Book One : Chapter Three
LEGAL
STUPIDITY
| A Los Angeles school board tried to ban Tarzan books, because the hero lived in a treehouse with Jane, and the two weren't married. |
City fathers of Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, have
banned swearing at soccer matches. Offenders face fines of $100 (USD)
and 36-hours in jail.
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| Italy's highest appeals court says that's perfectly legal for a man to beat his wife occasionally. A Sicilian man went free because - though he admitted to beating his wife - he did not beat her on a daily basis, and it was therefore not frequent enough to be of concern. |
A 22-year-old rape victim, testifying at her own rape trial,
was ordered by a Jamaican High Court judge to spend a night
in jail because she wouldn't speak loud enough.
Though she was transported to the Women's Prison, she didn't have to spend the night there - the judge rescinded the order later in the same day. |
| According to Texas law, running a bakery is considered to be an agricultural business. |
There are actually five state flowers in the American state
of Texas. When a debate over which species of Blue Bonnet
should be the state flower failed to reach a verdict, all were chosen.
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| In Michigan, USA, a man legally owns his wife's hair. |
In Tennessee, USA, a man must walk in front of any car
driven by a woman, waving a red flag as a warning.
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| Over the last three decades, civic participation in America has decreased dramatically. Two-thirds of all eligible voters under the age of 25 do not vote in elections. |
County sheriff's deputies in Cumberland County, North Carolina
were recently instructed to conduct house-to-house searches for
unvaccinated pets in the midst of the worst rabies epidemic in
40 years.
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| Every day in the United States, $20,000 in change is stolen from coin-operated machines. |
The state legislature of Mississippi voted in 1997 to
ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making it
the last of the 36 states in the union in 1865 to ratify the
amendment abolishing slavery.
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| Computer Crime adds up to more than $10 billion per year. |
Although banned in the developed world for more than 20
years, DDT is still widely used in the developing world,
primarily for control of malaria.
For example, Mexico and Brazil each used nearly 1,000 tons of DDT in 1992. The chemical has a half-life of more than 100 years and can be found in the tissues of almost all humans. |
| Wyoming was the first American state to allow women to vote, but the honour of the first western democracy to grant the right to vote to women was South Australia. |
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| It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas. |
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| The phrase "rule of thumb" is taken from an old English law stating that a husband could not beat his wife with anything thicker than his thumb. |
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A British housing tenant received an official letter from Sheffield Town Hall, stating
that he had been seen by a security camera leaving his council highrise flat with a dog.
As pets were not permitted, he was informed that he was to be evicted post haste.
An uproar occured, however, when it was proved that the pet in question was a stuffed toy dog, and the tenant to whom the letter was addressed was four years old. |
The commissioners of Kleberg County, Texas, voted unanimously for a resolution urging
the use of "heaven-o" instead of "hello" in greetings.
The idea was initiated by Leonoso Canales, a 56-year-old flea market operator, who said, "I see hell in hello. It's disguised by the o, but once you see it, it will slap you in the face." |
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A suspected drug dealer owes his current prison sentence to a pager and his own inability
to dial a correct number.
The 20-year-old man thought he was paging a buyer, but missed the intended beeper number by one. The pager that actually beeped belonged to an undercover narcotics officer. He set up a deal, bought crack cocaine from the man, and then arrested him and a 23-year-old who was with him. |
A Columbian judge ordered a 15-year-old girl with a history of delinquency to remain
chained to her mother 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a period of a month. If
the girl is caught unshackled, the 38-year-old mother faces 30 days in prison.
"This is a very stressful situation the judge has put me in," said the mother. "I lead her around like a puppy dog." |
| If a family had 2 servants or less in the U.S. in 1900, census takers recorded it as "lower middle-class." |
When authorities in Florida introduced a tough new drunk-driving
statute in 1981 that forced alcoholics to ride bikes, they no doubt
considered it to be a huge step forward in the fight against road
fatalities.
