The 1950 Pennsylvania Railroad calendar never made it to James W. Flanagan, general manager of The Scranton Times.

He would never need it: he died in December 1949. But on Friday, 63 years after his death, the U.S. Postal Service made a delivery.

A mail carrier, with no explanation of where the package had been the last 63 years, handed it to Chris O'Hora at The Times-Tribune's front desk. The calendar, rolled in a long tube, soon made its way to the office of Bobby Lynett, a publisher of The Times-Tribune and CEO of Times-Shamrock Communications.

Mr. Flanagan was The Scranton Times' general manager from 1936 to his death in 1949 at the age of 63. He had a 54-year career at the paper, starting as a salesboy in 1895. The calendar includes a holiday greeting from an executive at the railroad company, dated the same month Mr. Flanagan died.

On Friday, Mr. Lynett gently rolled the large calendar out on his conference table, curious about its origin and more curious about where it had been the past 63 years.

Ray Daiutolo, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said lost mail is sometimes found when a machine is dismantled or a post office space renovated. Other times, someone may find a stamped but unmailed letter or package at a yard sale and then drop it in the mail, he said. Mr. Daiutolo was unable to trace the package's history on Friday.

A dolphin trainer in the Ukraine has taught one of his wards to do something quite unusual.

Gosha - a 15-year-old Black Sea bottlenose dolphin - can now leap out of the water and crawl up to 10 metres on his belly.

Bogdan Dolgy first came across the idea when Gosha tried to get out of the water and crawl on it own during the summer.

"After I noticed that I fixed it in his mind, gave him some fish and he liked it, and now it happens all the time, after every stunt he is swimming and splashing his tail on the surface of the water."

"If compared to a human it's perhaps like making a human climb a tree like a monkey or swim like a fish."

The trainer thinks Gosha was trying to imitate humans when it first began to crawl.

A Barrow County sheriff's deputy encountered a burglary case on Saturday possibly more suited to a ghost hunter.

Though she perhaps should have called the Ghostbusters, the theft victim instead told local deputies that a ghost stole from her.

The 40-year-old Winder woman reported stolen her resume, criminal history and a blouse sometime during the past two weeks, according to a Barrow County sheriff's report.

When the deputy asked the woman if she knew anyone who might take the items, she said a ghost or spirt because the ghost of her mother often visits. However, she told the deputy she also occasionally sees a black spirit roaming near her home.

According to the report, the woman valued her resume at $5,000 and the criminal history at $10.

Milwaukee - A Wisconsin couple says clucks, not fire trucks, helped them escape a blaze at their home.

Dennis Murawska, 59, said a pet chicken named Cluck Cluck woke his wife Susan Cotey, 52, with loud clucking from its cage in the basement two floors below about 6:15 a.m. Thursday.

The couple's two cats also were running around the main floor.

Murawska said he had been half awake but didn't know about the fire because the smoke alarms hadn't gone off. He said he realized something was wrong when his wife got up.

"The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited," he said.

Cluck Cluck came from a nearby farm in Alma Center, about 135 miles east of Minneapolis, Murawska said. When the chicken began wandering over to his house, his neighbor said he could kill it because it wasn't producing any eggs.

But Murawska felt sorry for Cluck Cluck because she had a mutated foot and decided to keep her.

He fed the bird and built a coop, and then his wife let Cluck Cluck into the basement on cold nights.

When they close the history books on awesome dog tricks, Olive's should be right at the top of the list. Sure, it's not the showiest, but it's the simplicity and grace of this move that makes it absolutely sublime.

Under the Christmas tree was everything 9-year-old Dalton Dingus had hoped for -- an iPad and an iPhone, a big red toolbox filled with real tools just like his grandpa's, and a stack of Christmas cards nearly as tall he, each with the same wish: that he live to break a Guinness record, and for a long, long time after that.

For a month now, cards by the hundreds of thousands have come from all over the world -- well wishes and Christmas greetings from cities and countries the Kentucky boy had never before even heard of.

The cards have come from Germany and Ukraine, from South Carolina and South Korea. They're written in languages Dalton cannot speak, but they all deliver the same message, a wish that the little boy set a Guinness record for receiving most Christmas cards before he succumbs to a disease that has already made it virtually impossible for him to breathe.

