The average cost of rehabilitate one seal after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively-saved animals were released into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, a killer whale ate them both.

In 1992, Frank Perkings in Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole-sitting record. Suffering from the flu, he came 8 hours shorter than the 400-day record; his sponsor has gone bust, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off.

A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electrical kettle. Intending to jolt him from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he had been happily listening to his walkman.