18 Cops Sent for Sex Doll Rescue - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.

Police officers in China were dispatched to rescue a floating body from a river in East China's Shandong Province, only to realize that the body was an inflatable sex doll that had been discarded into the river. The 18 officers that reported to the scene took almost an hour to retrieve the doll, which was about 50 meters away from the riverbank. They had to disperse the crowd of over a thousand people, who had gathered to catch a glimpse of the scene. Emergency vehicles struggled to get through the mob, and once they finally did get the doll out of the river, the anxious onlookers covered their children's eyes.

This story relates to another amusing misunderstanding that occurred when some people in China mistook a sex toy for a rare species of mushroom. Locals in a rural village found the sex toy and called the local news channel who covered the story, which garnered millions of views online over night, thanks to the comical misreporting.