Strange But True Category
Weird, offbeat and bizarre news from around the world. Funny, strange & odd news stories that make you wince, laugh and fear for humanity.
‘Stray’ dog Xiao Sa runs 17000km from China to Tibet – dinner is served
ANYONE in China lost a dog? A dog, nicknamed Xiao Sa, has spent the past 24 days running more than 1,700 from Kangding, Sichuan province, to Lhasa in Tibet with a team of cyclists. Zhang Heng, 22, a student in Wuhan, Hubei province, was on the ride. He says the dog was a stray:
“She was lying, tired, on the street around Yajiang, Sichuan province. o we fed her, and then she followed our team…We felt she might want to come along with us, so we decided to bring her along to the end. We thought the dog was encouraging us.”
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Posted: 27th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Woman adopts 550 cats – husband leaves
THE husband wants to divorce his wife because she has adopted 550 cats.
The husband told the Rabbinical Court in Beersheba, Israel, that the cats have taken over, forcing him to exit the family bed and sleep on the floor. Cats hog the bathroom and steal his food. Given the option, she has chosen to stay with the cats.
Of course, she has, the life of domestic at is better than any child, dog or husband can ever dream of. The cat will always win.
Posted: 26th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comments (2)
Manchester boy eats his bedroom
TO Salford, Manchester, where five-year-old Zach Tahir suffers from Pica, described by the US Library of Medicine as the “pattern of eating non-food materials, such as dirt or paper”. The NHS says Pica is “a desire to eat non-food items, such as ice, paper or clay”. Zach Tahir cannot distinguish between edible and inedible objects.
The MEN says Zach is autistic and cannot speak. His Pica could be linked to his autism. Zach’s mother, Rachel Horn, tells the paper:
“He eats almost anything – mud and moss, stones, carpet, grow bags, thread, paper, wallpaper and hair. He loves to climb on his windowsill and eat his black-out blind. He likes to have something to chew on at all times. It is not the taste he likes, but the texture.”
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Posted: 26th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment (1)
Hedgehog gets head stuck in tin of carrots
TODAY’S animal with its head stuck in a thing is the hedgehog with its noggin weded inside tin of carrots. Hedgehog is now at the East Winch Wildlife Centre near King’s Lynn, Norfolk. It is thought that eating carrots makes hedgehogs see better in the dark, and prevents road accents where street lighting is poor…
Posted: 25th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Clouds that look like things – the best ones
CLOUDS that look like things – the best ones are here. Do you see things in clouds? And, if you do, do you always see the familiar: faces, cuddly animals; people etc.? Might it be that seeing a rabbit in a cloud is not a sign of a big imagination, rather a symptom of a limited one? Still, that for later. Get a lod of that ruddy dolphin:
alan-sugar
Posted: 24th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Woman trapped in deckchair for two days
CHECK your summer chairs and loungers, readers. An 84-year-old woman from Karlskrona, Sweden, fell through the seat on her balcony deck chair and remained stuck in the frame for two days. She was discovered when neighbours spotted that newspapers had not been taken indoors and she’d not attended church.
With the church and newspaper industries both faltering, rebranding them as alarm systems can only help stop the slide.
Posted: 24th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
The Morphsuit world record – in photos
DID you go to the Morphsuit record attempt at the Drayton Manor Theme Park in Tamworth, when 145 people broke last year’s record of 112 people gathered in any one place wearing the nylon romper suit for the chronically shy exhibitionist? What you lose in style, you more than make up for in money saved on sun creams and acne treaments…
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Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Man gets tattoo supporting Leviticus 18:22 that forbids homosexuality but ignores Leviticus 19:28 that bans tatoos
TATTOO of the day: the man who inked of Leviticus 18:22 into arm, the passage that forbids homosexuality:
“‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
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Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
China bans more than two flies going to the toilet at any one time
IT is now law that no toilets in Beijing, China, should contain more than two flies. The Beijing Municipal Committee has released its “major sectors of management of public toilets in Beijing services standards”.
In a land where the private in-home toilet is relatively rare, public toilets are in demand. The two flies rule is an effort to ensure they are kept clean, the thinking behind the move that the presence of flies is a sign of dirt.
Of course, there are problems. Is a Daddy Long Legs a fly or a spider? Would a toilet goer be more troubled by three flies or one massive cockroach? Is your zipper a fly? Shouldn’t flies be encouraged to go to the toilet? Is controlling flies the natural progression for a totalitarian State that wants to enlarge its sphere of control from just humanity to take in other creates and then, ultimately, also inanimate objects and the French.
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Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
So you had a zebra and a McCaw in your truck
TO Dubuque County, Iowa, where 55-year-old Jerald Reiter of Cascade, Iowa, (pictured) has a zebra and a McCaw in his pick-up truck. Why? Well Reiter says the zebra and the McCaw like to ride in the truck. But neither of them can drive, so it’s left to Reiter, as usual, to get them out and home.
We’ve all had a friend who never drives, someone who is always at the party with no way of getting home.
