Five things to amuse you today that have nothing to do with the US election

Now let’s be honest, we all know that Donald Trump winning the 2024 election and becoming the 47th president of the United States was always going to be the biggest story of the day.

But we also know that not everybody will want to read about every last detail.

Whether it’s election fatigue after long months of campaigning, or simply a lack of interest in US politics, there are plenty of reasons you might want a break from Trump’s orange-hued face.

If that’s you, Metro has rounded up some of the weirdest and funniest news stories we’ve covered in the last few days to help take your mind off things.

The radioactive island with mutant sharks

That’s certainly not a sentence I expected to write today.

The Marshall Islands, a ring of coral reefs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, looks like the perfect place to throw on a floppy sun hat and read a book below swaying palm trees.

But in the 1940s and ’50s, the US used two of the far-flung atolls, Bikini and Enewetak, to test out 67 nuclear bombs – one of which was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

Bikini Atoll now has such a reputation for groovy wildlife it inspired the setting of Spongebob Squarepants.

But while visitors are unlikely to find any talking sponges, the radiation lingering in the water is having a big impact on the wildlife.

Find out more here.

Italian beauty spot selling cans of air

If you’re looking for an item to represent your holiday which doesn’t fall into the standard fridge magnet or t-shirt category, this could be the one.

Empty cans containing air from Lake Como are being flogged to gullible tourists for £8.40 (€10) a pop.

The sealed 400ml containers are being sold at a bookshop and a restaurant on the lake, as well as in Menaggio and Lenno, two other popular destinations at the holiday hotspot.

You can hear more from the marketing company who came up with the idea here.

Marathon runner stops for 36 pastries en route

This is the sort of motivation that could get anyone to consider running a marathon.

Bradley Whalen-Griffiths loves Greggs so much that he built it into a 26-mile training routine.

Over the course of five-and-a-half hours he ran a marathon around Newcastle with stops at all 29 of the city’s bakery branches, spending £36.80 on a sausage roll at each one.

Find out what inspired him to take on the pastry-fuelled challenge here.

Hundreds turned up for fake Halloween parade

AI has claimed yet more victims.

Large crowds gathered in the centre of Dublin after a fake website promoted an event on O’Connell Street to mark October 31.

The penny only appeared to drop when they encountered furious bus and tram drivers who were unable to get through the hundreds of locals looking for a creepy night out.

The confusion appears to have originated from a website called My Spirit Halloween, which features an apparently AI-generated list of events in the Dublin area.

Find out more here.

‘Prisoners’ on the run from jail

A load of prisoners went on the run in the first marathon of its kind.

Originally built in the 1800s, Dorset’s Dorchester Prison has been closed since 2014.

But the corridors were teeming once again when 135 runners completed 55 laps, totalling 26.2 miles, around the prison complex in the first marathon held inside a prison in the UK.

Some embraced the venue’s theme by donning black and white stripy prison uniforms, while others dressed up as police.

Check out the brilliant pictures here.

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