After a long night of celebrating the arrival of 2015 tens of thousands of Europeans saw no better way to begin the new year than to jump into freezing water.

In the Netherlands alone some 50,000 people, many wearing knitted caps in trademark Dutch orange, took a mass plunge in the North Sea, which hovered at a brisk seven degrees celsius (44 degrees fahrenheit).

Fifty-one years ago, Arthur Lampitt of Granite City, Illinois, smashed his 1963 Thunderbird into a truck. This week during surgery in suburban St. Louis, a 7-inch turn signal lever from that T-Bird was removed from his left arm.

Dr. Timothy Lang removed the lever Wednesday during a 45-minute operation. Lampitt, now 75, is recovering at home.

A wall at a Morton Salt storage facility has collapsed, burying several cars at a next-door auto dealership in road salt.

Company spokeswoman Denise Lauer says a side wall broke Tuesday afternoon, spilling road salt outside of the facility on Chicago's northwest side and onto the neighboring property. Morton Salt Inc. is a more than 100-year-old company based in Chicago best known for its pourable table salt.

A woman has been jailed on charges she broke into a stranger's central Pennsylvania home after a night of drinking and was found by police in bed.

The Centre Daily Times (http://bit.ly/14axdj1 ) reports state police responded to an alarm about 4:15 a.m. Sunday in Liberty Township, Centre County.

Alaska drivers will have the choice of a retro look when they obtain new license plates next spring.

The state is bringing back plates that feature red lettering on white plates and a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs.

Fireworks coordinator Phil Grucci has a request of Mother Nature in this city of glitzy shows: If you're going to let it snow on New Year's Eve, let it snow at just the right moment, like right before midnight when his show launches from the Las Vegas Strip.

Grucci, president and creative director of Fireworks by Grucci, talked about the weather as he stood atop the Treasure Island casino-hotel on the Strip on Tuesday, one of seven hotel rooftops where 70 workers have been readying the displays since the day after Christmas.

For most of the past 20 years, a live animal has been used in a small North Carolina town's annual New Year's Eve Possum Drop. But this year, following challenges from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the organizer says he'll no longer use a live opossum — instead, it'll be a road-kill opossum or perhaps a pot of opossum stew.

The Brasstown event involves enclosing an opossum in a tinsel-covered plastic box and lowering it to the ground at midnight, then releasing the animal.

Police say they matched a would-be pizza shop robber to a roll of toilet paper in his Pennsylvania home.

Uniontown police say 29-year-old Eric Frey tried to rob Michael Maria's Pizza on Saturday by handing an employee a note written on toilet paper that read: "I have a gun. Give me $300."

A state agency in Minnesota is claiming the world record for largest ball of paper.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says the ball measures 9 feet 7 inches tall and 32.2 feet in circumference. The 426-pound ball was displayed at the Minnesota State Fair to show how much recyclable paper state residents throw away every 30 seconds.

The Oregon cat accidentally sold with a mattress set is home after 10 days on his own.

Roy Dufek wrote in a statement that his girlfriend, Hayley Crews, caught Camo in a trap Saturday night after he was reportedly seen near the Hillsboro Airport west of Portland. The trap was baited with sardines in oil and familiar scented clothing.