From the German town that unwittingly advertised pornography on its website to the American who interrupted his wedding to update his Facebook and Twitter accounts, the world was full of weird stories in 2009.

"Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss the bride" is how Dana Hanna kept the world posted between "I do" and that kiss.

Cartoon character Marge Simpson made it on the cover of Playboy magazine, two White House gate-crashers celebrated their triumph on Facebook, and the world was fooled into believing a 6-year-old boy was caught in a runaway home-made helium balloon.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube proved fertile ground for many of the bizarre stories.

British doctors were advised to ignore amorous advances from patients after some were propositioned on Facebook, Dutch lawmakers were told off for tweeting in parliament and in Canada an MP had to apologize for insulting a rival on Twitter.

In New York, five "restroom ambassadors" got jobs tweeting from the toilets at Times Square: greeting tourists and shoppers -- and then sending short dispatches on their encounters.

Britain's High Court ordered its first injunction via Twitter to stop an anonymous Tweeter impersonating someone else.

Swine flu, or H1N1, presented another challenge -- and rich source of weird stories. In Egypt, thousands of pigs were slaughtered even though the United Nations said the mass cull was a "real mistake" because the strain was not found in pigs.

Russian soccer fans were instructed to drink whisky on a trip to Wales for a World Cup qualifier match to ward off the H1N1 virus. In Japan, candidates stopped shaking hands. In Italy an inventor devised an electronic holy water dispenser.

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a multimedia journalist at the China Daily Web site.)

(Agencies)