Teacher's Mean Punishment for 1st Grader - A Dallas teacher who has not been publicly named has been placed on paid administrative leave after she sent a first-grade boy home with feces in his backpack. The Associated Press reports that the child soiled the classroom floor at the Gabe P. Allen Elementary School in Dallas, Texas, and the frustrated teacher wrapped up the waste and sent it home with the boy, along with a note for his parents."It generally appears the teacher was trying to help raise awareness with the family," Dallas school district spokesman Donald Claxton told AP. "It's just an unfortunate incident. Unfortunately, she took this course of action." [Netscape News, 9-27-2004]
A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday. "We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around," said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 km) northeast of Seattle. The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers' coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds. It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge. Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson. They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation. (Seattle, Washington) [Reuters]
Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting pleas to come out and give himself up.
A 9-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia received a one-day suspension under his elementary school's drug policy last week - for Certs! Joey Hoeffer allegedly told a classmate that the mints would make him "jump higher."
Fire investigators on Maui have determined the cause of a blaze that destroyed a $127,000 home last month - a short in the homeowner's newly installed fire prevention alarm system. "This is even worse than last year," said the distraught homeowner, "when someone broke in and stole my new security system..."
A student in Belle, West Virginia was suspended for three days for giving a classmate a cough drop. School principal Forest Mann reiterated the school's "zero-tolerance" policy...not to be confused with the "zero-intelligence" policy.
An Illinois man pretending to have a gun kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts.
In Alabama, an unidentified man in his late twenties walked into a police station with a 9-inch wire protruding from his forehead and calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen. Police were shocked to learn that the man had drilled a 6-inch deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power drill and had stuck the wire in to try and find the missing brain. Ouch!
AT&T fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked "intellectual leadership". He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not Walter who's lacking intelligence.
A man walked in to a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Shop, and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.
More than 600 people in Italy wanted to ride in a spaceship badly enough to pay $10,000 a piece for the first tourist flight to Mars. According to the Italian police, the would-be space travelers were told to spend their "next vacation on Mars, amid the splendors of ruined temples and painted deserts. Ride a Martian camel from oasis to oasis and enjoy the incredible Martian sunsets. Explore mysterious canals and marvel at the views. Trips to the moon also available." Authorities believe that the con men running this scam made off with over six million dollars.
Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot," the man shouted, "That's not what I said!"
A man spoke frantically into the phone: "My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!" "Is this her first child?" the doctor asked. "No, you idiot!" the man shouted. "This is her husband!"
In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun, but unfortunately, he failed to keep his hand in his pocket.
A 13 year old boy in New Delhi, India began producing winged beetles in his urine after hatching the eggs in his body. Doctor Chittaranjan Maity, Medical Education Director of West Bengal state where the boy is from, said doctors found the beetles while examining him for pain in the groin area. "Doctors were really surprised to see the beetles," he told Reuters. "There are eggs of the beetle in a fistula in his body and he is getting medical treatment to try to kill the eggs," Maity said. The boy had been taken to hospital Sunday after complaining of pain while urinating. The beetles -- more than half a centimeter in length -- belong to the Staphylinidae rove beetle family of insects. Most types are predators but some feed on fungi, algae and decaying plant matter. An expert in urology, Doctor N. Subramanian, said that in theory it was possible for insects to hatch in the body and come out in urine but said he had not heard of such a case. [Reuters, 06-17-03]
