While a 53-year-old man was competing successfully in the swimming section of the National Senior Games in Palo Alto, California, his 61-year-old brother was back home in Madison, Indiana, at the Yacht Club. When the brother called home to his mother to tell her he had just won a 500-yard freestyle, she told him his older brother had just been swept away in the rain-swollen Ohio River and could not be located. The Madison Courier. His body was later found.
An accident on Germany's A2 autobahn involving 259 cars has left 66 people injured, 10 of them seriously, but incredibly resulted in no deaths.
The pile-up occurred in the late evening, when a combination of heavy rain and a setting sun hampered the drivers' vision and made the road conditions slippery. The first accident happened near Hamelerwald, and began a cascade of other accidents that over the next two hours grew to span a 30 kilometre stretch of road. It finally took 340 emergency workers well into the next morning to finish dealing with the people and vehicles involved and the clean-up cost is expected to exceed 1.75 million Euros, i.e. $2.5 million (NY Daily News).
Many people joke about it, and there is even a dessert named Death by Chocolate, but it is no laughing matter. A man working at a chocolate processing plant in New Jersey lost his footing, fell into the large melting vat, and was hit in the head by the agitator.
Source: CNN.com
Plans to chop down a tree to make way for a roundabout in Jaslo, Poland have revealed that the oak was in fact planted to commemorate Hitler's birthday when the town was occupied during World War 2. The town's mayor, Maria Kurowska, called the choice between traffic improvements and the living memorial "simple," but not everyone agrees. "It's a historic curiosity," said local Kazimierz Polak, who was present at the planting ceremony as a child 67 years ago, adding, "It's not the tree's fault" (Reuters).
Two Bengal white tigers in a zoo in South Africa have given birth to a tiger cub that's not only white, but stripe-less (London Paper). Surely that's just called a lion?
A spiritual "healer" in Puerto Rico may want to re-read the manual today, after accidentally dropping a lit candle into the bath of alcohol he had instructed he lady patient lie in. The victim, who was suffering financial and marriage issues, can now add 50% burns to her list of problems (Metro).
The Swiss state of Appenzell went the whole of the second world war without a single German invader, so was perhaps unprepared to come under sustained assault by German hikers dressed in nothing but their socks and boots. Naked hiking, which has become a popular Alpine pastime apparently, has generated a stream of complaints from Swiss locals, and the authorities of the Outer and Inner Rhodes provinces of Appenzell have responded by imposing stiff fines of 200CHF ($175) on anyone caught without clothes, though where they expect the hikers to produce the money from is not explained (Cape News). To publicise the ban, the Swiss officials have ordered signs banning nude hiking, to the surprise of designer Dan Walter, who originally drew the sign as a joke (Metro).
It was bound to happen. Trying to stay connected during a bath, Maria Barbu died after her battery died from a long twitter session. Apparently, she was trying to plug in and the laptop dropped in the water.
Here's the link:
http://www.ncbuy.com/news/2009-06-22/1018060.html
You may be harassed for driving your bathtub in Russia -- here's the link --
A 50-year-old vicar told the medical staff at Sheffield's Northern General Hospital that the potato they had to surgically remove from his rectum got up there on account of a perfectly innocent accident. He fell backwards onto it while hanging curtains in the nude. Absolutely no sex games were involved, thank you very much!
A nurse at the hospital also claimed to have seen a cucumber, a Russian doll, and a carnation removed from the rectums of patients.
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.