Book Four : Chapter Five
Newsworthy
Oddities
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| The mayor of Rio de Janeiro declared an eight-day period of mourning to mark the death of Tiao, a chimpanzee at the Rio Zoo. |
A Buddhist who climbed a Welsh mountain to spend the weekend communing
with nature was interupted by a helicopter and search team who had
arrived to rescue him.
Rescue workers had scaled Cader Idris in north Wales after another climber told police he had seen a man there with a head injury. The 50-year-old Buddhist smiled, and told them all to go away. |
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More than 300 people in 120 vehicles were trapped in a four
kilometre (2.5 mile) tunnel in southern Russia in December
1996 when avalanches blocked the roads. No injuries or fatalities
were reported.
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| In a recent survey, most adults declared that they would be spending New Year's Eve with a small group of close friends. Only eleven percent said they intended to party with 50 or more people. |
When their plans for a Christmas holiday in Africa were cancelled
due to an air traffice controller's strike, 238 French tourists took
a travel agent and a hotel manager hostage in protest.
The travellers, who had paid for a luxury Christmas Eve dinner on a West African beach, found themselves in an airport hotel with few staff (they had been sent home for Christmas) and a closed kitchen. |
| In addition to being the U.S.A.'s number one selling car in 1996, the Honda Accord was also the U.S.A.'s number one stolen vehicle. |
Forget the stories about hardworking Asian bosses being responsible
for the boom in the Asian economy. A survey of 1,721 senior executives
in the ASia-Pacific region, Germany, France, Britain and the U.S.A.
has discovered that 72 percent of Western managers work long hours (>40
hours per week), compared to 64 percent of Asian managers.
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| The giant Shell oil company intends to introduce a new policy at it's Dutch service stations - hard-core pornographic magazines and videos are to be removed from the shelves to attract more women, children and elderly customers. |
Kellogg Co, the U.S. breakfast cereal giant, discontinued featuring
Venezuela's reigning Miss Universe Alicia Machado on the packets of
their Special-K breakfast cereal. The cereal is marketed as a weight-loss
product, and buyers were becoming disillusioned with Machado's very
public and very excessive weight gains.
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| Saudi Arabia's billionair price al-Waleed bin Talal annoounced recently that he had acquired a five sake in Apple computer for $115 million (USD). |
A Thai fruit vendor found an unattended bag hanging on her shop's front
fence, and took it home. Inside was a strange object that she dismantled,
and she was then able to use the bag as a pillow.
Early the next morning she was woken by a powerful blast at the shop near her house. Going out to investigate, she discovered police retrieving an unexploded bomb from a bag similar to the one she had taken home the previous day. It turns out that her shop, tooo, was supposed to have been blown up, and the strange object she had dismantled was in fact a time bomb - and she had succesfully, though unwittingly, defused it. |
| Notorious B.I.G., gangster rapper, grabbed the No 1 position on the U.S. music charts a month after being gunned down. The double album, called "Life After Death" sold 690,000 copies in one week. |
A Swedish prostitute was so upset at being stood up by a client
that she took him to court. The 33-year-old woman said that the man
made a telephone booking for a full body massage and sexual
intercourse but never showed up.
In her plea she wrote, "If a customer does not show up at the dentist at the appointed time, the customer is charged for the visit." The man settled out of court for $200. |
| The U.S. Coast Guard currently operates 144 lighthouses on the Great Lakes, but now sees these as 'excess property' and may offer them for sale to the public. |
A 44-year-old woman and her 22-year-old son continued to live in a
house for several months with the body of the woman's dead mother
propped up in front of their television.
The pair believe the 77-year-old was "demonically depressed" and would wake up any minute. The woman had died of natural causes. |
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Two security guards on duty at the Michigan State Capital shot
and killed each other after an argument. Invesigators don't
know what caused the point-blank shootout.
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When financial problems struck one Russian manufacturing company
recently, the company informed it's staff that it could not pay
them with cash. It did, however, offer to pay them with product
from the factory - bras and underwear. Workers were happy to accept
the offer, as it meant they would actually be getting paid more.
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| When a stray dog tried to mount his pet German Shephard, Raymond Leroy Belew, 25, tried to seperate the two dogs. When that didn't work he bit off the stray dog's genitals. He was charged with cruelty to animals. |
Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kids are designed to automatically chew on
plastic french fries. A cute little idea, but that's not what 7-year-old
Sarah Stevens if Indiana thought when here doll began chewing on her
hair and wouldn't let go.
Despite the 30 minutes it took for Sarah's hair to be freed from the doll's mouth, Mattel Inc, the toy's manufaturer, insists that the doll is safe. Fortunately, Sarah wasn't by the incident, and was happy to receive a replacement Snack Time doll. |
| A 121-year-old French woman released a rap album which she appropriately chose to name 'Mistress of Time'. |
During a heated argument Lazarus Nzarayebany chewed off
Levy Gwarda's lip and part of his beard. Both men are
members of the Zimbabwen Parliament.
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| Jasmin St Claire had sex with three hundred men in under 12 hours, setting a new world record. |
Complaining of abdominal pains and constipation, a Florida
electrician was admitted to hospital where doctors diagnosed
lead poisoning. In fact his blood lead level was three times
the accepted safe level.