In a deposition earlier this year as part of his divorce proceedings (and released in November), the president's brother, Neil Bush, admitted that he had had sex with several women while on business trips in Asia, but that he did not seek them out, insisting that they simply came to his door. Asked his ex-wife's lawyer, "Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her." Responded Bush, "It was very unusual." [Reuters, 11-25-03]
Two armed robbers who kicked in a door and threatened a terrified woman backed off after she told them she had epilepsy; one of the men said his cousin is similarly afflicted, and he convinced his partner to call it off (Wichita, Kan.). [Wichita Eagle, 12-30-03]
Brandi Nicole Nason, 20, dissatisfied with her Christmas gift, allegedly tossed a Molotov cocktail into her ex-mother-in-law's house, causing $200,000 in damage (Hermosa Beach, Calif.). [Los Angeles Times, 12-29-03]
Derek Leroy McSmith of Forest City, Ga., has filed 10,618 formal open-records requests to local governments in the last eight months, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report. Most were, he said, to satisfy his curiosity about how government works, but one day, he asked for 490 magazines and on another day, he checked out 100 books (and soon, according to the librarian, walked outside and dropped them into the return bin). Each request must be logged in and processed, and a Forest City clerk spends almost full-time on McSmith's work. Several officials said that after they locate his documents, he only glances at them (or, if there is a cost involved, declines the documents). A local First Amendment advocate said the situation was merely "one of the downsides of a free and open society." [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12-26-03]
A woman was arrested for beating a man with a Christmas tree after he complained that the gifts he was carrying were heavier than the tree that she was carrying (Victoria, British Columbia). [Victoria Colonist, 12-24-03]
Kenneth Martin, 44, and Earle Sharpe III, 30, were arrested for kidnapping in Providence, R.I., in December after abducting a 24-year-old man who supposedly owed Martin money. According to police, after taking the man to an apartment, Martin pointed his gun at him but then realized the magazine clip had fallen out. Martin and Sharpe went outside to retrace their steps in search of the clip after first giving the victim a stern warning not to leave. However, he did leave and called police. [Providence Journal, 12-11-03]
As New Yorkers frolicked in the fresh snow from the city's Dec. 7 blizzard, Gilberto Triplett, 28, set up a street-corner kiosk to sell snowballs for $1 each. According to the New York Daily News, he sold six, then created a fresh inventory, and moved four more before calling it a day. [New York Daily News, 12-10-03]
The parents of a teenage girl, who had inhaled nitrous oxide from "whippet" propulsion cartridges just before a car crash that left her with permanent brain damage, filed a lawsuit in Boca Raton, Fla., in December against the store that sold her the canisters. However, a store manager claimed that, even though his is a video store whose whippets are sold from an "adult" room, he believes that his customers are not inhalant-abusers but just people who want to make their own whipped cream. [Palm Beach Post, 12-10-03]
The Singapore government decided in December to list its high-tech sewage-water conversion plant as a major tourist attraction; Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong drank a bottle of the purified waste to demonstrate that it is not only safe but tasty. And sanitation officials in Oslo, Norway, said they will soon create an adventure park within the city's sewer system, including rafting, theater performances, artwork on the walls, and an area for weddings and parties. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation-Agence France-Presse, 12-5-03]
Police in Brooklyn, N.Y., set a trap and arrested a 44-year-old man and his 22-year-old associate for having kidnapped a teenager earlier in the day and having sought a $20,000 ransom from his mother. The sting was set up after the men, for some reason, released their victim (who went straight home) but continued to demand the ransom. [New York Post, 12-2-03]
According to a December Miami Herald story, the condition of museum-goers who grow faint or suffer anxiety attacks while viewing art (or viewing too much in a short time) has a name, Stendhal's Syndrome, that, although rare, has been studied for almost 200 years. [Miami Herald, 12-2-03]
"Champion Liar Accused of Cheating" - this year's winner of the World's Biggest Liar contest in Cumbria, England, read from a script instead of extemporaneously lying. [London Evening Standard, 11-28-03]
