The world's descent into madness continued in 2019.
Here are the strangest yarns Newshub covered this year from around the globe. (Also check out the strangest New Zealand stories from 2019.)
Bug scientist says there are insects on Mars
An entomologist - that's the fancy word for 'bug scientist' - claimed in November he'd found insects in pictures taken by NASA probes on Mars.
This followed a report in August a crashed Israeli spacecraft might have accidentally released thousands of near-indestructible creatures known as tardigrades on the moon.
Forget looking for intelligent life on other planets, because there's clearly none here on Earth.
Thousands vow to 'storm Area 51
What began as a harmless joke on Facebook soon became perhaps the biggest national security threat the US has seen since 9/11.
Millions signed up to 'storm' a secretive base where rumour has it the US keeps a crashed alien spaceship, sparking warnings from the military it's authorised to use deadly force against anyone who tries.
This came , the same year the US Navy confirmed top-secret videos shot by its pilots and made public by the former lead singer of pop-punk band Blink-182 were of legitimate, real-life UFOs.
Madonna's daughter in 'orgy' at same art gallery that sold $180k banana
There's a lot to unpack in this headline, so here here's the TL;DR.
An artist duct-taped a banana to the wall of an art gallery. Someone bought it for NZ$180,000, but before they could take it home another artist ate it. These events made headlines worldwide.
Then the gallery hosted a simulated 50-person orgy featuring Madonna's daughter Lourdes, because that's what you do when you briefly have the world's attention.
Swedish professor suggests cannibalism could help fight climate change
People are bad for the environment, and so is raising animals just so you can eat their meat - but what if you could kill two birds with one stone? And not just to eat it?
Magnus Söderlund of the Stockholm School of Economics made the bizarre suggestion at an academic summit looking at foods of the future.
More palatable solutions he presented included insects and pets.
Man's penis turning to bone
This joke writes itself. But if you must know the details, he was suffering from a rare condition called penile ossification.
Doctors say after they told him what was going on, he unsurprisingly left and never came back.
Doctors warn women to stop putting toothpaste in their vaginas
"File this one under 'fairly self-explanatory'," Newshub lifestyle editor Sarah Templeton wrote in October, unaware that exactly one month later she'd be writing the exact same yarn, but about toothbrushes.
It turns out the ladies were just copying the men - never a good idea - who'd been sticking toothpaste on their bits for... reasons.
Toothpaste is arguably not the worst thing women were putting up there this year. In August, a medical journal reported the case of a 62-year-old Canadian woman who suffered a prolapsed vagina after steaming it.
Doctor sucks urine from passenger mid-air to save his life
An elderly man on board a China Southern Airlines flight in November almost died after his bladder got blocked.
Luckily a doctor on board knew just what to do - suck out the urine. Over the course of 37 minutes, he reportedly extracted about 800ml of wees.
With a straw, in case you were wondering.
Trump is serious about buying Greenland, White House official confirms
It was a tough call to decide which of Donald Trump's exploits this year would make the list. Keeping it to one was even tougher.
In the end, it has to be his bid to buy Greenland - a sovereign country that no one ever offered for sale.
"He could buy anything I guess, or this is what he thinks he can," one resident said. "But you can't - sorry. I mean, it's people. It's a country. It's a culture."
Metric system symbol of 'tyranny' - Fox News host
Trump's allies on Fox News also made their fair share of headlines this year, most memorably for Tucker Carlson's bizarre hatred of the metric system.
The US is the only major country in the world which still uses the convoluted system of measurements, which include rods, fathoms, chains, gallons, drachms, furlongs and leagues.
Carlson called it "the yoke of tyranny", claiming it was forced on the world "at the business end of a guillotine", while his guest said it was the "original system of global revolution and new world orders".
Black civil rights activist takes over neo-Nazi group
2019's news at times oscillates wildly between Monty Python and Dave Chappelle sketches, this one firmly in the latter camp.
James Hart Stern, who for decades worked to defuse racial tensions between street gangs in Los Angeles, in March convinced a white nationalist to hand over the leadership of his National Socialist Movement group.
Stern sadly died in October before he could fulfil his mission of turning the group's website into a Holocaust education service.
