The Bike-eating Tree A bicycle lost over 50 years ago has been found -five feet off the ground, swallowed by a tree. Ninety-nine-year-old Helen Puz told the story of how she received a bicycle for her 8-year-old son in 1954. The boy was not particularly happy about riding a girl's bike, and one day told his mother the bike was lost. Forty years later, Puz read a a local newspaper account of a tree in the same woods her son used to roam that had grown up around a bicycle. Photographs of the bike had... READ ON

One of the ways we celebrate the end of the work week here at mental_floss is to round up the oddest news stories for The Weird Week in Review. Not every weird news story made it into the weekly column here, because I tend to skip those that are overly prurient or tragic, such as the Florida cannibal (read at your own risk), and stories that are not available in English. But of those strange news items that did, here are the top stories of 2012 that are worth another look, some of them with updated... READ ON

Yule Log Video Prompts Emergency Calls The fire department in Regina, Saskatchewan, has responded to way too many false alarms over the past few weeks. There was no prankster to be blamed, though, just the holiday spirit of the local hockey football team. The stadium used by the Saskatchewan Roughriders has a large video display, and the display has included video of a traditional Yule log burning. A festive idea, to be sure, but from a distance it appeared as a wildfire against the nighttime horizon.... READ ON