A 70-year-old businessman had just finished testifying against the Homer, Alaska, city council's proposed no-smoking ordinance (calling the reported dangers to health "baloney") when he keeled over, dead of a heart attack. (He had said that eating breakfast with smokers every morning "hasn't bothered my health any.") [Anchorage Daily News, 11-26-03]
Spain's Catalonian High Court ruled in November that the Barcelona construction company Perez Parellada Promotions had improperly fired a worker who admitted smoking marijuana on the job, finding that he only smoked during meal breaks and did not smoke enough to affect his work. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, 11-26-03]
Stephen P. Linnen, 33, an assistant to Republican legislators in the Ohio House, was indicted on 56 counts stemming from an 18-month spree in which a naked man jumps out from hiding and photographs startled women's reactions (Columbus, Ohio, November). [Columbus Dispatch, 11-21-03]
In November 2003, Jones Soda Company of Seattle bottled 6,000 units of turkey-and-gravy soda, which, remarkably, has the consistency and taste of pureed turkey and gravy; also remarkably, the entire run sold out, with some bottles offered at a huge premium on eBay. [Seattle Times, 11-15-03]
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that a woman who conceived three sons with her husband was biologically unrelated to two of them. Doctors posited that the woman herself was part of an nonidentical-twin pair that fused at an early stage of her mother's pregnancy and that only her blood cells are hers, alone, while cells from her eggs and other tissues may have come from her sister's fetus. [Daily Telegraph (London)-New Scientist, 11-13-03]
Free-lance writer Jean Lund (her pen name), 51, disclosed to the Boston Globe for a November story that she suffers from Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (perpetually on the verge of orgasm) and hopes that her revelation will help people understand how uncomfortable the condition is. According to Lund and others, the arousal is much different than sexual desire and in fact is not satiated by orgasm. Suspected causes are chemical imbalances, seizures and irregular blood flow. "It's just a horror," said a 71-year-old sufferer; it "never stops, it never lets up." [Boston Globe, 11-11-03]
A 20-year-old woman died in a one-car collision in Bridgewater, Mass., in November; according to police, she lost control of her car while talking on a cell phone and crashed into the Cingular Wireless store on Route 106. [Boston Globe, 11-2-03]
In October in Hennepin County, Minn., Rafiq Abdul Mortland, 38, was sentenced to eight to 10 years in prison as the man who habitually asked store clerks whom he robbed to also hand over some Rolaids. When asked by police why he did that, Mortland said it was to relieve the stress he got from committing robberies. [St. Louis Park Sun/Sailor, 10-15-03]
Japanese men's fetish for schoolgirls' used underwear is such a problem, concluded a civic panel, that shops that cater to them are proliferating, thus enticing more and more girls to become suppliers (Tokyo, October). [Mainichi Daily News, 10-4-03]
Steve Danos, 24, was arrested as allegedly the man who had been sneaking into young women's apartments to watch them sleep and to snuggle with them (and, sometimes, to fold their laundry) (Baton Rouge, La., October). [Baton Rouge Advocate, 9-30-03]
In May, Microsoft's British division announced it was developing an Internet-ready portable outhouse with computer and plasma screen, to be unveiled this summer at various British festivals; Microsoft headquarters then told reporters the project was a hoax, but after consulting with the British division, headquarters conceded that it was a real project but said it was being discontinued. [Associated Press, 5-13-03]
In April, when the Republicans on the New York City Board of Elections killed a plan to repair voting machines that had underrecorded votes in the 2000 election (with most of the unlucky voters being Democrats), Republican Commissioner Stephen Weiner denied that his party's disinterest in properly functioning machines showed bias against Democrats: "There are some people who don't want (their vote) register(ed), but who report to the polls for civic reasons." [Newsday, 4-16-03]
Responding to a February incident in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in which a girl performed oral sex on a boy during a middle-school class (both were suspended), the superintendent and the principal wrote to parents: "Just like our country was shocked into awareness when never-before acts of terrorism occurred in New York City, our district was shocked into awareness when middle-school students engaged in indecent acts in the classroom." (The boy's parents filed a lawsuit over the suspension, pointing out that their son was a "victim" in that, when the girl started, he had no "legal duty" to resist.) [Macomb Daily, 3-12-03]
