What is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in your village or small town?

[Puffinshop]

Obviously when you live in a big city, newsworthy stuff is happening all the time. If you've lived in small towns you know that it's often slim pickings for the local papers and it can be quite exciting when something happens close to you. What's the biggest local news story you remember from your town?

The most dramatic thing that ever happened where I live now (in my memory) is the body of a whale washed up on the beach. Sadly it was already dead so there was no rescue possible but so many people went to see it - quite a grisly and depressing sight but also impressive to see an animal of that size I suppose. I didn't go, partly because I had the kids with me and I didn't think a dead animal was something they'd enjoy (or me tbh) but loads of people took their kids It was certainly quite an event and everyone was talking about it.

In my childhood village there was once a man running round at night dressed in a gimp suit and frightening the villagers.

I lived in a small seaside town as a kid. About 25 years ago, a ship ran aground just off the beach.
In my current little hamlet the most exciting thing has been an escaped cow trotting happily along the road.

Two kids playing on the beach here found a woman's head in a bag which had washed up on the beach.

It turned out to have been a horrible murder that had happened in a different town in our county and the men responsible had stuffed her body into a suitcase and travelled here on a bus to get rid of it all in the sea.

It must have been around 15 years ago now and we have had some other murders but this one has always stuck with me. They killed her to take her money.

The less grisly stories on here sound like episodes from This Country

When I was in my last year of school, our headteacher came home to find his wife in bed with the local pharmacist's wife. They both had 3 kids and it led to 1 marriage breakdown. It was big news at school! Our poor HT was mortified :(

@BenedictCumberbatchstolemypenguin know it well. The Kitchen cafe does massive hot chocolates.

Just that earthquake, a set of village swingers and someone setting fire to the small bridge across the river. It has never been repaired, so now everyone has to drive the long way round.

An (apparently) disused warehouse turned out to be a massive cannabis farm. There was a police raid and half the village smelt of cannabis for a couple of days. That was a big talking point! Other than that, a country file presenter lives locally.

'The Unpleasant Pheasant'.

A peculiarly high number of murders (both solved and unsolved) for an average size town.

A couple of the unsolved ones have been particularly tragic as they’ve involved a newborn baby and a young lad in his late teens.

And someone local to us has recently been found Not Guilty of attempted murder. Newspaper reports seem to suggest that his defence was that he’d been in the army and had been trained to kill people, so if he’d wanted to kill them, he would have been successful.

This happened in 2007 when we had a huge flooding very windy storm the Coast Guard told all the ships to stay out (we have a huge harbour as we sell so much coal worldwide so ships from around the world visit about 23 ships in a 24 hour period).
Anyway back to the story all ships were told to stay out as the storm was so strong but this ship basically thought fuck it I'm going in and landed on the beach.
They were going to turn it into a casnio/restaurant as a huge tourist drawcard, but they didn't get the funding, and the ship was so destroyed, so they took it out and sunk it.
There is a plaque and a piece of the ship at that beach now for the memorial.

Every summer, a naked man gets off his bike, goes into our village shop and buys a roll. Everyone is too polite to comment on his nakedness, so afterwards he just gets back on his bike and rides off with his roll. Every August the chat in the shop is "Ooh, has the naked man visited yet this year?" And after he's been, it's the talk of the village for a while too, as you can imagine.

@Tarkan

That's awful. And for the two kids. I bet that stayed with them.

@Thmssngvwlsrnd

Brilliant.

Although I can't stop thinking about his poor bottom. He must have the calloused arse of a hard-core cyclist.

H in Norfolk?

We had an awful case of a man setting fire to his house and accidentally himself after his ex wife had been awarded the house in the divorce settlement. It was just before Christmas too. It was a cul de sac with identical houses and after the fire there was a gap.

They eventually rebuild the house but because it was newer it stands out compared to the others. It still makes me shudder every time I go past.

Unfortunately we've had more than one case of falling into the marina drunk with tragic consequences. I've personally had to throw in the life belt and call 999 on the way back from the pub, that person was ok.

Oh on a happier note, a Hollywood star I had never heard of has just bought a house here, I'm reliably informed (I know the estate agent!) he and his wife were in the local bar and nobody batted an eye lid (dsd had to tell us it was him, I'm not into those types of films)

St Ives? I waste hours of my life looking at the car trap posts on FB and wondering who the hell drives into a great big hole in the road

We had a WW2 bomb discovered in our town. A HUGE one. They did a controlled explosion that could be heard for miles around.

I've just remembered, in my small town when I was quite young a man set fire to the family home, with his brother inside. The brother unfortunately died.

I've always thought about the kids too. It would have been hard enough finding something like that as an adult.

I live in London now so too much to count, but in the village where I grew up there was a Russian boy who joined our class (in the early 90s so showing my age) and then suddenly disappeared with all his family one day. A couple of weeks later a letter arrived at the school saying they were safe and had returned to Russia. We all thought they ( or at least the dad) must've been spies, not actually that unlikely given there were a number of military bases nearby.

my childhood town had Fred West and his family nearby; my dad worked with Fred and my mum worked in a cafe with his first wife whom he murdered.
where I live now we have had murders quite a few paedophiles someone nicking a fire engine some setting fire to the policeman caravan but we did have something in the small estate we live in, new neighbours next door were getting friendly with the people at the next house. we had heard they were swingers but no evidence until last weekend when new neighbours were seen creeping out early hours one couple was out of the new people's house one out of the other house but they weren't the couples who should have been couples if you see what i mean! makes their evenings pot smoking in the garden seem innocent

Billy Elliot was filmed here and more recently Ken Loach's The Old Oak also

In the village where I lived when my children were growing up a female teacher suffocated her two girls with their pillows after her husband left her/the marriage broke down. Apparently she was a kind, lovely teacher to her infants class...but couldn't face bringing up her two as a sole parent.

Tragic.