The funniest tabloid stories of 2024

Helping a… hedgehog?

Finding a lifeless hedgehog in the road, a quick-thinking animal lover scooped it up, placed it in a box with some food and rushed it over to her local wildlife hospital. There, it was examined by vets, who immediately identified it as the fluffy bobble from a woolly hat. "I would have immediately known from the weight," said Janet Kotze, of Lower Moss Wood Wildlife Hospital in Knutsford. Still, "bless her, her heart was in the right place".

Banking on a dead uncle

A Brazilian woman was charged with attempted theft and the violation of a corpse after wheeling her dead uncle into a bank in Rio de Janeiro and trying to take out a $3,300 loan in his name. In footage of the incident, Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, can be seen asking Paulo Braga, 68, who had died hours before: "Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign." When a suspicious bank employee pointed out that Braga "doesn't look well at all", Nunes replied: "He doesn't say anything. He's like that" – then tried to force a pen into his hand.

Google gets it wrong

Google's new AI search tool was widely mocked for generating erratic and inaccurate answers. In one case, its AI Overviews urged users to mix glue with cheese to make it stick to pizza. In another, it was asked: "Can cockroaches live in your penis?" and replied: "Absolutely!", then added: "It's totally normal, too." It advised users to eat "one small rock per day"; to cook chicken at 38°C; and to smoke "two to three cigarettes a day" if pregnant. Asked to name fruits that "end with 'um'", the AI replied: "Applum, bananum, strawberrum, tomatum and coconut."

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Re-appraising Hitler

A private high school in Atlanta was criticised for setting pupils an Adolf Hitler-themed assignment. Eighth-graders (aged 13-14) were asked to "rate Adolf Hitler as a 'solution seeker'", and offered as options: Approaching Expectations, Meets Expectations and Exceeds Expectations. Pupils were also asked to rate Hitler "as an Ethical Decision-Maker". Mount Vernon School's principal explained that the assignment (which has since been removed from the curriculum) had been intended to "boost student knowledge of factual events".

Big babies

A soft-play centre in West Sussex was criticised for hosting an event for adults who enjoy dressing as babies. Wild Wonderland, in Lancing, normally welcomes children under 14, but last December it was used for a party that had been advertised on a fetish website. According to The Argus, the over-25s event offered story time with milk and biscuits, and a "nappy change room". However, attendees were urged to bring their own nappies and wipes. In response to complaints from regular customers, a spokesman for the play centre apologised, but added: "Who are we to judge?"

When mail goes mal

A postman in France who hoarded 13,000 letters, apparently so that he could clock off early, was charged with breach of trust. The man was supposed to be delivering post in L'Isle-d'Abeau, near Lyon. But a lot of it ended up in his garage. "I was overwhelmed by the work, which is huge. I'm speaking for all the postmen and -women in France," the facteur explained of his reasons for failing to deliver his full mailbag. "You don't realise it, but it's a huge job. You have to distribute, you have to distribute."

Russian-doll racism

Yale University held an anti-racism event this year to explore the scourge of racism within the anti-racism movement. Organisers of the three-week webinar series – entitled "Unmasking Racism in Anti-Racism Education" – said they would be using "decolonising methods" to uproot "the racism that is embedded in our existing anti-racism frameworks". The stated aim of the programme was to help solve the puzzle of why racism is continuing to flourish, "despite ongoing anti-racism efforts".

Sanpro station

The proposed design for a train station in China was ridiculed for its resemblance to a giant sanitary pad. Officials in Nanjing, where the station is due to be built, insisted that the design was inspired by the city's plum blossoms. "Why can we all tell it is a sanitary pad immediately, but the architects can't?" demanded one social media user.

Delighting in dullness

A Facebook group called Dull Men's Club, whose motto is "Celebrate the ordinary", went from strength to strength this year. In one post, a 50-year- old called Andy uploaded a photo of a wheel he'd made out of Pringles that he called "The Ringle". Another user dubbed it "the Lord of the Ringles". In other posts, men discuss their favourite pylons and roundabouts, and compliment each other on their mown lawns, tidy sheds and descaled kettles.

Coming up short

British men have fared very poorly in an international comparison of average penis size produced earlier this year. According to Worlddata, which reviewed 40 studies spanning 88 countries, the nation with the largest average erect penis length is Ecuador (6.9in), followed by Cameroon (6.56in) and Bolivia (6.5in). The UK ranks 68th, with an average length of 5.16in. Almost "the only people we can feel superior around, when it comes to our trousers, are Cambodia and Yemen", lamented Caitlin Moran in The Times. "The rest of the world is putting on a sympathetic face and saying, 'But you have lovely eyes, Britain! And a kind heart!'"

Rat gone random

A respected science journal has apologised for publishing a paper that included a "wildly incorrect" AI-generated diagram of a rat, which featured four testicles and a disproportionately vast penis, and was accompanied by garbled text, reported Vice. The creature – depicted in the peer-reviewed Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology – was shown sitting upright like a squirrel and was surrounded by nonsensical words such as "dissilced" and "testtomcels". The paper has since been retracted; the use of dubious AI-generated diagrams in science literature is seen as a growing problem.