As far as his mother, Jessica Dingus, is concerned, "It's a Christmas miracle."

At first, the cards came in slowly. A family friend had posted an appeal for well-wishes on Facebook. Dalton's mother would display them on the mantel and in his room beside his bed. Most came from neighbors and friends, a few from friends of friends.

That first post on Facebook went viral, spreading across the Internet, getting picked up by a local newspaper and other media.

Like Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth may not be amused but the RTÉ Guide made us republicans at An Phoblacht smile by describing her regular Christmas Day TV message in the BBC1 listing as: "The British monarch lectures her subjects."

In the UTV listing alongside the Beeb's for the same time, same day, the tone is a less harsh: "The British Queen delivers her message."

RTÉ blamed the editors. The managing director of Presse Media 81, an Irish-owned firm based in France and which provides the listings for the RTÉ Guide, said it was an unfortunate error and interpretation of the word 'deliver'.

"It was very straightforward and an innocuous but unfortunate use of the word 'lectures'," said Julian Kindness. (He diplomatically eschewed the defence that 'lecture' might be appropriate for a ritual TV address by an unelected head of state.)

"There was no political slight, no malice intended, no smart-arsed sub-context or attempt to sneak in a Christmas howler," he told the Irish Independent.

Maybe not but thank you kindly, Julian.

Ho, ho, ho.

When their blind eight-year-old dog went missing from their remote Alaskan home in a heavy snowstorm, the Grapengeter family felt sure they'd never see her again. But after more than a week of searching in temperatures as low as minus 40C, Abby, a brown-and-white mixed-breed whom the Grapengeters rescued from an animal shelter as a puppy, turned up safe and sound at the home of a local vet.

Abby first disappeared from the family's five-acre property near Fairbanks on 13 December. Given she'd gone blind a year ago, McKenzie Grapengeter and her three children held out little hope for her return. But on 23 December they received a call saying Abby had been found more than 10 miles away - and without even a trace of frostbite.

Neighbours had planned to set live traps to find her, but in the end the dog found her own way along a winter trail to the house of Mark May, a local dog musher and vet. "Everybody just assumed it was some kind of scaredy cat, but... it was blind," May told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "I guess [she found her way] by just sniffing." May found Abby's owners by disseminating her photograph and description on Facebook. She was recognised by one of the Grapengeters' neighbours, and returned home in time for Christmas Eve. McKenzie Grapengeter called it a Christmas miracle. "There's no other word to describe it," she told the News-Miner. "She's blind. It's amazing."

How desperate can a man can get when left alone with his children? Just ask one father in Bavaria, who called the police for help when he couldn't hush his three crying babies.

­The 31-year-old father from Weiden became overwhelmed when the tearful tykes let lose the waterworks in concert on Sunday night.

Unluckily for the Bavarian man, the babies' mother wasn't there and he couldn't reach her by phone as his two five-month old twins and their two-year old sister let lose with a torrent of tears.

Having failed to reach his wife by phone and unable to calm his babies down, the father desperately started looking for a helping hand, or in this case the long arm of the law.

The "Friends and helpers", as the German police motto reads, heard out the father's sob story and offered some helpful babysitting tips, leaving the pitiable papa to his parent trap.

Interviewer: Thanks for coming on the St. Matthew the Evangelist Show, Jesus. I know you're a busy man so let's get right to it. You probably know of the great income disparity in the world today. What would you tell those who call themselves 'Christians' to do about it?

Jesus: Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. 19:21

Interviewer: Gee, I don't hear any televangelist saying that. That's a pretty hard thing to do, give all your money to the poor. No wonder there aren't that many true Christians.

Jesus: Many are called but few are chosen. 22: 14 The harvest is rich, but laborers are few. 9:37

Interviewer: But you're saying the opposite of what our consumer culture is telling us, that we should be as rich as we possibly can.

Jesus: You can't serve both God and money. 6:24 You must worship God and serve him alone. 4:10

Interviewer: So you're saying we shouldn't want to be rich, huh?

Jesus: I tell you truly, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. 19:23 It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it. 7: 14 Many who are first will be last, and the last, first. 19:30

Interviewer: Yikes, it sounds like there are a lot of rich and famous people we won't be seeing in the hereafter. What would you tell the Occupy Wall St. folks, who are protesting the inequalities of our economic and political system?

Jesus: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. 5:6