Ottawa, January 24, 2006 -- Canadian voters, weepy and bleary-eyed from a national epidemic of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), voted the previously dark horse Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, into Parliament yesterday. Voter turnout was a healthy 11.8%, with over 88% of voters reportedly staying home with "apathy, runny noses, or, in most cases, both".

Map of Canada

Salt Lake City, Utah, June 29, 2108 -- A spokesman for the Human Reduction Institute's Very Small People Project announced at their annual meeting today that the group had achieved "only limited success" thus far in their attempts to reduce the size of human beings by 90 percent or more. The project, which has been coming under increasing fire over the past decade, may now be in danger of being scuttled altogether. Representatives of the institute remain optimistic, however.

Macon, Georgia, October 11, 2014 -- Scientists at the respected St. Ambrose Poultry Institute of Macon, Georgia have at last dispelled the widely held misperception that virtually every moderately unusual food tastes like chicken by proving that, in point of fact, nothing does.

"We've proven that, contrary to popular belief, it's actually a scientific impossibility for any known commonly consumed dietary substance to resemble the flavor of chicken," said Skinwood Neckle, Research Director at the Institute's Comparative Flavor Analysis section.

Hephzibah, South Carolina, October 30, 2007 -- A Hephzibah, South Carolina pumpkin farmer wins this year's annual "World's Smallest Pumpkin" contest with a record-small 0.23 inch (0.5842 cm) diameter, perfectly formed miniature example of the popular pulpy orange Halloween seasonal fruit.

Ozzie Crenshaw's World's Smallest Pumpkin

The farmer, Ozzie Crenshaw, said he was "real excited" to have captured the grand prize at this year's prestigious event.