In February, the head teacher at the Park Road nursery school in West Yorkshire, England, issued instructions that "The Three Little Pigs" and other stories featuring pigs not be used, in order not to offend Muslims. (The Muslim Council of Britain immediately denounced the decision, and the instructions were rescinded.) [The Guardian (London), 3-5-03]
CANADA - While two co-appellants chose to have lawyers represent them before the Supreme Court of Canada in their challenge of their marijuana convictions, David Malmo-Levine spoke for himself, addressing the justices for 40 minutes on May 6, arguing that his right of "substance orientation" was similar to someone's right of sexual orientation. After his session (which he began by waving hello to the justices), Malmo-Levine revealed that his entire courtroom wardrobe was made of hemp and that he had taken a few hits of hashish beforehand. Said he, "I was happy, hungry and relaxed, but I was not impaired." [Reuters, 5-7-03; Globe and Mail, 5-7-03]
Five stowaways, having boarded a ship in Buenaventura, Colombia, bound for Miami, emerged joyously when it docked after five days at sea, but then learned that it wasn't Miami, that mechanical trouble had forced the vessel back to port at Cartagena, Colombia. [Reuters, 5-16-03]
Dining-room workers at the U.N. staged a wildcat strike at lunchtime on May 2, causing the building's restaurants to be locked down, but what Time magazine called a "high-ranking U.N. official" ordered them unlocked so that staff members could eat (perhaps to pay for food on the honor system). What ensued, according to Time, was "Baghdad style (looting) chaos," in which staff members ran wild, stripping the cafeterias and snack bars bare not only of food, but also silverware and liquor, none of it paid for, including bar drinks taken by "some well-known diplomats." [Time.com, 5-3-03]
WESTERVILLE, OHIO - William W. Bresler, Jr., 56, was taken for psychiatric evaluation after he tried to rob a National City Bank of exactly one cent. [Westerville News, 3-19-03]
Convicted own-home arsonist Merle Crossman, 49, in an Ellsworth, Maine, prison, filed a lawsuit against Middlesex Mutual Insurance Co. demanding payment of $75,000 on the house he burned down, claiming that since he pleaded "no contest," and not "guilty," he is still entitled to insurance payments. [Portsmouth Herald, 1-16-03]
The CIA convened an open panel of scientists in January to discuss potential terrorist uses of life-science research, and the panel concluded that, despite the risks, openness in scientific study was absolutely crucial; in April, the CIA suppressed the panel's conclusions on openness as classified. [Federation of American Scientists Secrecy News, 4-2-03]
In March, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accepted an award by the Cleveland City Club for his contributions to freedom of speech, which Scalia said he would be glad to accept at the club's meeting provided no television or radio coverage was allowed. [CNN, 3-19-03]
A 35-year-old man was uninjured but his Jaguar mangled after he momentarily lost control at 70 mph on Interstate 15 near Pala, Calif., in January and drove underneath an 18-wheeler, with the car getting stuck under the axle and being dragged for a half-mile before another motorist signaled to the driver of the rig. [North County Times, 1-22-03]
HOUSTON, TEXAS - "Girl Headed for Eye Doctor Ends Up With Teeth Pulled Instead" (a March story on the Web site of KTRK-TV, Houston, about the error by a Texas Medicaid worker who dropped the 5-year-old girl off with the wrong doctor).[KTRK-TV, 3-31-03]
PITTSBURGH, PA - A trucking company was ordered to pay a $2.7 million legal judgment because its only employee smoking area was across a 100-yard, poorly lighted parking lot, where a 55-year-old smoker was accidentally run over returning from a break. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2-4-03]
PARKERSBURG, WEST VIRGINIA. - A 42-year-old man died of head injuries caused when he opened the door of a moving car to spit tobacco juice and fell out. [WTAP website, 3-22-03]
Thailand's prisons department announced a contest in which inmates would vie to see which one had the most contagious laugh, and one official said that especially tense inmates would be urged to compete. [New York Times-AP, 4-29-03]
A student at George Washington High School, Charleston, W.Va. (who was not identified because of his age), was disciplined after he accidentally wedged himself in behind the shower wall in the girls' locker room, after allegedly taking a choice vantage point for peeping. Virtually immobile, the boy waited until school was out for the day and called his father on his cell phone. The father went to the gym and rescued the boy but later turned him in. [Charleston Daily Mail, 4-2-03]