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Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Woman uses scabies to batter landlord in unlikely attack
TO Salem, Massachusetts, where an unhappy tenant has been arrested and charged with attempting to set her ‘cohabitants’ loose on her landlord, specifically using her scabies as a dangerous weapon to “assault and batter”. (Those things are huge in Salem – as big as your fist.)
The woman has complained that her home was infested with insects and mice. The landlord visited. She introduced him to her ‘pets’. He slapped her across the face.
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Posted: 22nd, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
What is the Beast of Hackney Marshes?
JUST in time for the London Olympics, news reaches us of the Beast of Hackney Marshes.
Helen Murray spotted the creature by the Old River Lea. She took photos. Says she:
“I tried to stay calm as I wasn’t sure what kind of animal it was or if it was even alive. I had my phone ready to call 999. Then the creature moved. Somehow I managed to take a couple of pictures before I ran.”
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Posted: 21st, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Police rescue constipated man – truncheons drawn
TO Canada, where police are responding to an emergency call. A woman has heard the noises of pain emerging from a Victoria property. She has dialled 911.
The police are at the scene. They have rapped on the door but no-one has answered.
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Posted: 21st, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
The sounds of noisy sex in Salford are a hit on the prudish web
LEE Moore made a 26-second-long recording of his neighbours having sex in Salford, Greater Manchester. He posted it on the internet.
Moore tells the Sun:
“I went on the balcony to see where the screams were coming from. The woman in the apartment below was shouting at them to either shut their windows or shut up…My windows were shut but I could still hear them clear as a bell.”
The Sun headlines the story:
Noisy sex neighbours might come after me
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Posted: 19th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Annoying man attacks resting alligator – video
GOOD news reporting is about show and not tell. Here’s Alyssa Newcomb reporting on a man who attacked an alligator minding its own business as it wallowed by a North Carolina road:
“A scientist’s arm almost became a snack for an angry alligator caught roaming along a North Carolina highway.”
Was the alligator angry before a man tossed an old towel on its head and then straddles it from behind? The gator looked pretty chilled. But that’s the thing when you place human emotion on another kind of being, it’s hard to know what they’re thinking.
“As he bent down to move the alligator, it bit his arm as he cooly backed away from a situation that could have been far worse.”
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Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Israel adds honey bees to its army of vultures and sharks
THE Israelis are not only using sharks and vultures to do their spying, but also birds, specifically the European bee-eater (Merops Apiaster). One bird has crashed into a field near Gaziantep in Turkey. On its leg it carries a ring declaring “Israel”. Locals call the police. .
You see, the bird-beak had “unusually large nostrils”. Yeah, the bird had a big nose. Locals wondered if it contained a surveillance device, such as Israel’s prototype Spotter Snot.
The story appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth, which tells us that after the shock find, Ankara’s security bureau was called in.
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Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comments (4)
Iceland MP moves elves’ boulder home to his garden
AS the economy plunges into the abyss, we look to Iceland’s politicians for guidance. Over there, Árni Johnsen, an MP for the Independence Party, has moved a 30-ton boulder, home to three generations of elves, from Sandskeið in southwest Iceland to his home Höfðaból in the Westman Islands.
Árni met the elves in January 2010, when his car flipped over and landed close to a huge bolder. A thought struck him. What if the boulder was where elves lived? What if they had protected him for death? As he says:
“I had Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a specialist in the affairs of elves from Álfagarðurinn in Hellisgerði, Hafnarfjörður, to come look at the boulder with me. She said it was incredible, that she had never met three generations of elves in the same boulder before. She said an elderly couple lives on the upper floor but a young couple with three children on the lower floor.”
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Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comments (6)
Man fist-pumps for 16 hours to set new world record
SPECIOUS World Record of the Day goes to Ohio’s 34-year-old fistman James Peterson, who fist-pumped for 16 hours, starting at 11am on Friday and ending at 3am on Saturday.
Unemployed Peterson kept his fist tight with super-glue.
As he says:
“I have set the qualifications for this record and every minute that I do this is a new record. My fist is super-glued together to ensure I maintain perfect fist formation.”
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Posted: 15th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comments (4)
Magic traps cheating husband insider another man wife – video
A CHEATING husband became trapped insde his married mistress in Nairobi. The woman’s husband scored his revenge by using black magic. He sought help from a witchdoctor. With the right magic the wife’s lover would be unable to exit. It worked. Police were called. But they could not separate the lovers. The husband said he’d only free the man if he coughed up Sh20,000 (£150) in compensation. The cheater agreed. Prayers were offered up and the man and woman went their separate ways.
The otherworldy voiceover on this video is great – “the big crowd swelled” being a choice cut:
Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Does swimmers’ urine kill German fish?
DOES urine kill fish? Well, yes, obviously if you stick a goldfish in a pub’s urinal it will die. But expects say the deaths of hundreds of fish in Eichbaum lake, Hamburg, Germany, is down to swimmers’ urine.The wee is enjoyed by plants, triggering an algal bloom that makes the water uninhabitable for the fish.“Swimmers who urinate in the lake are introducing a lot of phosphate. We’re calculating half a litre of urine per swimmer per day.”
