Amid a global pandemic, humanitarian crises, wars, disasters and other bleak news, lighthearted stories are as necessary as ever. Here is a pick of the week's best funny, silly, strange and quirky news from around the world.

Egg on their face

If you have a special request when ordering a cake online, make sure the bakery fully understands your instructions! 

One bakery in Nagpur, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, got a recent order hilariously wrong when the customer asked if its creations contained a specific ingredient.

"I ordered a cake from a renowned bakery in Nagpur, through Swiggy (a food delivery service)," customer Kapil Wasnik wrote on Twitter. "In the order details, I mentioned 'Please mention if the cake contains egg.' I am speechless after receiving the order."

Indeed, upon opening the box, he found the cake decorated with the message in icing: "Contain egg."

Many Indians are vegetarians and often request when ordering a cake that it be without eggs. 

Wasnik's post prompted a flood of replies from people with similar stories of birthday cake messages gone wrong. One other Indian customer had a similar experience when using Swiggy: his cake came with the message "Don't send cutlery."

Manchester United are rubbish!

The BBC had to apologize this week after a message appeared on its on-screen news ticker stating that "Manchester United are rubbish."

The mishap happened on Tuesday morning.

Rather than an in-house commentary on the recent results of the football club, which finished 6th in the English Premier League after a dismal season, this was the work of a trainee that accidentally went live, presenter Annita Mcveigh explained on air later in the day.

"Behind the scenes, someone was training to learn how to use the ticker and to put text on the ticker, so they were just writing random things not in earnest," she said. "It wasn't meant to appear on the screen."

Another message that accidentally landed on the news ticker said: "Weather rain everywhere."

"I hope that Manchester United fans weren't offended by it," Mcveigh said while apologising for the incident. "Certainly that was a mistake."

Baaaaa-d sheep

A sheep in South Sudan has been sentenced to three years in jail for killing a woman, according to media reports.

Police in Rumbek East County, Lakes State, arrested the ram a few weeks ago after it apparently headbutted a 45-year-old woman, repeatedly striking her in the ribs and causing her death, South Sudan's Eye Radio reported.

Explaining why the animal was taken into custody, a fate usually reserved for humans, police spokesperson Elijah Mabor Makuach told Eye Radio: "The owner is innocent and the ram is the one who perpetrated the crime so it deserves to be arrested, then later on the case shall be forwarded to customary court where the case can be handed amicably.” 

The ram will serve its three-year sentence at a military prison at Aduel County Headquarters in Rumbek East County, the news website Ghana Wish reported. The report did not say whether it would be serving alongside humans or other animals.

The ram's owner will also have to hand over five cows to the victim's family as compensation, according to the court ruling.

Hanging up for good

They have played a crucial role in film and TV – as a changing room for Superman, or as the target of a sniper in the 2002 Colin Farrell movie "Phone Booth" – but they are now a thing of the past.

New York City held a ceremony on Monday to mark the removal of the city's last public payphone.

Officials gathered in Times Square to see the last free-standing public payphone uprooted from a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan by a crane. It will now find its place at the Museum of the City of New York in a special exhibit about the pre-digital era, NPR reported. 

Although ubiquitous in big and small cities just a few decades ago, public payphones with corded receivers that require small change to operate have become obsolete in the age of mobile phones. As a result, New York City began removing them in 2015 and replacing them with LinkNYC kiosks that offer free Wi-Fi, charging stations and other services.

Time for Superman to find a new changing room then.

Read more: 

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world - May 20, 2022

ICYMI: The week's quirky news from around the world - May 13, 2022