Roberto Gabriel Trigo, are tired football player from Paraguay, is probably the only man alive who can say that he shot down a small plane with a football.

The legend of the football kick that brought down a plane has been doing the rounds through the locker rooms of Paraguayan football clubs for six decades. Some say it happened during an official game, others that it was during a practice, but they all credit the same man – Roberto Gabriel Trigo. He was 17 years old at the time and playing as a right back for the now-defunct General Genes football club of Asuncion. Annoyed by a small plane flying low over the local football field, Trigo allegedly kicked the ball outwards, hitting the aircraft’s engine and causing it to crash in an open field, just 200 meters away.

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Over the past couple of days, news headlines in the South American country of Paraguay have been dominated by “Gordito lindo” (Cute fatty), an inmate who managed to walk out of prison by dressing as a woman.

On Sunday, César Ortiz, a supposed leader of the Rotela crime gang, escaped Tacumbú National Penitentiary by simply walking out through the front gate. Along with his freedom, he also earned the nickname “Gordito Lindo” or “Cute fatty”, because he disguised himself as a woman in order to fool the guards. Photos and video footage released by Paraguayan authorities show the convicted criminal wearing a long hair wig, fake eyelashes, lipstick, fake fingernails and women’s clothing. His disguise made such an impression on the public that the “Gordito Lindo” nickname stuck.

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The Resistencia Sport Club, a small football club in Paraguay’s second division, is the first in the world to make a tree growing in the stands of its stadium an official supporter, even offering it a membership card and complimentary jersey.

Resistencia’s evergreen supporter is as old as the club, so both the team and its human supporters consider it part of their history. It was around back when the stadium was a mere football field in the middle of a wasteland, so 20-years ago, when the club decided to built concrete stands for its fans, it never even considered the possibility of cutting down their oldest supporters. Instead, they asked the architects and engineers in charge of the project to come up with a solution that would allow it to thrive. So they built the stands around it, allowing human fans to watch home games in its shade. A couple of years ago, when Resistencia celebrated its 100th anniversary, management decided to honor the tree by making it an official member of the club, complete with its own member card and jersey.

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Whenever 19-year-old Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barbosa tells people his name, they think he is making fun of them. That’s because his name is the phonetic version of how some people pronounce “Optimus Prime” in Spanish. It was given to him by his father, an avid fan of the Transformers animated series.

The Paraguayan teen recently got his five minutes of online fame after a photo of his ID card went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was digitally altered to attract attention, but Optimosprayn recently sat down with Paraguayan newspaper Cronica to confirm that he was indeed the Latino namesake of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

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A 20-year-old man in Paraguay recently gave his family and friends the shock of their lives when he returned home after three days to find them all grieving over what was supposed to be his dead body.

Juan Ramón Alfonso Penayo, from the village of Santa Teresa, close to Paraguay’s border with Brazil, had last been seen leaving his house last Thursday. He had told no one where he was going, and after failing to get in touch with him, Juan’s family reported his disappearance. As fate would have it, soon after contacting the authorities, the man’s family received news that a charred body had been found in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, and they were asked to come to the morgue and identify it.

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Jarvis Chimenes Pavao, considered one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in South America, was serving an 8-year sentence in Tacumbu Prison, when police raided his cell to find it was actually a luxury suite.

Pavao was due to complete his sentence for money laundering next year, at which point he was likely to face extradition to his home country of Brazil, but Paraguayan police recently learned that he planned to escape by blowing a hole in the prison wall. To prevent Pavao from pulling an “El Chapo”, they raided his cell only to find that instead of an austere room, he was living in a luxurious three-room suite complete with air-conditioning, private bathroom, conference room, kitchen, library and multiple flat-screen TVs.

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