The world is, by leaps and bounds, the most exciting planet in the solar system — and has been for quite some time now. from a gigantic rock from outer space annihilating millions of years' worth of reptile life to naked monkeys descending from the treetops and, in the blink of eye, inventing Crocs. And that's just the tip of the oddly moist rock we call home.

However, keeping track of everything can be difficult. To go beyond the broad strokes of headlines and gain a sense of all the strange, lovely, tiny things that are all too easy to overlook.

Indeed, while these random acts of awesome are never in short supply in our weird world, we are confined to one geographic location for the most part. But that doesn't mean our minds aren't free to wander through the absolutely random — which is exactly what we have here: a sampler of our weird world.