Our year-in-review special looks back at the wacky, weird, and wondrous stories of 2012.

Horseplay

In March, four Amish youths were arrested after drag racing a pair of horse-drawn buggies down a street in Sherman, New York, and crashing into a police car. The 18- to 20-year-olds were charged with underage possession of alcohol.

Live, dammit!

The mayor of Falciano del Massico, Italy, issued a decree earlier this year ordering citizens not to die. Mayor Giulio Cesare Fava forbade death temporarily while the town awaited the construction of a new cemetery.

Lesser of two evils

A 50-year-old Swedish woman, too intoxicated to drive, told police she murdered her neighbour so she could get a ride to her house (the neighbour was unharmed).

Booze cruise

In England, a 51-year-old woman stole a 100-seat ferry and took it for a joyride down the River Dart in Devon, screaming “I’m Jack Sparrow!” after spending two days drinking and eating nightshade.

Beat with meat

In June, a Holbrook, Massachusetts, cyclist was attacked by a man wielding sausage links. Michael Baker, who stole jewellery and the bicycle from the victim—as well as the sausages from a local food stand—was charged with a host of crimes, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and armed robbery.

Brain-dead dispute

A Long Island, New York, man allegedly shot his girlfriend earlier this month after a disagreement about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. Jared Gurman, a 26-year-old fan of the TV show The Walking Dead, was charged with attempted murder after shooting Jessica Gelderman, 27, with a .22-calibre rifle. Gelderman suffered a shattered rib as well as a pierced lung and diaphragm.

Hidden charge

A 40-year-old man came down with symptoms of Ebola virus disease—which has an average case-fatality rate of 68 percent—after allegedly stealing the cellphone of a patient suffering from the disease in an isolation ward at Kagadi Hospital in western Uganda. The Ebola outbreak killed at least 16 people, including the victim of the theft.

Obviously a cane sword

A police officer in Manchester, England, tasered a blind stroke survivor in the back and handcuffed him after supposedly mistaking his white cane for a samurai sword. The victim, retired architect Colin Farmer, plans to sue; the officer was not suspended.

Deferred urnings

Polish car thieves who helped themselves to a van in Germany in October and later ditched it in some woods near Konin, in western Poland, probably weren’t too crazy about its cargo: 12 coffins complete with bodies. Polish police said the van was on its way to a crematorium when it was stolen.

Scrubbed sober

“We arrived to find intoxicated men putting their clothes back on and realizing that the best decisions aren’t made while drunk and at a car wash without a car in the middle of the night.”

—Const. Ian MacDonald of the Abbotsford police after being alerted to three 20-year-olds going naked through a car wash in a shopping cart.