Margret Wegner, 59, was carrying the pencil when she fell onto it when she was 4. “The pencil went right through my skin and disappeared into my head,” she said.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — More than 1,000 people gathered Saturday in a scenic Minneapolis neighborhood for an annual ritual — the sharpening of a gigantic No. 2 pencil. The 20-foot-tall (6-meter ...

“Why a pencil? Everybody uses a pencil,” Amy Higgins said. “Everybody knows a pencil. You see it in school, you see it in people’s work, or drawings, everything.

The 20-foot-tall (6-meter-tall) pencil was sculpted out of a mammoth oak tree at the home of John and Amy Higgins. The beloved tree was damaged in a storm a few years ago when fierce winds twisted ...