orld-popular cartoon characters The Smurfs are now 50 years old and Belgians have prepared a big birthday bash starting early this week. The celebration will cover key European cities including Paris and Berlin. The Smurfs, the diminutive blue-colored forest dwellers, were created by late Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, fondly called 'Peyo,' through a comic strip in the late 1950s-back then, they were still called Schtroumpf. In the early 1980s, Smurfs debuted on US television and became hugely popular worldwide since then.

Residents of a Texas community found themselves stunned by a celestial scene involving what many believe was a UFO. Eyewitness accounts told of a large, silent, object with flashing lights, with residents insisting that it was lower to the ground than an airplane.

A 61-year old sailor sent out an SOS from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to the most unusual place, his local pub in West Sussex. Alan Thompson, 61, said he fell to the deck of his boat and broke his hip and unable to move when he sent the distress signal to the Bull's Head some 3,000 miles away.

An error caused by a satellite navigation system sent Army tanks looking for their barracks to a tiny village in Shropshire. Residents of Donnington were dumbfounded upon seeing rows of Army tanks entering their peaceful village.

Men's clothing company Kale Miles announced the availability of a belt with an $18,000 price tag. The staggering cost of what is nothing but a strip of leather comes from the seven- to eight-ounce buckle, made entirely of platinum - a compound that, as of Friday, was determined to be priced at about $1,560 per ounce.