Detroit City Council member Kay Everett outdid colleagues who use the city's printing plant for mere personal fliers and business cards; she had the plant publish for her a 12-month calendar of herself, "Hat's on Me in 2003," featuring a different, fashionable photograph of herself for each month. [Metro Times, 3-19-03]
BURT TOWNSHIP, MICHIGAN - Police blamed a traffic accident on truck driver Brian Anderson, who they said lost control on Interstate 75 while making himself a bologna sandwich. [Detroit Free Press, 5-9-03]
Rhode Island state Rep. Joseph S. Almeida was convicted in February of assaulting a repo man who was lawfully confiscating Almeida's girlfriend's car; Almeida's version was that the repo man voluntarily banged his own head into his truck's door three times, smashing his own eyeglasses and mangling his own face. [Providence Journal, 2-6-03]
KIEV - Cheap glue proved the undoing of a hard-core Russian criminal, whose fake ears came unstuck just as he was crossing passport control at the Ukrainian-Slovak border, a Ukrainian daily reported Wednesday. The popular paper Den quoted local customs officers as saying a ``dangerous'' Russian fugitive had tried to cross illegally into Slovakia from western Ukraine with a passport belonging to another person. To complete his disguise he had asked a surgeon to glue on artificial ears, but they popped off at the decisive moment. The surgeon had economized on medical glue, using a cheap Russian-made product instead of high-quality Western one, the paper said. [Reuters]
THOMPSON, MANITOBA, CANADA. Telephone relay company night watchman Edward Baker, 31, was killed early Christmas morning by excessive microwave radiation exposure. He was apparently attempting to keep warm next to a telecommunications feedhorn. Baker had been suspended on a safety violation once last year, according to Northern Manitoba Signal Relay spokesperson Tanya Cooke. She noted that Baker's earlier infraction was for defeating a safety shut-off switch and entering a restricted maintenance catwalk in order to stand in front of the microwave dish. He had told co-workers that it was the only way he could stay warm during his twelve-hour shift at the station, where winter temperatures often dip to forty below zero. Microwaves can heat water molecules within human tissue in the same way that they heat food in microwave ovens. For his Christmas shift, Baker reportedly brought a twelve pack of beer and a plastic lawn chair, which he positioned directly in line with the strongest microwave beam. Baker had not been told about a tenfold boost in microwave power planned that night to handle the anticipated increase in holiday long-distance calling traffic. Baker's body was discovered by the daytime watchman, John Burns, who was greeted by an odor he mistook for a Christmas roast he thought Baker must have prepared as a surprise. Burns also reported to NMSR company officials that Baker's unfinished beers had exploded. [1998 Darwin Award Winner]
RENTON, WASHINGTON. A Renton, Washington man tried to commit a robbery. This was probably his first attempt, as suggested by the fact that he had no previous record of violent crime, and by his terminally stupid choices as listed:
In FRANCE, Jacques LeFevrier left nothing to chance when he decided to commit suicide. He stood at the top of a tall cliff and tied a noose around his neck. He tied the other end of the rope to a large rock. He drank some poison and set fire to his clothes. He even tried to shoot himself at the last moment. He jumped and fired the pistol. The bullet missed him completely and cut through the rope above him. Free of the threat of hanging, he plunged into the sea. The sudden dunking extinguished the flames and made him vomit the poison. He was dragged out of the water by a kind fisherman and was taken to a hospital, where he died of hypothermia. [Darwin Awards]
MOSCOW, RUSSIA - A drunk security man asked a colleague at the Moscow bank they were guarding to stab his bullet-proof vest to see if it would protect him against a knife attack. It didn't, and the 25-year-old guard died of a heart wound. [Darwin Awards]
Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and found himself in the city prison. [Ron Peeples]
A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him. [Ron Peeples]
Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed under a low-level bridge -- killing him. [Ron Peeples]
Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull. [Ron Peeples]
George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, RI, narrowly escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing him. [Ron Peeples]
Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not to do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun to the floor. It went off and killed his wife. [Ron Peeples]
