Weird Universe Archive
February 2016
February 9, 2016
Fondled while floating to earth
1997: Cockrell couldn't keep his hands to himself.Bonus: the skydiving school was in Climax, North Carolina.
The Des Moines Register - Feb 9, 1997
Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 09, 2016 -
Comments (21)
Category: 1990s
Happy the Cowboy Ventriloquist Dummy
"Happy" looks anything but, as if he's battling the DTs. Does his cigarette really emit smoke?
Original ad here. (Page 35.)
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 09, 2016 -
Comments (7)
Category: Puppets and Automatons, 1950s, Sadness
February 8, 2016
Thought he was Jerry
So who was this Jerry, and what did he do? I guess we'll never know.
Arizona Republic - Jan 29, 1953
Man Stabbed With Apology
SAN FRANCISCO (INS) — Lawrence Bridges, 32, San Francisco Municipal Railway bus driver, reported to police that he was stabbed by a man who then leaned over him and said:
"Oh, pardon me, I thought you were Jerry."
He was stabbed twice, in the cheek and shoulder, as he walked on Sutter Street near Fillmore. He will recover.
SAN FRANCISCO (INS) — Lawrence Bridges, 32, San Francisco Municipal Railway bus driver, reported to police that he was stabbed by a man who then leaned over him and said:
"Oh, pardon me, I thought you were Jerry."
He was stabbed twice, in the cheek and shoulder, as he walked on Sutter Street near Fillmore. He will recover.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 08, 2016 -
Comments (6)
Category: 1950s
Horsford’s Acid Phosphate
What was once a patent medicine for "tired brains" and "seasickness" is now a hipster cocktail ingredient.
Full story here.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 08, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Nineteenth Century, Alcohol
February 7, 2016
News of the Weird (February 7, 2016)
News of the WeirdWeirdnuz.M461, February 7, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Even though concealed-carry gun permit-holders in Texas can now “open carry,” pistol-packing women concerned with fashion are not limited to traditional firearms in ordinary cowboy holsters. An online company, A Well Armed Woman, offers such carry options as stylish leggings, lace waistbands, and an array of underarm and bra holsters (even an in-cup model, the “Marilyn”) in leopard-print and pastel colors. However, a woman’s body shape and size may be more important shopping considerations, according to the company’s founder. “A 32A bust could not conceal a Glock 19 very well--nor would a 42DD-or-larger [front] allow for effective cross-draw carry.” [Star-Telegram (Fort Worth), 12-22-2015] [NPR, 1-28-2016]
Democracy Blues
In January, Robert Battle took the oath of office for his second term as a city councilman in East Chicago, Ind.--administered at the county lockup, where he is being held without bail, charged with a cold-blooded murder during a drug deal. The crime made news in October (i.e., before election day), yet Battle still won his race. According to law, he cannot be forced out of office unless he is convicted or admits the crimes, and he had the right to vote for himself in the election (except that he failed to request an absentee ballot). [Chicago Tribune, 1-25-2016]
Canonical Marijuana
(1) The Albany, N.Y., company Vireo Health told reporters it would soon offer the world’s first certified Kosher marijuana, announcing that the Orthodox Union of New York had authenticated it as having met Jewish dietary laws (e.g., grown with insect-free plants). (Other Kosher-validating officials complained that the approval should apply only to marijuana that is eaten, not smoked.) (2) Two habit-wearing nuns were scheduled to ask the Merced (Calif.) City Council in January to decline its prerogative under state law to ban dispensing or cultivating of medical marijuana. The nun’s order makes and sells salves and tonics for pain management, using a strain of cannabis containing only a trace of psychoactive material. [Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 1-7-2016] [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-4-2016]
Bright Ideas
