The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)
Geoff Tibballs is the author of the bestselling Mammoth Book of Jokes and The Mammoth Book of Dirty Jokes as well as many other books including Business Blunders and Legal Blunders. A former journalist and press officer, he is now a full-time writer who lists his hobbies as sport, eating, drinking and avoiding housework. He lives in Nottingham, England, with his wife and daughters.
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Constable & Robinson Ltd
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First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2011
Copyright © Geoff Tibballs 2011
The right of Geoff Tibballs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN 978-1-84529-934-7
eISBN 978-1-84901-959-0
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First published in the United States in 2011 by Running Press Book Publishers
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.
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Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing
US Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941554
US ISBN 978-0-76243-728-3
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INTRODUCTION
1 ANIMAL CRACKERS
2 SEX MATTERS
3 ARTISTIC PURSUITS
4 FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE
5 IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
6 TILL DEATH US DO PART
7 SPORTS CRAZY
8 BAFFLED BY TECHNOLOGY
9 LAW AND DISORDER
10 THE WORLD OF POLITICS
11 FLASHES OF INSPIRATION
12 AT WORK AND PLAY
13 ROCKY RELATIONSHIPS
14 EAT, DRINK AND BE WEIRD
15 UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEYS
16 ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN
17 THAT’S LIFE
WHEN WE WATCH the television news or read the daily papers, often it’s not the major stories of the day that have the greatest impact. We all know the world is awash with corruption, war and economic strife and we don’t necessarily want to be reminded about it 24/7, which is why media outlets, in an attempt to lighten the mood, scour the world in search of weird news stories. You know the sort of thing: Taiwanese Man Marries Barbie Doll, Woman Swallowed By Fridge, Moose Steals Bicycle or Driver Blames Crash On Pterodactyl. These quirky news items (a disproportionately high number of which, incidentally, seem to occur in Romania) are guaranteed to send us off to work or bed with a smile on our faces and the thought that maybe the world isn’t such a terrible place after all. They restore our faith in the absurdity of the human race. How else can you explain why a drink-driving suspect would eat his own underwear to beat a breath test or why a 33-year-old woman would pose as her 15-year-old daughter to enrol at high school because she had always wanted to be a cheerleader? These are just two of the hundreds of true stories that I have unearthed from the four corners of the globe, covering topics such as crime, sex, health, animals, sport, relationships, travel, work and deaths. So if you have ever doubted the saying that truth is stranger than fiction, read on.
Geoff Tibballs
MAN CAUGHT WITH PIGEONS DOWN PANTS
A 23-year-old Australian man stopped by customs officials at Melbourne airport in 2009 was found to have a live pigeon stuffed down each leg of his pants. The man was searched after disembarking from a ten-hour flight from Dubai. First, officials discovered two bird eggs hidden in a vitamin container before a further search revealed that the man was wearing tights under his pants – and inside each leg was a live pigeon wrapped in a padded envelope. An undeclared aubergine was also found in his luggage. A customs spokesman said: “We have no idea of his motives.”
CAMEL HUMPS FIRE HYDRANT
A sex-starved male camel at a zoo in Wichita, Kansas, alarmed keepers by taking a fancy to a fire hydrant in his enclosure. When Tommy’s mate died in 1993, he turned his affections to the hydrant, vigorously rubbing himself against it for hours on end until officials at Sedgwick County Zoo eventually decided to remove it. His embarrassed keeper, Julie Fritz, said of Tommy’s misplaced passion: “If it’s during public hours, I just go hide somewhere. What can I say? The camel doesn’t have a life.”
GIRAFFE MASTERMINDS CIRCUS BREAKOUT
A giraffe was the brains behind a mass escape of animals from a travelling Dutch circus in 2008. After the giraffe kicked a hole in their cage, 15 camels, two zebras and an unspecified number of llamas and potbellied pigs made a dramatic dawn break for freedom. They were later found wandering around an Amsterdam suburb before being rounded up by police and circus workers.
GOAT ACCUSED OF ARMED ROBBERY
Police in Nigeria arrested a goat on suspicion of armed robbery in 2009. Vigilantes seized the black and white goat, claiming that it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into an animal in order to escape after trying to steal a car. A spokesman for police in the eastern state of Kwara confirmed: “The goat is in our custody. Witnesses saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. One escaped while the other turned into a goat.”