In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, NY, was laid out in her coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright. [Ron Peeples]
A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death. [Ron Peeples]
In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one person was hit-Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover. [Ron Peeples]
While motor-cycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down. While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with, Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence the horse's owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports- car. At this, the sports-car driver leaped out of his car and joined the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled. At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out the claims. [Ron Peeples]
Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their cars weren't scratched. [Ron Peeples]
In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started when one of the men threw a French fry at another while they stood waiting for a train. [Ron Peeples]
Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses, seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room, her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he and his wife were reconciled. [Ron Peeples]
A restaurant owner in Edinburgh, Scotland, was unsuccessful in his judicial appeal of Karen McInulty's judgment against him. McInulty, 29, had won about $7,700 in damages after eating salmonella-infected chicken curry at the restaurant. The restaurateur argued that McInulty was overweight at the time and thus that the 21 pounds she lost after being hospitalized actually helped her. [News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd]
Patrick Williams, 17, a player for the Kilgore (Texas) High School football team, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in January for robbing a disabled man. Williams said he spent $2,200 of the $4,500 he took. According to police, Williams said he didn't know the victim was disabled until the crime was under way and later "felt bad about it. That's why I spent (the money) so fast. If it had been good money, I would have kept it." [News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd]
In January, Lori Collison, 30, charged with robbing three stores in 1994 in Toronto, Ontario, was found not criminally responsible because of mental disorder. According to psychiatrist Hy Bloom, Collison thought she was taking a screen test at the time and was playing the role of a person robbing the stores. [News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd]
In summer 1995, Philip Morris ran newspaper ads promising to crack down on retailers that sell cigarettes to kids. In October, responding to a helpful list of such retailers in Minnesota sent to the company by the state attorney general, Philip Morris declined to act on it. The company still intended to crack down, said vice president Ellen Merlo, but "We didn't say starting today." [News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd]
Novato, Calif., homeless man Neal Berry, 22, was arrested in January and accused of stealing industrial batteries. Berry said he had found them and used them to power his Toshiba laptop computer. Berry says he is wisely using his $8-per-hour earnings as a shipping clerk by sleeping on the side of a highway but spending $200 a month for a storage locker, a gym membership (so he can shower), a cellular phone, a mailbox and an e-mail account. Said Berry, "In Novato, you can't even find a single room that costs less than $500 a month." [News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd]
The owner of MIT Tank Wash, Inc., of Savannah, Ga., pleaded guilty in June to willful violation of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation in the death of an employee. The company cleans truck-based tanks of their chemical or food cargo residues, and apparently the company's normal procedure for using one poisonous cleaning substance was merely that the employee would enter the tank, swab the insides with the poisonous cleaner while holding his breath, climb a ladder to the top of the tank, and take a gulp of fresh air before descending again for more cleaning. [OSHA Week, 6-24-96]
In February, escaped Tennessee inmate James Sean Stuart, 30, was captured on Interstate 65 near Athens, Ala., after leading dozens of police officers at speeds up to 155 mph. Stuart told police he had wanted to turn himself in and was driving fast because he "wanted to get far enough ahead so there wouldn't be any question" that he was giving up on his own. [Tuscaloosa News-AP, 2-15-96]
