From events celebrating rotten shark to bacon gelato – there are unusual food festivals in every corner of the globe. Here are some of the most extraordinary.

Traditional Icelandic dishes such as pickled ram’s testicles, whale blubber, sheep’s head and rotten shark are all celebrated as part of the Thorrablot festival from January 23 to February 23. Known as Þorrablót in Icelandic, it honors the Norse god Thor with a huge feast that also includes less adventurous Icelandic staples such as rye bread and smoked salmon.

If you’ve ever driven past a dead animal, chances are the last thing on your mind is eating it. But in Marlington, West Virginia they do the opposite: they create dishes from the roadkill and hold a festival. Dishes include squirrel gravy over biscuits, teriyaki-marinated bear and deer sausage.

In the northern Italian city of Ivrea people divide up into nine different squads for the Battle of the Oranges. Men, women and children hurl oranges at each other, attempting to ‘kill’ the other teams. The origins of the festival are unclear but most people know the tale of the evil marquis who attempted to rape a young woman, but was instead decapitated by her. In the aftermath of his death, the townspeople stormed his palace in revolt, which is what the festival is said to symbolize.

Having dubbed itself the ‘cheese curd capital’, Ellworth in Wisconsin now holds a festival for the byproduct every June. Run by the Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery, people celebrate all things cheese curd by trying treats like cheese curd brats and deep-fried curds. There’s also a cheese curd pie competition, cheese curd dessert contest, and a timed eating contest for serious curd-eaters.

Each May people gather at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, England to watch a group of men chase a large mound of cheese down a steep hill. It can be a dangerous affair and the hill is meticulously scoured for stones and any other potentially dangerous objects participants could injure themselves on. The winner takes home the wheel of cheese.

As a tropical part of Australia, Chinchilla in Queensland is the place to get plenty of fresh fruit like watermelon. It grows in such abundance that it’s now celebrated with its own festival. Everything is melon-themed and there are events including melon skiing, eating competitions, pip spitting contests and a melon chariot race. But the main event is the final activity: a giant melon food fight.

Halloween may celebrate everything pumpkins but on December 23 the the Mexican city of Oaxaca hosts a food and folk art festival where the understated radish takes center stage. Locals carve beautiful sculptures such as animals, Jesus, and even Mexico’s revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapato out of the root vegetable.

The Waikiki Spam Jam is a street festival where the people of Hawaii celebrate their love for the canned meat from Hormel Foods. In Hawaii there’s Spam at all grocery and convenience stores, many restaurants and in most homes too. The event, which has its own Spam mascot, supports the Foodbank and its efforts in feeding the needy in the islands.

This festival began after a giant fungus was found 1988 in Crystal Falls near the Wisconsin border. During the annual festival a huge mushroom pizza is made for festival goers to devour while participating in events like a mushroom cook-off and a mushroom-themed parade.

On the last Wednesday of August herds of people flock to the Spanish village of Buñol for the La Tomatina festival, which is essentially a town-wide tomato fight. It dates back to 1945 but was banned in the early 50s until locals staged a ‘tomato burial’ in protest of the ban and festivities were reinstated. An unusual side event is the palo-jabón, a soapy pole with a Spanish ham on top; whoever can make it to the top gets the ham.

The Lemon Festival, or Fête du Citron, is held each year in Menton, France where art installations made from oranges and lemons are put on display. About 160,000 visitors come to see the displays that have included safari animals, scooters and well-known landmarks.

An event that started as a celebration of local produce and flavors in 1990 in the small New Zealand town of Hokitika has evolved into the Wildfoods festival. It showcases some of the weirdest world foods such as fried grasshoppers, mountain oysters and crocodile nibbles.

Porridge is quintessential Scottish food, so much so that the annual Golden Spurtle is dedicated to the classic breakfast staple in Carrbridge, a village in the Cairngorms National Park. As part of the festival there’s the World Porridge-Making Championships, where the winner gets the Golden Spurtle, a wooden stick traditionally used to stir the porridge pot.

The Turnip Festival in the village of Richterswil takes place in November and is the largest of its kind. It involves 26 tons of carved turnips being paraded around the village on the second Saturday after Halloween. Just like pumpkins in October, the turnips are hollowed out, elaborately decorated and used as lanterns with candles inside.

The people of Alresford in southern England celebrate the versatile aquatic herb used in traditional English cooking in soups, salads and sauces with a festival on the third Sunday in May. It takes place in the center of the village, which turns into a street festival where farmers bring local products to sell and celebrity chefs create special meals. Festival recipes include trout with watercress; beetroot and apple, beef Wellington in watercress; and watercress sushi rolls.

As the name suggests, the star of the Garlic Festival on the Isle of Wight is the pungent bulb from the onion family. The festival includes garlic-based treats from the island chefs such as garlic fudge, garlic biscuits and garlic popcorn. There’s also a beer tent where you can wash down the garlic treats plus live music, craft stalls as well as local cheeses, meats, honey, wine and cider. You can even get a selfie with the Garlic Queen (pictured).

