By Bruce Stambaugh
This was another year filled with daily doings of drama, dopiness, and downright dismay. Likely due to all the year’s politicking, here are few that failed to make the headlines in 2016.
January 3 – Police in Gladwin Co., Michigan, investigated a hit and run car-buggy accident where the buggy ran over the car, and then took off after the horse spooked.
January 9 – The Downtown Soup Kitchen in Anchorage, Alaska served “Bullwinkle’s chili” for lunch when someone donated a road-killed moose.
February 3 – A research study found that residents of Oregon were the fastest talkers in the U.S, while folks in Mississippi spoke the slowest.
February 12 – Girl Scouts set up outside a San Francisco marijuana dispensary and sold 117 boxes of cookies.
March 4 – Because of another unusually warm winter, Alaska had to import 350 cubic yards of snow to start the annual Iditarod dog sled race.
March 16 – A report said Ohio had 1,300 farms with at least a century of family ownership.
April 26 – A man who stole a woman’s purse in Washington, D.C. was arrested after he jumped the fence at the White House to avoid police.
May 6 – The Social Security Administration announced that for the second year in a row, Emma and Noah were the most popular names in the U.S. for girls and boys.
May 25 – Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., reached a record low of being only 37 percent full, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
June 8 – A Vermont newspaper, the Hardwick Gazette, announced an essay contest with the winner becoming the owner of the paper.
June 14 – A Chinese national was fined $1,000 for leaving the walkway, stepping on the fragile travertine crust, and collecting thermal water at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park.
July 7 – Scientists in Iceland painted a long stretch of asphalt bright colors to discourage Artic Terns from frequenting the highway that provided warmth and camouflage to them.
July 30 – Daredevil skydiver Luke Aikins, 42, jumped 25,000 ft. without a parachute into a net in Simi Valley, California for a new world’s record.
August 7 – Four men with knives accosted the head of security for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as he left the opening ceremonies.
September 8 – The Daldykan River in Russia turned blood red after passing a nickel mine and a metallurgical plant.
September 12 – The Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York reported that August continued a streak of 11 consecutive months that set new monthly record high temperatures.
October 1 – Having survived both World Wars and the Auschwitz concentration camp, Yisrael Kristal, 113, finally celebrated his bar mitzvah in southern Israel.
October 18 – A 52 – year-old Youngstown, Ohio man reported to police that at 5 a.m. a woman robbed him of his pants and underwear, but not his wallet or cell phone.
November 8 – The website WorldWideWebSize.com reported that there were at least 4.75 billion Internet pages.
November 27 – A group called Cards Against Humanity convinced thousands of people to donate more than $100,000 to pointlessly dig a hole in the ground, dubbed the Holiday Hole, over the period of several days as a Black Friday spoof.
December 4 – A Florida woman wandered for 12 hours in a park after taking a wrong turn in a half-marathon in Venice, Florida.
So there you have it. As you can see, the presidential election wasn’t the only silliness on the planet. Let’s all hope for a better 2017.
© Bruce Stambaugh 2016
Roadkill Crossing 
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