Oslo, Norway, police inspector Leif Ole Topnes admitted in July that "our body-search techniques aren't good enough." He was commenting on a male prisoner's having been locked up for two weeks in the women's jail despite having been "body- searched" at the Sola Airport and then "strip-searched" at the jail. The man was wearing female makeup and had hormone-treatment breasts, but Topnes admitted that otherwise he was obviously a man and should have been detected as such. [New Haven Register-AP, 7-19-96]
In June, according to La Vergne, Tenn., police Sgt. Carl McMillen, a man called 911 to summon officers to his home to stop his wife from pouring out all of his beer following a domestic dispute. [Tennessean, Jun96]
The Floyd County (Ky.) coroner complained in February that ambulance drivers were taking obviously-dead people to the hospital just so they could bill the county for rides. One man was rushed to the hospital even though his suicide shotgun blast was so powerful that it blew both eyeballs out of their sockets. Another had been dead so long that rigor mortis had commenced, leaving the body bent at the waist so that it would not fit on a stretcher, but the driver said he thought he felt a pulse. [Lexington Herald-Ledger, 2-15-96]
According to a Seattle Times feature in March, Robert Shields, 77, of Dayton, Wash., is the author of perhaps the longest personal diary in history--nearly 38 million words on paper stored in 81 cardboard boxes--covering his last 24 years in five- minute increments. Example: July 25, 1993, 7 a.m.: "I cleaned out the tub and scraped my feet with my fingernails to remove layers of dead skin." 7:05 a.m.: "Passed a large, firm stool, and a pint of urine. Used 5 sheets of paper." [Seattle Times, 3-17- 96]
Western Kentucky University student Joe Schmidt, asked by the school newspaper whether Magic Johnson's return to pro basketball in February would put other players at risk: "It would be an honor to get HIV from playing Magic Johnson on an NBA court. He's one of the greats." [College Heights Herald, 2-6-96]
Sigma Chemical Company in St. Louis, Mo., gained notoriety in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing for making the artificial scents used to train the dogs that helped find dead bodies amidst the rubble. According to the March Discover magazine, the company makes these smells: Pseudo Corpse I (for a body less than 30 days old), Pseudo Corpse II (more than 30 days old), Pseudo Drowned Victim, and Pseudo Distressed Body (for a person still alive but in shock), with Pseudo Burned Victim in the works. [Discover, March 1996]
In February, John Howard opened a Ku Klux Klan museum and apparel store, called The Redneck Shop, in Laurens, S. Car. Asked by a reporter what the reaction was by townspeople, Howard said, "The only people I've had a problem with, who took it as an insult and a racial situation, have been blacks. I didn't know blacks here were so prejudiced." (Shortly after it opened, a man in a pickup truck rammed the storefront, shutting Howard down.) [Louisville Courier-Journal-AP, 3-7-96]
In March 1996, Judge Philip Mangones in Keene, N. H., declared unconstitutional a drug-producing search of the dormitory rooms of two Keene State College students. The students consented to the search, and more than six ounces of marijuana was found, but the judge said that the men were too stoned to know what they were doing when they consented. [Exeter News-Letter, 3-5-96]
In November, the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected the argument of Erwin Davis (who once ran for governor of the state) that he was not the father of a boy born in 1990. A paternity test showed a 99.65% likelihood Davis was the father, but Davis accused the boy's mother of breaking into his house, stealing a used condom, and inseminating herself. [Memphis Commercial-Appeal-AP, 11-7-95]
In February in Madison, Wis., during a routine search of Leonard Hodge, 22, who had been arrested for failure to carry a driver's license, police found cocaine in his underwear. According to a police spokesman, Hodge attempted to exculpate himself by saying the undershorts he was wearing were not his. [Wisconsin State Journal, 2-3-96]
The Washington Post reported in January that, in their preparation of the outdoor gallows for the first death-row hanging in 50 years (for convicted murderer Billy Bailey), workers at the Delaware Correctional Center affixed non-skid safety strips to each of the 23 steps up. [Washington Post, 1-26-96]
In November, the U. S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida appeals court ruling that, while a local police department could purchase an allegedly obscene film and use it as evidence in filing criminal charges, it could not use as evidence a film it had rented and copied. The Florida court had ruled that the police had violated federal copyright law as described in the "FBI Warning" that appears on rented tapes. [Washington Times, 11-28-95]