Not so. A survey in 1996 discovered that bicycle fatalities had tripled since the statute was introduced. |
| An Indian woman argued with village leaders near New Delhi about a proposed road through her property. As punishment for arguing she was paraded naked through the village and tied to a pole. She committed suicide the next day. |
Israel's chief rabbi has warned Jewish bridegrooms against buying
wedding rings with credit cards.
Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu told the Itim News Agnecy that a couple in northern Israel almost had to remarry after it was revealed a credit card company had failed to bill the husband for a ring before the ceremony. Under Jewish ritual law, a bridegroom's marriage vow -- made as he slips the ring on the finger of his bride -- is valid only if he has legal ownership of the ornament. |
| In Lebanon it is a crime to have sex with a male animal. However, sex with female animals is legal. |
The U.S. constitution stipulates that, to be eligible for the Presidency,
a candidate must be a natural-born citizen, must have lived in the United
States for a minimum of 14 years and must be at least 35 years old.
There are no other legal qualifications or restrictions for the post, so there is nothing in the law to prevent a lunatic, a bankrupt or a convicted criminal from becoming President. (No further comment...) |
| It is an offense to slam a car door in Switzerland. |
A 24-year-old Italian won the right to live with his mother after
she threw him out and changed the locks. The unmarried man took his
case to court in Ferrara, northern Italy, after his mother decided
he was making her life miserable. The judge ruled that the son had
a legal right to live with his mother even though he was an adult
and had his own income.
Nearly 52 percent of Italian males aged 25 to 35 still live with one or both parents. |
| A 15th century law made it illegal for all but the nobility to carry handkerchiefs. |
In November 1996, the state of Florida freed 446 violent criminals
under a state Supreme Court ruling that new and tougher sentencing
guidelines could not be used to hold them.
In all more than 22,000 violent inmates serving time in Florida prisons were expected to gain from a ruling made by the state's highest court, which decided that changes in sentencing laws made last year could not apply to inmates convicted and sentenced before that time. Among the 446 inmates, 107 were convicted of murder, attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder. |
| Under English law, if two people agree to commit suicide together and only one is successful, the survivor is guilty of murder. |
A judge in Hawaii ruled in December 1996 that same-sex marriages
are legal, making the state the first in America to recognize that
gay and lesbian couples are entitled to the same privileges as
heterosexual married couples.
In his ruling, Judge Kevin Chang found that the Hawaiian state government had failed to establish a "compelling state interest" to justify the prohibition against same-sex marriages, said Dan Foley, a lawyer for three same-sex couples who sued the state in a landmark case. |
| After he was run over by a subway train, Milo Stephens sued the New York City Transit Authority. He was awarded $650,000 despite the fact that he was trying to commit suicide at the time of the incident. |
This list - or something similar - has been floating around for years.
In fact I first heard many of these items in a comedy sketch by the
English comedian Jasper Carrot back in the early eighties. He said at the
time that he had received them from Australian Insurance Companies ...
but we're not like that down here, are we?
It may very well be 'urban legend' now, but it's still funny...
Here s some personal descriptions of car accidents, taken from the
files of the American Metropolitan Life Insurance Company....
Of course, state legislators always knew that drivers were a dangerous
lot and should be treated with absolute caution. Take the Nebraskans, for
example. A law passed there in 1912 really made certain that drivers of
these newfangled horseless devices knew their place.
Drivers in the country at night were required to stop every 150 yards,
send up a skyrocket, then wait eight minutes for the road to clear before
proceeding cautiously - all the while blowing their horn and shooting off flares.
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| According to the drug industry publication 'apharmacy weekly', a US court ordered the Federal Drug Administration to determine whether drugs proposed for use in lethal injection executions were safe. |
It is now or was at one time a crime to do these things in these places:
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| Death-row inmate Manuel Quintana refused a request by the state of Virginia to undergo a heart operation. Authorities wanted him to live long enough to be executed in the electric chair. |
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| The state of Maine, USA, set aside the first day of winter as an annual holiday to honour Chester Greenwood, the inventor of earmuffs. |
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| A 1982 redistribution of electoral boundaries in Washington state resulted in one electorate that had no voters. It consisted almost entirely of the Bayview Cemetary. |
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