Since the (naturally insulated) uterus can be a lonely space, Institute Marques of Barcelona, Spain, recently demonstrated a tampon-like “speaker” to carry soothing, specially-selected, 54-decibel (“hushed tone”) rhythms that supposedly improve fetal growth. In the “Babypod”’s first “concert,” the singer Soraya performing Christmas carols. (However, documented evidence for such a device was limited to success of in-vitro fertilization when music was wafted through during the first 48 hours of sperm-egg union) [New York Times Live, 1-1-2016]
The Job of the Researcher: Taiwanese scientists recently announced the availability of their Infant Cries Translator (iPhone and Android app) that they say can, with “77 percent” accuracy (“92 percent” for those under two weeks old), tell what a baby wants by its screeches and wailings. The National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin doctors first had to create a database of 200,000 crying sounds. [Reuters, 12-30-2015]
Compelling Explanations
The Latest in Corruption News: (1) Italy’s highest court freed a man in January because the bribe he offered a cop to avoid a DUI ticket was “too small” to be serious--100 euros (about $108). (2) Lawyers for John Bills (former Chicago city commissioner on trial for taking bribes on a traffic-camera contract) said Bills was obviously innocent because everyone knows that, in Chicago, only bribing the mayor (or at least an alderman) will get anything done. (3) A security guard in Nairobi, Kenya, despairingly told a New York Times reporter in November (detailing corruption so rampant that, for example, ball-point pens were being sold to the government for $85 each) that “If [people]’re going to steal, please, just steal a little.” [The Local (Rome), 1-21-2016] [Chicago Sun-Times, 1-13-2016] [New York Times, 11-5-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
A former lecturer for Spanish classes at the liberal arts Amherst College near Northampton, Mass., sued the school in December after it failed to renew her contract--leading the lecturer to charge that the Spanish department had tried to solicit student course enrollment by prostitution. Lecturer Dimaris Barrios-Beltran accused her supervisor, Victoria Maillo, of hiring only attractive “teaching assistants” and encouraging them to “date” Amherst students with the ulterior motive of signing them up for Spanish classes--to boost the department’s profile. (College officials said they could not corroborate the accusation, but apparently Maillo is no longer employed at Amherst.) [Washington Post, 12-29-2015]
William Bendorf, 38, filed a lawsuit in December against the Funny Bone comedy club in Omaha, Neb., and comedian-hypnotist Doug Thompson after plunging off the stage and breaking his leg following Thompson’s having hypnotized him during his act. Thompson claimed that he had “snapped” Bendorf out of the trance, but the lawsuit claims that Bendorf, instead of exiting via the stairs as Thompson instructed, wandered directly toward his stage-side table because he was still “under” Thompson’s spell. [Omaha World-Herald, 12-28-2015]
A patient who had been blind for a decade (a condition thought to have been brought on by brain damage from an auto accident) suddenly “regained” her sight, according to a research report in the latest PsyCh Journal--but only in one of the 10 identities (a teenage boy) populating her Dissociative Identity Disorder. Doctors have since ruled out organic damage and (through EEG testing) “malingering” and are now coaxing her eyesight back by treating the disorder. [Washington Post, 11-24-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Chutzpah! (1) Michael Leonard, 53, was charged in December with stealing a package that moments earlier had been dropped off by a courier. The delivery was to a Prince George’s County, Md., police station, and Leonard, hanging around in the station (to register as a sex offender) walked out with the package when no one was looking. (However, a station surveillance camera caught his face.) (2) Sean Lyons, 23, wanted on an Upper Darby, Pa., arrest warrant since October as a drug dealer, was arrested in January--at the police station, where officers recognized him when he came to give information as a victim of an unrelated hit-and-run accident. [Capital Gazette (Annapolis), 12-23-2015] [Philly.com, 1-21-2016]
The Aristocrats!