For the second straight year, a Canadian Football League team wasted a valuable draft pick on a defensive end who, unbeknownst to the team, had died in the off-season. The Montreal Alouettes' James Eggink had passed away from cancer; last year, the Ottawa Rough Riders' Derrell Robertson had been killed in a car crash. [Washington Post, 3-15-96]
Lowell Altvater, 80, was charged with negligent assault in Sandusky, Ohio, in November after he thought he saw a rat in his barn and fired his shotgun at it. It turned out to be his wife's hat, which she was wearing. Mrs. Altvater begged police not to file charges, but they did, in part because Lowell had shot himself in the leg in 1992 in the same barn after thinking then, too, that he had spotted a rat. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel- Toledo Blade, 12-20-95; Columbus Dispatch, Nov. 1995]
Valdamair Morelos, 35, confessed to murder in 1994 in San Jose, Calif., and told the judge he wanted the death penalty, but he was forced to trial because California law requires one in capital cases. Consequently, at the trial in January, Morelos occasionally tried to help the prosecution. For instance, after the prosecutor described the killing to the judge, Morelos added, "I blindfolded him, too." [San Francisco Examiner-AP, Jan. 1996]
Rudy Terrenal, 58, was convicted of the murder of his Mobil Oil refinery supervisor David Dawkins in Torrance, Calif., in December and sentenced to 39 years to life. Terrenal claimed he was innocent, that he had gone to Dawkins to protest being fired, taking a gun but only to commit suicide if his protest failed. Terrenal testified that he suddenly remembered that he was Catholic and thus had to set aside his suicide plans, but he remembers nothing after that. [Daily Breeze, 12-9-95]
In October, a Redondo Beach, Calif., police officer arrested a driver after a short chase and charged him with drunk driving. Officer Joseph Fonteno's suspicions were aroused when he saw the white Mazda MX-7 rolling down Pacific Coast Highway with half of a traffic-light pole, including the lights, lying across its hood. The driver had hit the pole on a median strip and simply kept driving. According to Fonteno, when the driver was asked about the pole, he said, "It came with the car when I bought it." [Torrance Daily Breeze, 10-24-95]
MacArthur Wheeler, 46, was sentenced to 24 years in prison in Pittsburgh, Pa., in January, a conviction made possible by clear photography from the bank's surveillance camera. Wheeler and his partner did not wear masks, and in fact were not concerned about the camera at all, because they had rubbed lemon juice over their faces beforehand in the belief that the substance would blur their on-camera images. [USA Today, 1-8-96]
In October, a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justice ordered a 30-day suspension for attorney Donald T. Hachey of Athol. A female former divorce client had angered Hachey by testifying in court that he had sexually assaulted her 21-year-old daughter. Immediately after being acquitted of that charge, Hachey returned the client's divorce files, severely urine-stained. Hachey said space constraints forced him to keep the files beside the urinal in his office and that they might have gotten splattered once or twice, but a bar association committee, which had sent the papers to the state police lab for testing, said the "linear patterns of the stains" resulted from a "direct hit." [Boston Herald, 10-4-95]
Police in Ft. Worth, Tex., arrested a man in December just after he robbed a NationsBank branch. Cops were waiting because a bank customer had walked next door to police headquarters to summon them after becoming suspicious that a man was waiting in a bank line wearing a ski mask. [St. Petersburg Times, 12-14-95]
A pre-trial hearing will take place this month in Lamar, Mo., on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly everything in her body. According to her petition: "All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments . . . discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abrased, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed, and infected." [Carthage Press, 1-9-96]
Sue Olsen, 38, finished the Grandma's Marathon (26 miles) in Duluth, Minn., on June 16, then ran 100 kilometers in an ultramarathon in Minneapolis on June 17 and 18, and followed that up late on June 19 by going into labor and producing 7-pound, 3-ounce John Miles Olsen on June 20. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 6-28-95]
In November in Pawtucket, R. I., Robert Breen, 35, was arrested after a brief chase down an alley near the bar in which he had been attempting to fence goods he allegedly stole earlier in the evening. Officer David Kareemo discovered Breen squatting with a garbage can over most of his body but with his feet clearly visible. [Pawtucket Times, 11-25-95]
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