A HAPPILY married couple were shocked to receive a solicitor's letter saying their divorce had been finalised. John and Joan Kitteridge from Sheffield have been married for 36 years and had no notion of getting divorced.
Joan, who burst into tears when she read the letter, said: "I couldn't believe what I was reading. I knew deep down it couldn't be true, but it was still such a shock. "We've had our ups and downs like any couple! But we'd never get divorced."
John was furious and wanted to know how such a mistake could happen. "We dealt with the same solicitors three years ago on an unrelated legal matter, but everything should be on computers these days, so it must have shown up that we weren't getting a divorce." The ironically named Best Solicitors apologised, and said that a standard letter had been sent to the Kitteridges with the wrong details.
A desperate housewife had to call police in Germany after enduring 30 hours of listening to her friend's non-stop talking.
After several failed attempts to get her to leave, Ingrid Schuettler from Speyer, called the police to shift her friend. Ingrid told police she had invited her friend round for a cup of tea and a chat.
But once they started talking, her friend "would not shut up" and kept it up all through the night and the next day. Officers persuaded her friend to leave.
The Chinese are nothing if not determined, as can be shown by their efforts to turn a cathedral in Fuzhou city around 90 degrees and move it 250ft to create space for a new main street.
The Catholic Cathedral of St Dominic in Fuzhou has been raised three feet with hundreds of jacks, and workers are now laying concrete tracks underneath. Another eight tracks have been laid to carry the 1,500-tonne building eastwards, then south.
A spokesman said: "Under the cathedral, we've installed nearly 400 wheels, which will ensure the cathedral moves smoothly on the tracks."
A teenager was astonished to discover that a baby bat had been curled up inside her bra for five hours - while she was wearing it.
Hotel receptionist Abbie Hawkins thought it was her phone ringing when she felt vibrations, but later found the bat hiding in the padded pocket of her bra. It was not until her lunch break when she felt a strange movement inside her bra, which had been hanging on her washing line the previous night.
Colleagues at the Holiday Inn Norwich North witnessed Abbie find the frightened bat, which was later released unharmed. She said: "I plucked up the courage to investigate, and I pulled out a little baby bat."
Jaime Eastham of the Bat Conservation Trust said they had never heard of a bat being found in a bra before.
Kent Couch from Bend, Oregon, embarked on a 230-mile flight across a desert - in a deckchair attached to 150 helium-filled balloons and with 45 gallons of water for ballast.
Couch touched down more than nine hours later, shooting some of the 5ft balloons to lower the craft. "Things just look different from up there," he remarked. "You're moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity. You can hear a dog bark at 15,000ft."
Sandi Barton was the first on the scene as Couch landed in the small town of Cambridge, Idaho.
"He came right over our pea field." She said. "He was coming down pretty fast." Nearly half the town - some 150 people - rushed out to greet him on landing.
Wife Susan groaned: "He's crazy. It's never been a dull moment since I married him."
Some 60 dogs have hit the waves in California for the US's largest surfing contest for dogs.
Wearing Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses, the dogs competed in the 3rd Annual Loews Coronado Bay Resort Surf Dog Competition at Imperial Beach in California.
Each dog and team had three waves to impress the judges, who scored the animals on confidence, length of ride and overall ability.
TJ the Spanish spaniel took first place in the Small Surf Dogs category. Stoli the black labrador won gold in Large Surf Dogs and Zoey the Jack Russell and owners came first in the Teams category - dogs surfing with their owners.