Held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, families gather to celebrate the year's harvest and make offerings to the Goddess of the Moon, Chang'e. In celebration sweet mooncakes made from lotus paste are eaten. The festival is celebrated in China, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan.

It’s not certain how the Pancake Race in Olney began but it’s believed to have started in 1445. The tale goes that a flustered housewife heard the Church bells while cooking breakfast and dashed to the service clutching her frying pan with the pancake she was cooking. On Shrove Tuesday, the women of Olney now race with a frying pan and pancake with the winner taking home prizes.

For the chocoholics out there this festival won’t at all seem unusual but Salon du Chocolat in Paris is a chocolate-related event that’s a bit more unusual. During the five-day event there’s a fashion show where garments are entirely made from chocolate. It also features more than 220 chocolatiers, pastry chef and confectioners, who treat visitors to cooking demonstrations.

Hundreds of people flock to the small quiet town of Piedmontese in Alba, Italy to taste one of its prized white truffles. The pungent ingredient takes center-stage at the White Truffle Fair from early October to mid-November where savory and sweet dishes laced with truffles are up for the taking. The fair ends with an invitation-only truffle auction, which only the who's who of the food world can attend.

Bacon lovers everywhere will salivate at the thought of this festival where you can get anything from bacon gelato to bacon ramen to bacon fair floss (pictured). Chefs cook the meat from organically fed hogs right outside on the street so the smell of bacon is inescapable.

This festival revolves around the root vegetable called the dasheen, which turns blue once ground and cooked. It’s eaten in abundance in the Caribbean, with the weekend-long Blue Food Festival held in the coastal village of Bloody Bay on Tobago. The festival attracts thousands of people, rich and poor, all keen to cook inventive dishes using the ingredient.

As the largest producer of sweet chestnuts in France with 62 different varieties, Ardeche hosts the Castagnades Chestnut Festival annually. The festival celebrates the fact that chestnuts are an important ingredient in Ardeche cooking. They’re added to soups, stews or baked into a crisp flat cake called the Pisadou.

The traditional Canadian dish of fries, gravy and cheese curd has its own festival in Ottawa. The PoutineFest is a three-day festival of live music, eating contests and cooking demonstrations. The festival brings out exotic international versions of poutine such as pad Thai poutine, butter chicken poutine, beef jerky poutine, smoked salmon poutine and pulled pork poutine.

On the fifth day of the fifth Chinese lunar month, Chinese families eat zongzi dumplings as part of Dumpling Festival, a national holiday in Hong Kong and Macau. The dumplings consist of glutinous rice with different fillings wrapped in bamboo, lotus or banana leaves. The most spectacular event that takes place at the festival is the dragon boat race, a sport now so popular it has its own international federation.

It may not be shocking that there’s a pizza festival in the birthplace of one of the world’s favorite dishes but it’s the events that make Pizzafest impressive. The four-day festival in Naples involves pizza makers showing off their dough-throwing talents that will leave the crowd in awe. There are also live music and performances and, of course, many varieties of freshly-baked pizza to try.

In the town of Lucban each May people celebrate the Pahiyas Festival, where thanks is given to Saint Isidro de Labrador, the patron saint of farmers, for a bountiful harvest. The festival celebrates all food harvested in the area with residents competing to out-decorate their neighbors’ house. People cover every square inch of their homes in colorful produce. Decorations include fruits and vegetables, sausages, and ground rice flour that's dyed bright and steamed on banana leaves.

Held each year in August, the Maine Lobster Festival is held in the New England town of Rockland. In celebration of the crustacean, around 20,000lbs (9,072 kg) of lobsters are used and eaten during the four-day festival. There’s also live music, a parade with a gigantic lobster float and contests to keep everyone entertained.

The Irish love their seafood festivals just as much as America, with the Galway Oyster festival attracting more than 20,000 oyster lovers each year. Having started in 1954, it’s one of Europe’s longest-running food festivals and is celebrated with different events the whole family can enjoy.

This may not be an unusual food festival if it was held in Scotland like the name suggests but in fact it’s held in Barga, Tuscany. The Scottish Fish and Chips Festival is a three-week summertime celebration of one of the most un-Italian dishes. The history behind it lies in Barga’s connections with Scotland, where many Italian emigrants flocked during World War One. Traditional battered fish and chips is served with tomato salsa and a glass of Chianti.

Schools of herring swim into Ringkobing Fjord’s sheltered waters each April and to mark the occasion the Danish put on a Herring Festival. The herring attract anglers to the tiny village of Hvide Sande from all over Scandinavia where they compete to get as many fish as possible. The catch is served either pickled, fried or ground into fishcakes and consumed by festival-goers.