Mexican mayor marries a crocodile

And other stories from the stranger side of life

A crocodile
(Image credit: Getty Images)

A mayor of a Mexican town has married a crocodile bride in a traditional ritual for prosperity, reported the BBC. Mayor Victor Hugo Sosa could be seen kissing the reptile, whose snout had been tied shut. The seven-year-old crocodile is believed to symbolise a deity linked with mother earth and her marriage represents the joining of humans with the divine. “It is the union of two cultures,” Mayor Victor Hugo Sosa told reporters.

Septuagenarian punches a bear

‘Boil in the bag’ funerals coming to UK

Water cremation will be available in the UK later this year, said The Guardian. The process of dissolving a body in a bag in 160C water treated with an alkali is the first new legal method of disposing of corpses since the Cremation Act of 1902. Perfect for anyone “uneasy at the thought of their body being consumed by flames or interred in an insect-teeming grave”, the process has been described as a “boil in the bag” funeral, said the paper.

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.