January : Couple remarries after sex change
Like a lot of happy couples, Barry and Anne Watson wanted to renew their vows after nine years of marriage.
But the second-time around there was a big difference: This time Barry was a woman called Jayne.
“At first Anne was furious when I told her I wanted a sex change,” says Barry, 43, a former bus driver who changed his name to Jayne by deed poll.
“Our marriage had been going through problems and she thought I’d been cheating on her with another woman. But I just wanted to be one.”
“Anne came to accept me for who I wanted to be and love me as Jayne. Renewing our vows seemed the perfect way to tell the world how happy we are with our new lives.”
Anne, 53, added: “I grieved for the loss of Barry, but there were sides to Jayne I enjoyed getting to know. Now we sit and giggle and talk about hair, clothes and make-up.”
Anne added: “I still love the same person whether they’re called Barry or Jayne... even though she does drive me mad when she steals my clothes without asking me!”
April: Unemployment scheme proves legless
When job centre staff threatened to force Austrian Hans Url to undergo a medical if he failed to accept the work they found for him, he decided to take measures into his own hands.
To prove he was too sick to work, the 56-year-old sawed off his left foot above the ankle and threw it into an oven so it could not be reattached.
Police said Url waited until his wife and adult son had left the house, then used a mitre saw to slice off his left foot above the ankle.
Url then threw the leg into the fire so it would be impossible to reattach, before calling the emergency services.
But even after his extreme attempt to avoid work, the local job centre said he could still be forced to get a job.
Hermann Gössinger said: “This is a tragic case but it will not help the man. Even losing a foot does not automatically mean he will not be able to work. He will be assessed once he is out of hospital and we will see what work we can find for him.”
June: Eat Me, says Japanese painter
A Japanese artist cooked his own genitals and served them to five paying diners in Tokyo to cover the medical costs, in a bizarre act to raise awareness about sexual minorities.
Mao Sugiyama had his penis and testicles surgically removed in March and kept them frozen for two months before dishing them out – seasoned and braised – to customers at an event hall on May 13, according to postings on his Twitter account and local police.
Diners paid 20,000 yen (B8,000) for the plate with a portion of genitals. The painter said the organ had been removed by a physician and and the meal met all relevant laws.
Sugiyama, who considers himself "asexual", that is without gender, initially thought about eating the genitals himself, but decided to solicit paying customers to help pay his hospital bills for the surgery.
He said the event had taken place was organised to raise awareness about "sexual minorities, x-gender, asexual people". He said he was readying to publish an official account of the day.
Police in Tokyo said they knew of the episode, but added that it had not broken the law as cannibalism was not illegal in Japan.
August: Dead possums pose for kids
Schoolteachers in New Zealand encouraged kids in their classes to dress up dead possums for a class project.
As part of an annual fundraiser for the Uruti School in the North Island, children at the school fitted dead possums in a variety of costumes including wedding dresses and bikinis, then arranged them in comedy poses, such as riding a tricycle and posing in a boxing ring.
Possums are considered a noxious pest in New Zealand, where they are responsible for damaging native forests.
Another school there got into hot water a few years ago for staging a possum-throwing contest, in which students swung dead possums around their heads and hurled them across the playground.
November: Man attends own funeral
A Brazilian man who family members thought was dead surprised mourner when he appeared, alive, at his own funeral.
Jose Marcos Araujo, 41, shocked his family when he walked into the ceremony in the town of Alagoinhas.
Jose’s brother had misidentified a body at the morgue after a shooting at the car wash business where he worked.
But the body was that of a different worker at the car wash who resembled Jose – and it was mistakenly taken to Jose’s home for the funeral ceremony.
When Jose Marcos turned “some people fainted and others were so scared they ran away. It was a big shock,” a family friend said.