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"The year has been fabulous for news pertaining to the weird and wonderful. A woman who saved a suicidal man with a simple kiss, a confused elephant who tried to have sex with a car - these are some of the great nuggets that failed to make the cut. Below, Digital Spy presents to you the top 20 quirky stories from 2011.    20. Schoolgirl to Santa: &amp;#039;Give me Justin Bieber or I&amp;#039;ll kill you&amp;#039; Back when we were kids, we penned missives to Santa begging for the 1989 Arsenal Subbuteo team. If Santa couldn&amp;#039;t find it, we were sad, but we understood. This year, one 13-year-old girl has demanded both a BlackBerry and &amp;quot;the real life Justin Bieber&amp;quot; and vowed violent revenge if she doesn&amp;#039;t get her wish. Her mum&amp;#039;s response? &amp;quot;I think I&amp;#039;d better get her what she wants.&amp;quot; We blame the parents! [MN]    19. Man jailed for trying to turn poo into gold Alchemy... the transmutation of lead into gold is an enduring myth and oft-used analogy in the modern world. But what happens when you don&amp;#039;t even have any lead? This chap from Northern Ireland left his own poo on a heater with fertiliser and other waste products. The resulting fire got him a less-than-golden three-month sentence for arson. [MN]    18. Apple horse semen sold in New Zealand pub Horse semen being served at a food festival is a little strange, but a pub went one step further and actually made money from selling shots of the thing - apple-flavoured, no less. For the curious among you, horse semen is apparently just like custard... [BL]    17. Students &amp;#039;watch live sex toy lecture&amp;#039; Teachers often complain that it&amp;#039;s hard to get their students to pay attention in lectures. Well, instead of treating them to third-order integral equations or the finer points of Heisenberg&amp;#039;s uncertainty principle, why not get a woman on stage to pleasure herself with a charmingly-named &amp;quot;f**ksaw&amp;quot;? [MN]    16. Facebook party accidentally attracts 1,500 guests Thessa became quite the popular girl when she accidentally set her Facebook birthday event as public. 1,500 people (out of 15,000 confirmed guests) turned up outside of her house - some with presents and cake! - but she had already slipped away to celebrate at her grandparents&amp;#039; place. Imagine playing pass the parcel or musical chairs with that number. [BL]    15. Shocked woman dies at own funeral Our biggest fear is being buried alive, and we can&amp;#039;t begin to imagine how poor Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov felt to wake up in a coffin as her nearest and dearest paid their respects. She was rushed to hospital but lived on for just 12 minutes. We don&amp;#039;t think the shock helped her chances. [MN]    14. Sperm bank turns down red-headed donors due to &amp;#039;low demand&amp;#039; We know, Emma Stone is not a natural redhead. But this writer is absolutely besotted with her and thinks she&amp;#039;s living proof that redheads shouldn&amp;#039;t be being turned away! Karen Gillan. Amy Adams. Kevin McKidd. Deborah Ann Woll. Even Prince Harry. Why are redheads considered inferior? [BL]    13. Supermarket opens on Good Friday with no staff Back in April, a New Zealand store opened with no staff. Half of the 24 customers admirably used the self-checkout machines to pay for their shopping, while the other half sadly took advantage of the situation and made off with free groceries. [BL]    12. Naked woman tames Arctic whales underwater Whales that can only be tamed naked? A woman who can dive underwater in sub-zero temperatures nude? Natalia Avseenko apparently used meditation techniques to stay in the water for more than ten minutes. [BL]    11. TV channel apologises for David Cameron &amp;#039;w**ks&amp;#039; typo Typo? iPhone autocorrect? Or just someone at Channel 4 having a Freudian slip when thinking of David &amp;#039;Dave&amp;#039; Cameron when live-tweeting the British Prime Minister&amp;#039;s comments about the UK riots which hit the country this year? [MN]    10. Back to the Future 2011 Nike MAG shoes up for auction &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;s my hoverboard?