For some, an emergency goes beyond the usual call for help. A broken fingernail at a nightclub, a mouse that swallows medicine, and a woman who needs help getting her drunken boyfriend up to bed are all but a few of the thousands of calls made to the 999 emergency hotline in the U. K. A spokesperson for the North East Ambulance Service says demand rose by 15 percent in the past year due to the bizarre calls that are made almost on a daily basis.

A skydiving instructor in New Zealand, whose parachute failed to open during a fall at 13,000 feet came back from the mouth of death when he crashed back to Earth and into a thick blackberry bush instead of falling to the ground. Speaking from his hospital bed, British-born Michael Holmes, 25, said, "I realized it was all over. "

A new study finds that "man flu," the psychological condition in which men claim to suffer more from colds than women, is a fact. A survey conducted by a university in Cardiff, Wales shows that men feel they are suffering from flu when all they have is colds, and that they take more time off than women with the same symptoms.

A British man got the surprise of his life when he discovered a Polish immigrant sleeping beside him in his bed instead of his wife. Graham Handley from Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire in England told the police that he did not noticed his wife Linda, getting out off the bed to sleep with their eight-year-old son Adam, in another room.

Three wailing fire alarms failed to rouse a man from his slumber while his home burst into flames late Tuesday. Josh Coats, and Alabama native, slept through the initial spread of the fire, and was only jarred from his sleep by the piercing bark of his trusted best friend and pet, a 4-year-old English bulldog named Princess. "If Princess hadn't woke me up, I don't think I would have woken up," Coats said to reporters.