemporary fairy sightings, from the Cottingley fairies (which were faked) in 1917, to more recent photos snapped by university lecturer John Hyatt in Lancashire.

Tater tots were this burglar's downfall

Can you blame him?
When a Petaluma burglar broke into a house, he no doubt planned to rob the place. Instead, he got sidetracked by tater tots.
 
The homeowner came downstairs to discover that the man had cooked and eaten a plate of tater tots, then fell asleep on her couch. She sensibly phoned police and ran out the back door.
 
Police had to repeatedly taser the man into submission when they arrived. Personally, I would have thought he would be more compliant, being full of greasy carbs like that.
 

Did a UFO visit the Calbuco volcano eruption?

Interesting footage posted to YouTube
When the Calbuco volcano erupted last week, several observers caught what looked like a UFO hovering near the ash plume. The object appeared to be two glowing spheres, and it reportedly hovered in mid-air for several minutes before vanishing.
 
Several experts analyzed the footage and determined that it was legit, and not either a hoax or a CGI effect. But that left the question, what was it?
 
Enter Marc Dantonio, an FX expert and the chief photo and video analyst for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). Dantonio looked at the footage from several angles, and determined that it was most likely a drone.
 
According to Dantonio, the various angles show that the drone was smallish and close to the camera. It's difficult to tell scale from video like this, which is why it's understandable that some people thought the object was large and far-away.
 
Most likely the drone belonged to someone in the nearby town who decided to use it to get a better view of the ash plume. Understandable, certainly. 
 

11-ton glob of fat and wet wipes destroys London sewer

Bring your umbrella!
Today an 11-ton glob of congealed fat, wet wipes, and other household waste burst through a 1940's-era sewer pipe in London to create a truly disgusting mess.
 
The congealed fat had built up over the course of many years, from households pouring fat down the drain instead of disposing of it properly. The wet wipes, however, have become an increasing problem for London's aging sewer system in recent years. Many people now use wet wipes in place of toilet paper. But since the wet wipes don't break down in water as easily, they can cause a bigger mess when they hit (for example) a giant blob of congealed fat.
 
The blob was padded out with other things that should not have been flushed but were, like diapers and paper towels. All in all, the "fatberg" was the size of a city bus, and cost the city over $600,000 USD in damages.

Man shoots his computer to death

Can you blame him?
Having experienced a whole host of computer problems this week, I really empathize with Colorado Springs resident Lucas Hinch, who ran afoul of the police after he shot his desktop computer with a handgun seven times.
 
Hinch had been fighting with his computer for "several months" before things turned violent. No official word on what was the last straw, but it ended with Hinch carrying his desktop out to the alley at 7PM, wherein he executed his PC with eight shots at point blank range.
 
Colorado Springs police charged Hinch with firing a firearm inside city limits. However, one suspects they empathized with Hinch's frustration, as well. Who doesn't?!

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