An odd New Year’s record in Las Vegas and ghosts in Nevada, plus David Bowie news in Paris and a Banksy brouhaha in London highlight this edition of weird and wacky world news.
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
A wave of couples saying “I do” in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve was expected to set a record for the city’s busiest wedding day ever. That’s because 12/31/23 is known in the massive Las Vegas wedding industry as a “specialty date,” thanks to the repeating 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern. The icing on the cake? The specialty date fell on a holiday famous for blowout celebrations.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Melody Willis-Williams, president of Vegas Weddings, which operates multiple venues. “Anytime you get these specialty dates, they’re always hugely popular. But tie that in with New Year’s Eve and it’s a showstopper.”
The number to beat on New Year’s Eve was 4,492 — the single-day record for marriages in Las Vegas set on July 7, 2007. The second-most popular specialty wedding date on record with the county’s marriage bureau was Nov. 11, 2011, when 3,125 couples tied the knot. Typically, New Year’s Eve has drawn somewhere between 450 to 550 couples to wed in Las Vegas since 2018.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
Travel Nevada has launched an all-new Paranormal Passport to encourage visitors to explore some of the more haunted sights in the state. From its over 600 ghost towns to its Extraterrestrial Highway, Nevada comes by its other-worldly experiences naturally (or supernaturally, as the case may be). The Paranormal Passport, created in conjunction with Bandwango, is free to download and allows travellers to digitally check in at nearly 50 locations to earn points toward exclusive swag and prizes. Some of the experiences ghost hunters can check out and check in, include: The Clown Motel, Alien Research Center and the Haunted Boulder City Ghost & UFO Tour.
A PARIS ODDITY
Paris immortalized late British music icon David Bowie by naming a street after him in the city’s southeast on what would have been his 77th birthday on Monday. The inauguration of rue David-Bowie was first announced in 2020 by Jérôme Coumet, mayor of the 13th arrondissement. Bowie died of cancer in 2016. The tribute celebrated Bowie’s first Paris performance in 1965 – his first outside the United Kingdom – and his lasting impact on music, fashion, and culture. Bowie’s influence on music, with hits like “Space Oddity” and “Let’s Dance,” and on fashion, are now permanently recognized in the Paris city landscape. The inauguration featured a concert and an exhibit. The street is roughly between the Jardin des Plantes botanical gardens and the National Library and will undoubtedly join Jim Morrison’s grave in Pere Lachaise cemetery as a pilgrimage site for rock fans.
HONK IF YOU LIKE BANKSY
The elusive artist Banksy displayed his latest work on a London street corner over the holidays and it was taken less than hour after he confirmed its installation. The red stop sign with three military drones on it was taken in the middle of the day by a man with bolt cutters as witnesses snapped photos and shot video in the Peckham section of south London.
People commenting on Banksy’s Instagram accurately predicted it wouldn’t be there long after the artist posted a photo of it. Some of his work has sold for tens of millions of dollars. Many onlookers watched in awe as a man in a red and black jacket climbed up on a bike next to the post where the sign was bolted to and began hitting it with his hands. “We said, ‘What are you doing?’ but no one really knew what to do, we sort of just watched it happen,” said one witness. “We were all a bit bemused; there was some honking of car horns.” Two suspects were later arrested.
SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT
Initially unsure of which orangutan was the father of a new baby primate, the Denver Zoo decided to have a little fun with the results and turned to the paternity announcement guru himself: former daytime talk show host Maury Povich. Just as he would do on his long-running show, Povich pulled the purported DNA results for four-month-old Siska out of an envelope and declared: “Berani! You are the father!” The zoo posted the video on social media.
Siska’s father remained a mystery because the zoo’s animal care team had to wait a few months before her mother Eirina was comfortable allowing them to get close enough to get a hair sample from Siska to compare her DNA against 30-year-old Berani and 16-year-old Jaya.