From rotting fish sauce to penis-shaped icebergs, here's the weirdest N.L. news of 2023

Typically, it's hard news that dominates headlines. Political manoeuvres, business deals, and tragedies all tend to draw readers keen to keep an eye on the world around them.

But every so often, we come across a story so out of the ordinary that its strangeness almost exclusively drives its news value.

This year, we witnessed a saga over bright lights, uncovered mysterious tunnels and marvelled at one particularly phallic iceberg.

Here are the weirdest news stories to grace Newfoundland and Labrador in 2023.

Colin Way kicked off the new year with a weeks-long controversy over the industrial floodlights that he kept on his properties in the Battery, one of St. John's most historic neighbourhoods.

Residents rallied against them, alleging Way was trying to drive them to insanity by keeping those lights turned up around the clock — and also drive them out of the neighbourhood, so he could buy up their properties.

Way himself turned off the lights in late January, but not before one intrepid neighbour attempted to dismantle them by force.

Residents near Dildo, N.L., woke up to a strange sight in their harbour one March morning.

A circling pod of dolphins swam frantically, so close to shore you could nearly reach out and touch them. 

The dolphins were trapped by encroaching sea ice, prompting a rescue operation. (At least three of the dolphins didn't survive it.)

In terms of wildlife tragedies, spring brought no reprieve, as dozens of dead seals began to wash ashore in Conception Bay South. Wildlife officials couldn't figure out why, but said the seals likely died after sea ice pans melted, drowning them. 

A construction project in Carbonear uncovered an odd cellar-like stone door earlier this year.

About eight feet below the 400-year-old town's main street, the stones lay stacked, untouched for decades. 

It left officials wondering whether they'd stumbled on a root cellar, sewer, or 1700s bunker.