&amp;quot; kids of the &amp;#039;80s cry as technology marches on, but doesn&amp;#039;t quite catch up with the tale of Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Not here just yet, but a step closer, we think, following the limited-edition charity launch of the famous Nike MAGs. [MN]    9. Internet &amp;#039;has same weight as strawberry&amp;#039; In The IT Crowd, Jen was left believing that the internet was kept in a little black box and controlled by a single red button. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so small,&amp;quot; she said. Well, this year Professor John Kubiatowicz found that the electrons that make the internet work weigh around 50 grammes. The same as a strawberry! [MN]    8. Tiny Tim the Tortoise and a grape If you had the cutest, tiniest tortoise in the world, what would you do with it? Why, have it push a grape along a table to show just how little he is of course! The wee fella was just six grammes as a hatchling and now resides at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire. [MN]    7. Man eats 25,000th McDonald&amp;#039;s Big Mac Don Gorske has consumed 25,000 Big Macs in 39 years. That&amp;#039;s close to an average of two a day. What&amp;#039;s even more ridiculous is the fact that even after all of those burgers, he&amp;#039;s still apparently in superb health. [BL]    6. US offers advice for zombie apocalypse Between a new zombie boot camp course and a local council being asked about a possible undead invasion, 2011 seems to be the year where people reckon Zombieland and The Walking Dead may become a reality. But the US government took the time to actually gave detailed advice on how to deal with such an apocalypse. Prepare an emergency kit! Plan your escape routes! And the eternally-wise nugget: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re a goner if a zombie bites you.&amp;quot; [BL]    5. German firm arranges company-wide orgy Well, here&amp;#039;s one way to incentivise staff. While some firms go for big cash bonuses and others just an &amp;#039;Employee of the Month&amp;#039; certificate, this German firm has rewarded its highest-earning salesmen with a company-wide sex party. Ick. [MN]    4. Cat &amp;#039;adopts&amp;#039; newborn chicks &amp;quot;I want to be the boy / The man / Who writes the song / That makes Israel and Palestine/ Get along&amp;quot; sung spoke frontman Eddie Argos on Art Brut&amp;#039;s classic &amp;#039;Formed A Band&amp;#039;. Well, if this cute cat can &amp;#039;adopt&amp;#039; a bunch of newborn chicks, then anything is possible! [MN]    3. Pippa Middleton offered $5 million to do porn Pippa Middleton became a revelation during this year&amp;#039;s royal wedding, earning widespread compliments in her white dress. She ended up attracting the attention of a porn production company, who offered her a staggering $5 million (or around \u00C2\u00A33m) to take part in one &amp;quot;explicit&amp;quot; scene with a sexual partner of her choice. Later that year, a survey reported that 2% of Americans thought Pippa was a porn star. [BL]    2. End of the world &amp;#039;will happen on Friday, October 21, 2011&amp;#039; When Harold Camping declared that the Rapture would happen on May 21, 2011, all but a few were incredibly sceptical. That day came and passed without apocalyptic event, but instead of retreating from the public eye, Camping &amp;#039;corrected&amp;#039; himself and declared that the world would actually end on October 21. Honest! For real! Wait, why are we still alive? [BL]    1. MI6 hacks al-Qaeda website, adds cupcake recipe Not content with 8th place on last year&amp;#039;s list when they trialled semen as invisible ink, MI6 took absurd to a new level. In the long-standing battle against terrorism, the intelligence agency successfully hacked into an al-Qaeda website. How did they sabotage it? Instead of removing a pipe bomb tutorial, they replaced the instructions with a cupcake recipe - by Ellen DeGeneres. Even awesomer, they actually named the operation &amp;#039;Operation Cupcake&amp;#039;. [BL] What do you think of our list? Should anything be higher or lower? Did we miss anything off? Add your comments below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/fun/news/a353745/digital-spys-top-20-odd-stories-of-2011/>