Our year-in-review special looks back at the wacky, weird, and wondrous stories of 2014.

Lego my soul
A Polish priest, Slawomir Kostrzewa, warned parents that Lego toys are all about “darkness and the world of death” and “can have a negative effect on children. They can destroy their souls and lead them to the dark side.” The Wolsztyn cleric has previously accused Hello Kitty of being evil and My Little Pony of being a “carrier of death”.

Dumbo the safety elephant
Police in the central Chinese city of Zhengdong issued “heartfelt apologies” and meted out internal punishment to two officers after a gun went off and injured four adults and a child during a police safety talk in a kindergarten class.

Twilight Zone
Estonian scholars from the University of Tallinn announced in June that they had discovered the final resting place of Vlad III, otherwise known as Vlad Tepes or “Vlad the Impaler”, the 15th-century prince of Wallachia who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The alleged remains are in the Piazza Santa Maria la Nova graveyard in Naples, Italy.

Peace is in the books
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with India’s Kailash Satyarthi this year, donated her $50,000 World Children’s Prize to rebuild a UN school that was damaged during the recent Israel-Hamas war.

Method acting
“Every shithead who uses weapons while hiding behind press identification assumes responsibility for future deaths of journalists.”—Russian journalist Alexander Vishnevsky after a video posted on the YouTube account of Ukrainian separatist Novorossia TV showed Russian actor Mikhail Porechenkov, wearing a blue bulletproof vest and a helmet marked “Press”, firing a machine gun toward Ukrainian forces’ positions while visiting a rebel-held battle site at Donetsk Airport in eastern Ukraine. Porechenkov said afterward that he was observing the progress of a ceasefire and delivering “medications for hospitals” in the contested region.

Tenderizing moments
Top chefs from around the world gathered in Paris in November to decry the workplace bullying and violence that they said is commonly directed at apprentice chefs—including in the kitchens of prestigious restaurants. The meeting was sparked by the firing of an assistant chef from the well-known Le Pré Catelan restaurant in April after he was caught burning an apprentice with a white-hot spoon. Other chefs recounted stories of being slapped, beaten, and humiliated.

Feast or famine
Consulting firm McKinsey estimated that problems connected to obesity cost the world about $2 trillion in 2012, more than the worldwide costs of alcoholism, climate change, or drug abuse and almost as much as war, terrorism, or smoking.

Don we now our gay oppression…
“People are now saying, ‘You need to affirm my particular lifestyle, and if that goes against your conscience, you have to do that.’ ”—Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party MLA Paul Givan about his planned introduction of a bill to insert a clause in equality legislation that would allow religious people to discriminate against gays because of their conscience. He claimed the clause would “enhance” the legislation because forcing people to treat gays equally is “intolerance”.

Bird of paradise
Thailand’s military government, which took power in a May 22 coup, detained five student protesters for “attitude adjustment” after they flashed a three-fingered hand sign—made popular by fictional rebels in the Hunger Games movies—during a speech by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the coup. According to local news reports afterward, the prime minister said: “Any more protests? Make it quick.”