A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” are on the auction block nearly two decades after a thief stole the iconic shoes, convinced they were adorned with real jewels.

The Edinburgh Zoo has launched a cuteness contest between Haggis, its newborn pygmy hippo, and Moo Deng, the adorable mini hippopotamus that became a viral sensation at a Thailand zoo this summer.

A woman who pleaded guilty to dressing as a clown and in 1990 murdering the wife of a man she later married has been released from a Florida prison.

During the Day of the Dead celebrations that take place in late October and early November, Latin Americans honor their departed loved ones by setting up altars adorned with food, flowers and photographs.

Pets are not forgotten during Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead celebrations, when even Fido and Tiger get a place at the altars Mexican families set up to honor their deceased loved ones, complete with flowers, candles and photographs.

A winged creature from Oregon has been crowned this year's winner in the annual “Bat Beauty Contest.”.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear showed off his Halloween spirit Thursday.

A New York man who turned a rescued squirrel into a social media star called Peanut is pleading with state authorities to return his beloved pet after they seized it during a raid.

Perched on two fingers on the roof of an art gallery in Wellington, New Zealand, the giant sculpture of a hand has loomed over the city for five years.

For the first time since 1938, children in Des Moines, Iowa, will go trick-or-treating on Halloween.

A rare dime whose whereabouts had remained a mystery since the late 1970s has sold for just over $500,000.

Actor Timothée Chalamet made a surprise appearance at his own look-alike contest in Lower Manhattan.

British chef Jamie Oliver is on the case of the stolen cheddar.

Thieves with a nose for fine cheese have pulled off a massive cheddar ripoff in London.

A special kind of beauty contest featuring bats kicked off in the lead-up to Halloween.

A makeshift aquarium that popped up this summer in a puddle beneath a leaky New York City fire hydrant is no more.

Travelers leaving the New Zealand city of Dunedin will have to keep their emotional farewells brief after a new three-minute time limit was imposed on goodbye hugs in the airport’s drop-off area in order to prevent lingering cuddles from causing traffic jams.

A British chestnut-whacking champion has been cleared of cheating after an investigation into alleged malfeasance at the World Conker Championships.

The World Conker Championships says it's investigating allegations of cheating after this year’s men’s winner was found to have a steel chestnut in his pocket.

A Russian man has been rescued in the Sea of Okhotsk after surviving for two months in an inflatable boat that lost its engine, but his brother and nephew have died.

A Minnesota horticulture teacher has remained the reigning champion of an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California.

An annual event in Maine involving mud, beer and cash has once again drawn dozens of eager competitors.

Witnesses could bear-ly believe the surprise visitor that appeared at the Connecticut governor’s estate.

A woman from China has pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak.

New Zealand’s Defense Minister Judith Collins has decried what she called misogynistic online comments about the woman commander of a navy ship which ran aground, caught fire and sank off the coast of Samoa on Sunday.

A Washington state woman had to flee her property after 50 to 100 raccoons descended on it and were acting aggressively.

The owner of a water buffalo that ran loose in a Des Moines, Iowa, suburb for days in August has pleaded guilty for having an animal at large.

The question of whether a 2-year-old beaver named Nibi can stay with the rescuers she has known since she was a baby or must be released into the wild as winter approaches was resolved when the Massachusetts governor stepped in to protect Nibi.

Police and firefighters in New Hampshire have responded to an unusual call — a moose trapped in a backyard swimming pool.

It’s tarantula mating season on the Colorado plains, when male spiders scurry out of their burrows in search of a mate.

Whether a 2-year-old beaver named Nibi gets to stay with the rescuers she has known since she was a baby or must be released into the wild as winter approaches in Massachusetts has ended up in court — and caused such an uproar that even the governor has weighed in.

The claim to Shohei Ohtani’s potentially lucrative 50th home run ball grew more complicated this week, with a second fan filing a lawsuit asserting he had possession of the historic baseball.

Voting has started in the annual Fat Bear Week contest at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

Actor Damian Lewis has driven a flock of sheep across the River Thames in homage to a centuries-old tradition.

Earth will have a temporary “mini moon” for two months.

A gray cat living an extraordinary life of visits to the beach and trips to the lake went on his biggest adventure alone: traveling hundreds of miles from Wyoming to California.

A photograph by a naturalist captured a seemingly bewildered seal in the mouth of a humpback whale after the giant marine mammal unintentionally gulped it.

The winner of the Florida Python Challenge removed 20 Burmese pythons from the Everglades.

Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat.

The hoiho or yellow-eyed penguin won New Zealand's annual Bird of the Year vote, after a fierce contest without the foreign interference and controversies that have upset the country's avian elections before.

A cat aptly named Drifter is safe at home after sneaking out and getting trapped in a sewer for nearly eight weeks.

Police in Denmark say a 29-year-old man faces a whopping 86 preliminary charges for reckless driving.

A study that explores the feasibility of using pigeons to guide missiles and one that looks at the swimming abilities of dead fish were among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement.

First-year veterinary students in Hungary are being joined by two full-grown horses in their lecture hall for the first anatomy lesson of their academic careers.

Many of the expected conventions of music biopics are present in “Piece by Piece,” about the producer-turned-pop star Pharrell Williams, and “Better Man,” about the British singer Robbie Williams.

A young golden eagle attacked a toddler in Norway in what an ornithologist says is likely the same bird’s fourth such attack on humans in the past week.

College football players aspire to play in bowl games.

Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value.

A man suspected of going on a three-hour shooting rampage in Northern California and killing 81 animals, including miniature horses, goats and chickens, pleaded not guilty to animal cruelty and other charges.