The patient eventually admitted that he had been chewing about one metre (39 inches) of electrical cable every day for the last ten years. Claiming that it had a "sweet and pleasant taste, expecially near the centre", the man - a smoker - explained that he chewed on the cable at building sites which prohibited smoking. Treatment has lowered the man's blood lead levels. Though he hasn't yet quit smoking, he has found other ways to check his habit. |
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A domestic oil supplied happily delivered 1,000 litres
(270 gals) of oil to a customer, pumping the fuel into
the cellar of the house. Just two problems - the owner
of the house had converted to gas heating more than
20 years earlier, and the cellar no longer had an oil
tank.
An addressing error was blamed - the fuel was actually meant to be delivered more than 10 km (6 miles) away. The supplier agreed to pump the oil out of the cellar. | |
| A nine year old girl needed surgery after being suck into a toilet on a South African Airways flight. |
On a cold January day in 1997, an unidentified 43 year old
man stripped to his underwear and climbed the stone facade
of New York's Astoria Hotel.
According to police, the man explained that God had told him to do it. The man is undergoing psychiatric evaluation at a New York hospital. |
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Continental Airlines sued a pilot's ex-wife after she
admitted including marijuana in rye bread she had baked
for her husband. She did this to "cause him significant
distress in his personal and professional life."
Continental had fired the man in 1994 when a random drug test detected marijuana in his system. | |
| Barbie, the world's largest selling doll, is to get a total makeover. According to Barbie's manufacturer, Mattel Inc, her hips are too wide, her breasts are too big and her waist is too narrow. |
A small plane loaded with 300 pounds of marijuana
crashed in Detroit after being tracked by U.S. Customs Service
planes for about 1,500 miles. Three Customs planes
started tracking the plane near El Paso, Texas, and
followed it across country before it ran low on fuel.
Authorities believe the pilot was trying to reach Canada.
Witnesses said residents rushed to help at the scene, but
some fled with bundles of pot while the pilot was dying.
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In November 1997, the Department of Animal Regulation in Los Angeles
were required to search for a dog (believed to be a Rottweler) that
entered the apartment of a comatose woman via a doggy-door, and
chewed the unconcious 30-year-old's foot.
The Sun Valley woman, in a coma for years as a result of an accident, was taken to hospital in a serious condition.
An unusual auction in Geneva saw a collection of more than 250 rare watches and precious objects raise more than $2 million (USD). What was unusual? All items in the auction featured some theme of eroticism. For example, one gold watch (circa 1900) included a secret compartment that featured a semi-naked monk and a nun making love. |
There's lots of lists like this one (even one in another
chapter of the Digest). There's a good reason for that ...
they're a hoot!
ACTUAL NEWSPAPER HEADLINES:
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| Peruvian police in a remote Andean village elected to free recently captured theives, when the theives offered them a "thick wad" of cash. The joke was on the corrupt police, however, when they discovered that the money used to bribe them was counterfeit. |
So many German spies were swarming around Britain before World War I
that German military leaders knew more about most towns and villages
than the local policemen, according to 90-year-old records released
in 1997. Germany's spies were not necessarily brilliant enough to pass
on great qualities of information, but Britain was doing nothing to
stop them, Britain's intelligence services records showed. So inept
was British security at the turn of the century that a German
man-of-war anchored in daylight at the port of Plymouth and waited
while an officer went ashore and photographed every gun platform.
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| The state-sponsored Icelandic Board of Tourism was once responsible for answering letters to Santa that made it to Iceland. That is, until the funds dried up in 1982 and the practice was stopped. In 1995, spending cuts caused a similar cut in the same service in Greenland. |
An elderly grandmother was hauled off to jail in October 1997
for feeding fifteen cents into two expired parking meters as a police
officer was writing the parking violation tickets. Neither of the
parking meters was for the grandmother's car.
A judge declined to dismiss the charges against the woman, Sylvia Slayton. |
| Belgian airport authorities declared that they would take legal action against two reporters from a local television program. The two dressed as pilots, and - carrying bags with hidden video cameras - boarded an airliner and took footage of the flight deck to prove that it could be done. The results were broadcast on Belgian BRTN television. |
Farmhand Darrel Voeks was sentenced to a 10-year prison term and ordered to
pay restitution of more than $100,000 (USD) when he was convicted of
stealing pigs from his employer.
Voeks pleaded that he was trying to pay bills for his ex-wife and children, but the court heard that receipts showed much of the money went to dancers at local strip clubs where Voeks was known as a big tipper. According to one sripper, he had even offered to pay $3,000 (USD) for her breast implant surgery. |
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The Washington Post reported an incident of Internet romance that didn't quite
go to plan.
Margaret Anne Hunter met Thorne Wesley Jameson Groves through an online dating service, and was so smitten by him that the two wed. Four months into the marriage, however, Margaret discovered that her new husband was in fact a 26-year-old woman. The groom had avoided intimacy by telling Hunter that 'he' had AIDS and wanted to be happily married while he was dying - and used the disease as an excuse for celibacy. Hunter has sued for divorce. | |
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