Good week for:
Paul Anka, who demanded—and got—50 percent of the sales revenue from Michael Jackson’s new single, “This Is It,” which Jackson’s estate originally released with no credit to the songwriter. Anka was able to prove that he and Jackson co-wrote the song during a brief collaboration in the 1980s.
Watching a cat play the piano, after YouTube announced that it is now getting 1 billion hits a day.
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Latest Videos FromThe Week
Having Ben Affleck’s baby, after a sperm bank in Southern California started categorizing sperm based on the celebrity the donor most resembles, ranging from Affleck to Seth Rogen to Russell Crowe. Sperm recipients can search through the database of celebrities to find the donor they want their baby to look like.
Bad week for:
Snail mail, after David and Jennifer Palliser of Almondbury, England, received a postcard sent in 1969.
Long, romantic walks on the beach, after visitors to Vero Beach, Fla., were shocked to find a trail of large feces in the sand that went on for a mile. “It looked like Great Dane poop all along the beach,” said beach stroller Bill Becker. The culprit: manatees, whose feces were washed onto the shore after being stirred up from the ocean floor by strong winds.
Spontaneous combustion, after a flock of sheep in Jordan burst into flames and virtually disappeared in front of a startled shepherd. The soil the sheep had been walking on was saturated with methane from a nearby sewage plant, geologists said, and was ignited by a spark. “There’s no need to panic,” geologist Bahjat Edwan assured frightened Jordanians.