(1) David Newman, a prominent emergency-room doctor at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was recently charged with sexual abuse of two female patients, including one of drugging, groping, and masturbating onto the woman’s unconscious body (one incident in September and another four months later). (2) Well-known restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 53, was arrested in January and charged with exposing (and “pleasuring”) himself to two women, repeatedly, at a New York City subway station--and to one he had blatantly asked, “Can I masturbate to you?” Hoyt is the owner-chef at Quintessence in the East Village and gained notoriety in 2005 when a subway passenger photographed him “in action” during a previous weak moment. [New York Times, 1-20-2016] [New York Post, 1-13-2016]
Recurring Themes
(1) Kopi Luwak (the gourmet coffee beans roasted only after having been flavored by a trip through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats) has been a staple of weird news stories for a quarter century, but a New York startup (“Afineur”) will soon bring to market a synthetic process mimicking the flavoring effects of the civets’ gut bacteria. (2) From time to time, when people worry excessively about their stations in life, entrepreneurs create “destruction rooms,” where, for a fee, customers get some time with a sledgehammer or baseball bat and pound on junked furniture. The most recent, Tantrums LLC, of Houston, Tex., opened in January, charging $35 for 10 minutes. [Business Week, 7-21-2015] [KHOU-TV, 7-22-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (July 2011)
Toshihiko Mizuno, 55, was arrested in Tokyo in June [2011] after three girls, ages 9 and 10, reported that he had talked them into spitting for him so that he could record it on video, to assist with "research" he was doing on "saliva." Police later discovered 26 videotapes, featuring about 400 young girls spitting. According to local media sources, Mizuno has had the obsession for 17 years, successfully getting at least 500 girls to spit, among the estimated 4,000 he propositioned. [NDTV (New Delhi, India)-Agence France-Presse, 6-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Bruce Strickland, and to the News of the Weird Board Editorial Advisors.
Posted By: Chuck - Sun Feb 07, 2016 -
Comments (3)
Category:
Flying Fish a Hazard
[Click to enlarge]
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 07, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Fish, Air Travel and Airlines, 1980s, North America
Inverted Preacher
September 1928: The novelty of preaching from a casket having worn off, Rev. H.W. Thomas announced he would henceforth deliver the gospel message while standing on his head.
Medford Mail Tribune - Sep 5, 1928
Update: Here's a picture of Rev. H.W. Thomas taken in 1928, when his stunt for that sermon was to unwrap the "swathings of iniquity" from a member of his congregation who posed as a live "Mummy."
Milwaukee Sentinel - May 8, 1928
Posted By: Alex - Sun Feb 07, 2016 -
Comments (3)
Category: Religion, 1920s
February 6, 2016
Love trapped
A man who died after having sex with a prostitute ended up trapped inside of her. They had to be taken to the hospital to be "de-coupled"
Posted By: BrokeDad - Sat Feb 06, 2016 -
Comments (6)
Category: Accidents, Love and Romance, Public Humiliation, Sexuality
Follies of the Madmen #273
Happy Joe Lucky was no Roger Rabbit, but he does a credible job here with Gisele MacKenzie.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 06, 2016 -
Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Television, Tobacco and Smoking, Cartoons, 1950s
Wedding ring instead of coin
Two examples makes this a recurring theme, though not a frequently recurring one. The theme being: wedding rings used instead of coins.
Tucson Daily Citizen - Sep 15, 1961
Tunnel police are trying to trace the owner of a gold wedding ring that turned up in the reject tray of an automatic toll machine.
The ring - inscribed "Until I die" - was found at the toll booths at Merseytravel’s Queensway Tunnel at around 9.30am this morning.
A Merseytravel spokesman said: "The ring may have innocently slipped from the finger of someone paying to travel through the tunnel.
"But a wedding ring is usually worn on the left hand and people use their right hand to put cash into the hopper."
The ring - inscribed "Until I die" - was found at the toll booths at Merseytravel’s Queensway Tunnel at around 9.30am this morning.
A Merseytravel spokesman said: "The ring may have innocently slipped from the finger of someone paying to travel through the tunnel.
"But a wedding ring is usually worn on the left hand and people use their right hand to put cash into the hopper."
Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 06, 2016 -
Comments (7)
Category: Jewelry
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
