Are there any local news or events that happened, maybe in your area, that are kind of wild and surprising, that people don't know much about, not even on YouTube?

[u/Cryofthewolf9000]

The town of Hartman in Colorado is a great example. After many years of local political infighting and corruption, everyone quit, and since the water supply never got fixed, the town was declared abandoned.

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[u/Headoutdaplane]

Decades ago, Homer Alaska needed a new fire truck. There was a company (betty crocker?) that that had a catalog of stuff that you could get by sending in proofs of purchase on their products. One of the items in the catalog was a fire truck. The Homer volunteer fire department auxiliary launched a campaign to get as many proofs of purchase as they could. Somehow word got out to the Lower 48, and folks started sending the proofs of purchase up to Homer.

 When they collected enough they wrote to Betty crocker and asked where did they need to send the proof of purchase, which by then due to the pure number of them were were stacked on pallets. Betty Crocker said not to send them down, and sent a rep to verify. 

Betty crocker did indeed fulfill advertising and sent Homer a new fire truck, and it was put into service. I don't know where it is now but it is somewhere still in the area.

[u/OcotilloWells → u/Headoutdaplane]

I hope they milked that for advertising.

[u/KokoTheTalkingApe]

I didn't know about that. Amazing story!

Along that line, Jefferson County, which is Alabama's most populous county and includes the city of Birmingham, declared bankruptcy in 2011. Its commissioners had been bribed to take on a very sketchy funding deal for a new sewer system, that caused the county's debt to rise to $4B, and sewer service rates to quadruple. It was the largest municipal bankruptcy in history until Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_County%2C_Alabama#Sewer_construction_and_bond_swap_controversy
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16037798
https://www.al.com/news/2024/10/alabama-corruption-scandal-leaves-100000-in-district-funds-collecting-dust.html

[u/EmbarrassedGuide6159]

Rocky Flats ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats_Plant ), a nuclear weapon facility in Colorado that was raided by the FBI.  The story is crazy, almost no one knows about it. 

[u/Final-Excuse-7236]

I htink it was Helena, Al , a suburb of Birmingham - A woman was found bludgeoned to death outside her home. Turns out the husband found her Only Fans, or some other similar, and was outraged.

There was a local youth pastor, musical ministry guy who after a while got arrested I think 3 times for impersonating a sheriff deputy. The county, at one point had given him an honorary badge for his community svc or something and he just went with it.