Weirdest stories...

1. Tree Man: I want to get married
   One of many stories about Dede Koswara, the Javanese man with a mysterious skin condition that made him look like a tree. Recent hospital treatments have seen Dede look less like a tree, although there have been fears he may be suffering a relapse.
2. Student punished for spaghetti beliefs
   A North Carolina student who was suspended from school for dressing up as a pirate, which he claimed was part of his religion - because he worshiped the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The internet was outraged by the creeping fascism.
3. Man in unfortunate saw-mill penis incident
   An extremely popular, if self-explanatory, story: most of the comments were uncertain if there could ever be such a thing as a fortunate saw-mill penis incident.
4. The nude wet meat soil bandit
   The story of a naked man who broke into a house, filled the bathroom sink with meat, made a shrine out of a bongo drum and created trails of potting soil throughout the house.
5. Giant ice penis
   Not so much a story, as a picture:
6. Goat marriage
   The tale of Charles Tombe, the Sudanese man who in 2006 was forced by tribal elders to marry a goat after he was caught having sex with it, remains one of the most popular stories on the internet several years after it was first published. Every few months, the 2006 BBC article that started it all would jump back to the top of their list of most-read stories. Sadly, the goat - who was named Rose - died in 2007.
7. Cyclops kitten
   The pictures of Cy, a kitten born with a single, huge eye in the middle of its forehead, rapidly spread around the world in 2006. Many people thought it was a fake - but the pictures were genuine. Cy, who survived for only a few days, suffered from a developmental disorder known as holoprosencephaly.
8. Four kestrels
   Not necessarily the greatest story of the past ten years - it's a light-hearted animal story, about a farmer whose bedroom was repeatedly invaded in the night by a brood of birds of prey - but undoubtedly the greatest headline. Eternal congratulations go to whichever Hereford Times sub-editor came up with 'Four kestrels maneuver in the dark'.
9. The 'lightsaber duel' that wasn't
   The two people who supposedly tried to recreate a lightsaber duel by filling fluorescent tubes with petrol - which promptly exploded in flames, severely injuring them both - was passed around online as an example of the pinnacle of human stupidity. As it turned out, their stupidity lay in a slightly different, less Star Warsy - although no less idiotic - direction. Mark Webb, 20, was in fact trying to video a Jackass-style stunt so he could upload it to a website called Retardz. The stunt, in which he broke the petrol-filled tube over 17-year-old Shelley Mandiville's back, engulfed them both in flames. He was subsequently found not guilty of grievous bodily harm.
10. 'Hippo swallows dwarf'
    A classic tale of a dwarf who, as part of a circus act, bounced off a trampoline and accidentally got caught in a hippo's open mouth, triggering the animal's gag reflex and quickly being swallowed by the animal. The downside of this story is that, while highly amusing, it's even less accurate than the lightsaber story. It's an urban legend that's been doing the rounds since 1994, which occasionally gets picked up by an unwary newspaper and printed - leading to more excited forwarding of the story by the denizens of the internet.

Metro.co.uk