Matt Lauer (left) stole the show dressed as Baywatch's Pamela Anderson this morning - ensuring that the Today show came out on top as the networks battled for the best Halloween costumes. His hilarious costume - complete with her iconic red swimsuit and flowing blonde mane - came in stark contrast to George Stephanopoulos' full astronaut gear from 'Gravity' (bottom right) on Good Morning America. GMA presented an awards-style show with the hosts dressed as celebrities, including Lara Spencer as Miley Cyrus (top right), while the Today show (pictured main) chose TV characters from classic 80s shows, including the Flinstones, CHiPs and The A-Team.

The former Philadelphia 76ers star, affectionately known as Dr J, has a child with sports journalist Samantha Stevenson, who he met in 1978. In his autobiography, released on Tuesday, he describes the night in question when his daughter Alexandra Stevenson was conceived.

Horror writer Michael McDowell (pictured top left) has amassed a huge collection of death-related memorabilia. As well as photographs of people who met their maker thorough natural causes, Mr McDowell also gathered images of people who were hanged (main picture) and macabre books on embalming. Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, bought the 'Death Collection' McDowell amassed in three decades before his own death in 1999 and is now preparing to open the vault.

Bodi men fatten themselves over six months in preparation for the Ka'el (New Year) celebration which takes place in June. Participants walk around a sacred tree for hours before the fattest man is chosen and a cow killed in an attempt to see what the future holds in its blood and entrails.

In a hilarious Halloween prank video, a man dressed as a terrifying Mr. Pumpkin leaps out at passersby, sending some running and leaving some in stitches. The prankster hides beneath a pile of leaves with only his pumpkin head revealed. RIP Mr. Pumpkin reads a sign just above an impressive display of jack-o-lanterns. But when people stop to marvel at the carved pumpkins, Mr. Pumpkin leaps back to life.

The mammoth undertaking - which meant gutting 66 rooms behind the famous facade and building a nuclear bunker (main) - is detailed like never before in a new book called The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence, which has been seen by MailOnline. He also recounts how the house was infested with rats and a death trap before the renovation.

Ann Carrizales, a former Marine and boxer from Houston, Texas, said she was determined to stay in the fight - especially as she had children at home. 'They shot me and they were absolutely not going to get away with that, because I will do everything I can to come home to my children every day,' she said. After she chased the car, officers from a neighboring police department helped apprehend the alleged gunman, Sergio Francisco Rodriguez (left).

Superfan Vanessa Sky Ellis has amassed a staggering 10,000 'selfies' of her with a variety of famous faces including Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Matt Damon. She sometimes spends up to 12 hours a day celeb spotting in New York. She is pictured with (clockwise from top left) Sharon Osbourne, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Courtney Cox and Orlando Bloom.

Pittsburgh Penguin Pascal Dupuis barely flinches as he yanks out his own tooth after being struck by a teammate's stick. 'I tried a second one, too, but it's glued there' said the Canadian right winger. And right after his gory procedure, he went back to the game.

A propaganda picture released by Chinese officials backfired spectacularly as the image was an inept and painfully obvious Photoshop botch job. Four grinning men tower above centenarian Cheng Yanchun, who has obviously been edited into the photo from another image but appears almost doll-sized. One of the party officials has been chopped off at the thigh to incorporate the image, leaving him bizarrely hanging in mid-air.

The mutilated head of Joao Rodrigo Silva Santos, 35 (left) was delivered in a rucksack to his horrified wife Geiza Silva at their home in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday morning. But it later emerged the former professional footballer, had recently published photos on the internet of three men (seen right) he claimed had robbed his new business venture, a health food shop called Forca Natural. The 20 photos, which were posted on his shop's Facebook page two weeks ago, showed images from the store's CCTV cameras of the street in front of the shop just before the armed robbery in August.

Police investigating phone hacking in 2011 discovered they had been lovers from 1998 to 2004 after finding a letter Rebekah Brooks wrote to Andy Coulson on her PC (together left in 2004). Their affair was revealed today at the Old Bailey in London because it took place at the height of hacking at the News of the World, where she was editor and he was her deputy for the majority of that time.

A Georgia judge ruled Wednesday that footage of Kendrick Johnson, 17, walking through Lowndes County High School corridors and then into the gym should be released to the student's parents. Mr Johnson and his wife Jacquelyn, of Valdosta, Georgia, expect another victory on Thursday when U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, Michael Moore, may announce he is opening an investigation into the death the local sheriff's department ruled an accident. The teen was found dead in a rolled up wrestling mat in January.

Olguiemar Freyre (left) locked her $700 bicycle up outside an art shop in Chicago only to discover hours later it had gone on Monday. According to Miss Freyre she worked hard to pay for the bike with the intention that it would be her only mode of transport. So the student, who attends DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, didn't hold back with her use of vocabulary in the letter (right). The potty-worded note quickly went viral but despite being laced with swear words it led to a good Samaritan coming forward and buying the cash-strapped student a new pair of wheels.