Posted: 13th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Police stop man for driving whilst radioactive
TO Connecticut, where Mike Apatow has been pulled over by the polcie for Driving Whilst Radioactive.
Apatow has recently been for a blood test at the Cardiology Associates of Fairfield County in Trumbull. The test involves inserting a dose of radioactive matter into his blood system. Medics do this to best record blood movement around the heat. Local pollice cars are fitted with devices to sense radioactivity. And one has picked up Apatow.
As he says:
“I asked the officer `What seems to be the problem?’ He said `You’ve been flagged as a radioactive car.'”
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Posted: 13th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
70-year-old virgin Pam Shaw looking seeks Simon Cowell to break her duck
PAM Shaw, the 70 year old Mancunian cabaret singer advertising for sex, has no descendants to embarrass. The ‘Queen of Wigan Pier’ is not Sheila Vogel, aka porn star Ruby Tuesday, the octogenarian escort operating under the name Grand Dame Cecilia Bird, entrepreneurial grandmother to the X Factor former wannabe Katie Waissel.
Shaw is an OAP, and not one given to ruminating on her aching joints and lamenting her loneliness now that her life’s work – kids, pets – are all left of dead. Her nom de
sparkle is Sexational Pam. She tells the Sun: “I’m ready to take the plunge for the right bloke.” Wrong blokes include such crooner swooners as Englebert Humperdinck and Tom Jones, who have trodden the boards with Pam but never cause them to squeak.
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Posted: 12th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
Mexican couple row over teddy stuffed with heroin
WOULD you be more unnerved by a man and a woman fighting in the street over drugs or a teddy bear? We ask in light of news Juárez, Mexico, where Efraín Vera Chávez, 39, is rowing over a teddy bear with Edith Ortiz Sandoval, 29. Police notice the fracas. Edith tells the police the bear is hers and that Efraín is in a jealous rage. She says a mystery man gave it to her and Efraín is upset.As the copper orders Efraín to hand over the bear to Edith he notices a small hole in the toy. Inside, the cop finds 245 aluminum packets filled with heroin.
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Posted: 11th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
George Galloway presents the Enfield Poltergeist
GEORGE Galloway now narrates the story of the The Enfield Poltergeist. Galloway makes his appearance in his son-in-law Jay Stewart’s film of the horror in north London.
It’s 1977. Peggy Hodgson, a single mum, and her four children are living in a rented 3-bedroom home at 284 Green Street, Enfield, London. It’s the home where Bill Wilkins lived and died. Things have been moving about the place, as if on their own. Thing are going bump in the night. There is a tapping sound running up and down the walls. And then one night Janet Hodgson, 11, opens her mouth and out comes the voice of an old man. It says:
“Just before I died, I went blind, and then I had an haemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.”
Afraid – and not only of the home’s decor – Peggy Hodgson called the police. WPC Carolyn Heeps signed a statement that she saw a chair move: “A large armchair moved, unassisted, 4 ft across the floor.”
Hodgson called the press. The Daily Star leads with “Possessed by the Devil“. The Daily Mirror wanted to solve the mystery. Reporter Douglas Bence and a photographer named Graham Morris arrived at the house. What did they see? “It was chaos,” said Morris, “things started flying around, people were screaming.”
The Daily Mail sent a man over. He found nothing, only advising that the Hodgsons contact the the Society for Psychical Research. They did. Maurice Grosse and his colleague Guy Lyon Playfair were now on the case. layfair would go on to write This House Is Haunted. Grosse would go on to say:
“As soon as I got there, I realised that the case was real because the family was in a bad state. Everybody was in chaos. When I first got there, nothing happened for a while. Then I experienced Lego pieces flying across the room, and marbles, and the extraordinary thing was, when you picked them up they were hot. I was standing in the kitchen and a T-shirt leapt off the table and flew into the other side of the room while I was standing by it.”
Janet Hodgson (now Janet Winter) told Channel 4:
“I felt used by a force that nobody understands. I really don’t like to think about it too much. I’m not sure the poltergeist was truly “evil”. It was almost as if it wanted to be part of our family. It didn’t want to hurt us. It had died there and wanted to be at rest. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister…
“I was bullied at school. They called me Ghost Girl and put crane flies down my back. I’d dread going home. The front door would be open, there’d be people in and out, you didn’t know what to expect and I used to worry a lot about Mum. She had a nervous breakdown, in the end.”
Graham Morris spoke to the BBC:
The BBC reported:
Here’s Galloway:
Posted: 11th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, Strange But True | Comment
Sweden records biggest ever seizure of cowboy hats
“THIS is our largest seizure of cowboy hats,”said Morten Nystuen of the Kongsvinger customs in Sweden.
It would be tempting to end the story there before heading off to the wilds of Sweden’s western provinces to investigate how a haul of 540 cowboy hats has topped all other local seizes of cowboy hats. But the sun’s just arrived for summer, and we will make do with scanning local new bulletins for signs of Scandinavian cowboys making do with the plastic policeman’s helmet they bought on a trip to London…
Posted: 11th, May 2012 | In: Strange But True | Comment