There's an army taking to Mexico City's streets — the Tree Army.

Newly listed for sale in Southern California’s notoriously pricey realty market: half a house for half a million dollars.

An ultra swimmer's attempt to cross Lake Michigan appears to be over.

An extreme swimmer is back in Lake Michigan trying to cross one of the Great Lakes from Michigan to Wisconsin.

A white beluga whale named “Hvaldimir” that was first spotted in Norway not far from Russian waters with a harness that ignited rumors he may be a Moscow spy has been found dead.

Ohio’s Division of Cannabis Control has proposed fines totaling more than $200,000 against five businesses for violating the state’s advertising rules for marijuana sellers.

Late French film icon Alain Delon once suggested he wanted his beloved Malinese dog Louba buried with him.

Germany’s navy says there was "no deeper message” in the choice to blast the famed Imperial March — Darth Vader’s theme song in the “Star Wars” films — from one of its warships as it cruised down the River Thames through London.

A college town in Mississippi temporarily closed a street after a delivery truck dropped dozens of cases of beer.

A cat in South Carolina has been reunited with his owner after 11 years thanks to a microchip.

In the dead of night, hunters go deep into the Florida Everglades, searching for the invasive Burmese pythons that are eating up mice, rabbits and other prey.

A rarely seen deep sea fish resembling a serpent was found floating dead on the ocean surface off the San Diego coast.

A tiny South American deer that will weigh just 15 to 20 pounds when fully grown is making its debut at the Queens Zoo in New York City.

Some frozen custard and mini-golf customers in Pennsylvania have made a startling discovery that elevated a humble groundhog to icon status.

Whatever possessed Vice President Kamala Harris to pick Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, it probably wasn’t a desire to inflame arguments about apostrophes.

State Department of Public Safety troopers recently helped rescue an escaped sulcata tortoise that was attempting to cross Interstate 10 near Picacho.

A makeshift aquarium established by two longtime Brooklyn residents in a sidewalk tree pit often flooded by a leaky fire hydrant has stirred controversy.

New Zealand's prime minister is defending the removal of basic Māori phrases meaning “hello” and “New Zealand” from a lunar new year invitation to an Australian official.

Swedish officials say no one will be allowed to fish out any of the nearly 100 bottles of 19th-century Champagne and mineral water nestled in a shipwreck off southern Sweden without proper authorization.

On the other side of the Atlantic from Wall Street, a market more wholesome than cutthroat has sprung up at the Paris Olympics.

A dog that went missing in 2015 in Las Vegas has been found.

Two black bears are being blamed for causing a bit of a ruckus in Connecticut.

The Ohio Supreme Court says consumers can't expect boneless chicken wings to actually be free of bones.

The head of Argentina’s soccer federation says the chaotic ending to its Olympic soccer match against Morocco “makes no sense,” and Argentina’s coach called the scene “a scandal.”.

Morocco fans crashed the pitch to protest a late goal by Argentina at the opening match of the Paris Olympics men’s soccer tournament.

An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile got into a pickle on a Chicago highway.

The Downtown Aquarium in Denver has a new resident — a rare orange lobster that was rescued from a shipment of crustaceans delivered to a Red Lobster restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado.

King Charles III has bestowed a royal title on a rare golden goat breed.

An Australian art museum curator has divulged that she was the creator of three paintings that she presented as works by Pablo Picasso -- and which prompted a gender discrimination case when she only permitted female gallery patrons to view them.

A South African restaurant and bar has served up a sandwich that's nearly 10 feet long in the latest offering from an establishment with a taste for the supersized.

A snake in the U.K. has drawn attention to the ability of some female species to reproduce without a mate.

World UFO Day is being celebrated amid a surge in sightings and government studies on unidentified flying objects.

Subway riders in Boston are playing their own game of “Where’s Waldo?”.

A new museum in northern Arizona features the fossilized feces of prehistoric animals.

A silver pocket watch that belonged to President Theodore Roosevelt is back on public display at his home and national park site in New York, nearly four decades after it was stolen.

A small mammal called a kinkajou was found far from its normal rainforest habitat this week: at a rest stop amid the rolling sagebrush plains of central Washington state.

A giant sinkhole has swallowed the center of a soccer field in Illinois.

A strange monolith found jutting out of the rocks in a remote mountain range near Las Vegas has been taken down by authorities.

An Alaska man and two police officers have joined forces to rescue a baby moose that got stuck between a floatplane and a dock in a lake.

A strange monolith has been found jutting out of a remote mountain peak near Las Vegas.

Dozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig.

What stands out during a cicada invasion is the sound.

Photos of a white bison calf in Yellowstone National Park have generated excitement as well as questions: How does that happen.

Twenty-three sets of twins have graduated from a Massachusetts middle school, making up about 10% of the eighth-grade class.

A military history buff in China appears to have made an alarming discovery after picking up four books for less than $1 at a neighborhood recycling station.

Social media influencers and candidates in jail have won seats in the powerful European Parliament, with social media playing an outsized role in many elections.

New research shows African elephants call each other and respond to individual names, something few wild animals do.

As a city kid, veterinarian Amy Attas had big dreams of roaming the countryside healing animals a la the classic “All Creatures Great and Small.”.

Cliff diving’s marquee event thrilled spectators in Boston as the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series made the 100th stop in its history.

A massive rare fish thought to only live in temperate waters in the southern hemisphere has washed up on Oregon's northern coast.

At first, fossil-hunting diver Alex Lundberg thought the lengthy object on the sea floor off Florida’s Gulf Coast was a piece of wood.