A locksmith in Houston, Texas, spent 20 hours drilling into a concrete-lined safe before he finally opened it and to his great surprise a treasure trove of gold coins and silver dollars. Robert Rivera (inset) said that he was surprised to see boxes of what looked like genuine gold coins inside the safe.

Atlanta Lamborghini dealer Ed Bolian used a souped up a 2004 Mercedes to speed into the record books October 20. Bolian's time of 28 hours 50 minutes beats the previous record set by Alex Roy in 2006 when he made the trip in 31 hours 4 minutes by over two hours. With a distance of 2,813.7 miles, Bolian and his two-man team did the Cannonball Run at an average of 98 miles per hour.

The seven men, 32 women and 48 children died in the Sahara in early October after a failed attempt to reach Algeria from the Niger town of Arlit. Almoustapha Alhacen, from local aid organisation Aghir In'man, confirmed the death toll and gave a graphic account of discovering the bodies. 'The corpses were decomposed. It was horrible,' he said. 'We found them in different locations in a 20km (12-mile) radius and in small groups, often under trees, or under the sun. Sometimes a mother and children, but some lone children too.'

Bryan Eugene Sweatt, 27, allegedly bound his victims, ranging in age from 9 to 51, with duct tape before shooting them dead in their Greenwood County, South Carolina, home. The victims included the mother of Sweatt's baby daughter, Chandra Marie Fields, 26; her parents, Richard Allen Fields, 51, and Melissa Kay Fields, 49; and two of her nephews, Tariq Kenyon Robinson, 11, and William Asa Robinson, 9. Authorities said the couple had an ongoing child custody dispute, and police had been called to the house before for a domestic argument.

WARNING: GRAPHIC A Utah man nearly snapped off his lower leg and foot during a botched BASE jump near Moab. Ammon McNeely, 43, calmly showed his mangled limb in a video after he jumped. According to the Grand County Sheriff’s office, McNeely’s parachute did not fully deploy. As he fell, he hit the rock wall several times before finally coming to a rest on a cliff 600 feet above Kane Creek Boulevard. McNeely added in a Facebook post that he struck the cliff with his foot as he plummeted down.

The 1940 Buick Phaeton - which belonged to Bogart's character Rick Blaine in the 1942 film - is expected to fetch $500,000 (£312,000) at auction in New York on November 25. It is among a number of iconic movie props and costumes being sold off as part of the Dreams Are Made of This auction at Bonhams. The car can be seen in the background as Bogart looks into Bergman's crying eyes and utters arguably the most famous movie quote of all time: 'Here's looking at you kid.'

Maria Cristerna, from Mexico, is covered head-to-toe in tattoos, had dental work which makes her look like she has fangs and even has titanium horns inserted into her head. Despite her striking looks, the mother-of-four gives talks on domestic violence to women after suffering years of abuse herself. A close friend said people once crossed the street if they saw her coming because of her looks but now she is treated like a goddess.

A new study provides shocking photographic evidence of the devastating effects that cigarette addiction can have on a person's face. Researchers interviewed more than 70 pairs of identical twins where one was a regular smoker. They found that the smokers showed considerably more signs of premature facial aging. The female twin on the right is a smoker, while her sister is a nonsmoker and has less creases around the nose and mouth as a result. Both of these male twins smoked, but the twin on the right smoked 14 years longer than his brother and looks older as a consequence. Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin.

With modern technologies outlawed, being Amish often seems like hard work. But a stunning set of pictures by Wisconsin photographer David Nevala has shown growing up inside the closed off community can also be a lot of fun. Nevala took the fascinating photographs at an Amish farm in Hillsboro, Wisconsin while shooting a project for Organic Valley. The company wanted to capture the diversity of the cooperative, and Nevala's shots show children feeding calves, playing in the woods, making masks out of cabbage and 'wagon surfing.' However, the series came to focus on childhood by accident, as most of pictures he shot of adults were vetoed by the farm's patriarch.

Tim Emmett, 32, delved into the 130ft deep cave. He was joined by photographer Jonathan Griffith, 30, for their trip to the Mer de Glace, in Chamonix, France. Mr Emmett is a rock and ice climber, base jumper, wingsuit flyer, surfer, skier, snowboarder, inspirational speaker, and stuntman who travels the world undertaking extreme challenges.

The Neurocam headset uses a brainwave quantifying algorithm developed by Keio University, Japan, to judge what interests the wearer on a scale of one to 100. The prototype headset (pictured right) combines a brainwave scanner (modelled by the user pictured top left) with an iPhone dock. If a user scores over 60 in interest (bottom left) the device records a five-second video, which they can later replay in a 'liveblogging' app.

The work, called Bronx Zoo, is located across the street from the baseball stadium at East 162nd Street and Jermome Avenue. The cat (left) seems to have graffiti tags instead of spots and sits on a yellow line of paint. The work's name may refer to the fact that Yankees earned the name Bronx Zoo between 1972 and 1981 because of the fighting between George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and Reggie Jackson. Crowds gathered last night to take photographs of the work (inset).