Florida firefighters battling a blaze got the shock of their lives when they got a call to tell them their own firehouse had erupted in flames.

Investigators say crews from the Melbourne firehouse had been so anxious to get to the scene of a nearby fire, they rushed out without switching off a fryer in the kitchen.

“We’re human,” explained the red-faced battalion chief, Robert Apel.

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Wal-Mart clerk Daniel Lorenz learned the hard way that the retail giant is willing to stretch its dress code only so far.

Lorenz, 20, was fired after he reported to work in Boerne, Texas, in a priest’s shirt and collar, six crosses, a vampire symbol and an Arab headdress.

He explained that if he didn’t wear the get-up, it would be “like turning my back on God.”

The store said Lorenz’s outfit upset customers and was not based on “a bona-fide religious belief.”

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A hypnotist astonished students at Harvard University by putting the school’s normally serious Undergraduate Council president under a trance – and having him strip off his shirt and dance onstage as if he were a backup dancer for Britney Spears.

Matthew Mahan, a junior, said hypnotist Frank Santos helped him get rid of his inhibitions fast.

“It’s analogous to alcohol,” he explained. “At one point, I thought to myself, ‘I could get up and walk off this stage, but this is kind of fun.’ “

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Hold the passion in Indonesia!

That’s because a new law being proposed will jail couples caught kissing in public – for five years.

“It is against our traditions of decency,” said legislator Aisyah Hamid Baidlowi, who’s pushing the bill. Sounds like a fun guy.

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Brad Shorton thought the nail gun he was holding to his head was empty. He was wrong.

“My mates and I were talking about construction-site accidents and taking your eye out with a nail gun, and I foolishly put the gun to my head and pulled the trigger,” said Shorton, 33, of Melbourne, Australia.

The nail, which pierced his skull, was removed during a four-hour operation.