truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

In November, the Bombay high court expunged the arranged-marriage records of an Indian couple who had separated immediately after their 1998 honeymoon when the husband complained that he had been unable to consummate because the bride had large boils on her face. She has since been cured of her disorder and did not want future suitors to read of her past.

Freud de Melo, 73, operates a quirky tourist park in central Brazil that features stone models of Noah's Ark and other sculptures, but he also notoriously suffers from taphephobia, the fear of being buried alive, and one of his sculptures is his own elaborate, fear-assuaging crypt. His vault houses a TV and fruit pantry, has access to fresh air, and features two built-in plastic cones that act as megaphones to the outside, reassuring de Melo that if he is buried too soon, he will be able to protest (as he demonstrated for a Wall Street Journal reporter, for an October dispatch, screaming into the countryside, "Help me! Come quick! I've been buried alive!"). (Taphephobia was more common in centuries past, afflicting George Washington among others, because doctors often missed lingering signs of life in sick patients.)

In September, despite an increasing chorus of complaints, Peruvians celebrated the annual Gastronomic Festival of the Cat in a village just south of Lima, serving a variety of feline delicacies (fried cat strips, cat stew, grilled cat with spicy huacatay). For the most part, according to a Chicago Tribune report, the dishes are made with specially bred cats rather than street prowlers, and are consumed for their health benefits, though centuries-old tradition is the likeliest explanation. Said one Peruvian, such cultural events "are our roots and can't be forgotten."

U.S.-educated Palestinian Nadim Khoury is introducing Taybeh (Arabic for "delicious") lager from a microbrewery in the West Bank, according to an October Agence France-Presse dispatch, and so far has encountered little resistance from the 98 percent Muslim population. "(E)veryone drinks beer," he said.

Unlike their American counterparts, debt collectors in Spain are legally allowed to humiliate deadbeats in front of relatives and neighbors, and are thus quite successful, according to an October Wall Street Journal dispatch from Madrid. One collector's employees make flamboyant house calls in "top hat and tails" and another's are dressed as Franciscan friars, and yet another collector sends bagpipe players to announce the debt to the entire neighborhood. One debtor hurriedly paid off his daughter's wedding tab when the collector found the ceremony's guest list and began billing each attendee for his or her "share" of the debt.

A plumbing error in October at the annual Grape Festival in Marino, Italy, stymied the traditional hook-up in which white wine cascades through the famous fountains in the center of town. Instead, water continued to run in the fountains, but "10 to 12" nearby homeowners must have thought it glorious divine intervention, briefly, when they opened their taps and found white wine flowing freely.