WOMAN CHASED HOME BY CRAZED SKUNK
A woman in Salem, Massachuset
ts, was chased for more than 15 minutes by a rabid skunk in 1997. Carmen LaBrecque, 51, encountered the skunk on her way home and it proceeded to harass her all the way back to her property, constantly snapping at her heels. Once there, she was unable to slow down sufficiently to open her front door and reach safety, so instead she had to run around her yard, making sure to stay at least a foot ahead of her demonic pursuer. On one lap, she was handed a cell phone by her elderly mother from inside the house and managed to call the police. Her trauma finally ended when, alerted by the police, an animal control officer arrived on the scene and shot the skunk.
STONED WALLABIES MAKE CROP CIRCLES
The mysterious appearance of a series of crop circles in Tasmanian poppy fields in 2009 was found to be caused by stoned wallabies which were eating the poppy heads and hopping around aimlessly. “We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” announced the state’s top lawmaker Lara Giddings. Deer and sheep were also seen to “act weird” after eating poppies in Tasmania.
BEAR PASSES OUT AFTER BEER-DRINKING BINGE
A bear passed out on the lawn of a resort in Baker Lake, Washington State, in 2004 after drinking 36 cans of beer. The black bear had broken into campers’ coolers and used his teeth and claws to puncture the cans, but after his marathon drinking session he decided to sleep it off. Wildlife agents noted that the bear only drank Rainier Beer and ignored all other brands.
“EXTINCT” BIRD SEEN ON WAY TO COOKING POT
A quail that was thought to have been extinct for decades was spotted alive in 2009 – on its way to a cooking pot. Worcester’s buttonquail was previously known only through drawings based on dead museum specimens but when a live bird was captured by hunters in a Philippine mountain range, a film crew was on hand to take pictures. Michael Lu, president of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, was delighted by the find but admitted that it was unfortunate that the rare quail would probably end up medium rare.
RADIOACTIVE CAT MISTAKEN FOR BOMB
A driver in the US was stopped by police on suspicion of being a terrorist after his radioactive cat was mistaken for a bomb. The man was flagged down when his vehicle triggered an isotope signal on specialist radiation detectors that were being used by anti-terror agents to monitor passing highway traffic. However a search of the car revealed nothing more sinister than the owner’s cat which had undergone radiotherapy for cancer three days earlier.
BULLS EXPLODE AFTER POWER LINES COLLAPSE
Seven bulls exploded and caught fire after overhead power lines fell on a dairy farm near Auckland, New Zealand, in 2009. Three of the animals were electrocuted after the lines collapsed and the other four were killed when they walked into the live area. Farmer Dave Taylor was alerted to the incident by a phone call from his father, who was driving on a nearby motorway, telling him his cows were exploding.
TORTOISE STARTS HOUSE FIRE
A couple from Bracknell, Berkshire, returned home in 2008 to discover that their house had been set on fire by their 70-year-old pet tortoise. Fred, a female tortoise, had been brought inside after coming out of hibernation early and was placed in a tank under a heat lamp in order to stay warm. But while Emma Fox and partner Paul Butler were out shopping, Fred piled dry straw under the lamp, causing it to catch fire and send flames spreading through the house. Although much of the couple’s furniture was destroyed, Fred emerged unscathed.
CHIMP MAKES NUISANCE CALLS
A light-fingered chimpanzee bombarded staff at a Scottish safari park with nuisance calls in 2001 after stealing a cell phone from a keeper’s pocket. For three days and nights workers at Blair Drummond Safari Park near Stirling were pestered with mysterious calls. They were on the verge of calling the police when keeper Gary Gilmour recognized the shriek of a chimp on the other end of the line. The culprit was 11-year-old Chippy who must have snatched the phone from Gilmour’s jacket while the keeper was cleaning out the chimpanzee enclosure. The cheeky chimp then kept pressing various numbers stored in the phone’s memory and hitting the redial button.
DOG SWALLOWS $750
When her dog swallowed $750 from a purse, Debbie Hulleman managed to recover most of the cash . . . by sifting through the animal’s poop. Pepper, an eight-year-old labrador cross, snatched the notes from a purse belonging to a friend of Hulleman’s mother in Oakdale, Minnesota. The dog quickly vomited up some of the cash and then Hulleman noticed a $50 bill hanging from a pile of dog faeces. After that it was simply a question of waiting for nature to take its course. She eventually managed to reclaim $647 but the rest was damaged beyond repair. The soiled money was then exchanged for fresh currency at a bank.
WOMAN CONFUSES GOLDFISH WITH PIRANHAS
A woman from Saransk, Russia, lost most of the flesh from two of her fingers when she attempted to clean her son’s fish tank, unaware that it was full of piranhas. As she tried to catch the fish, they launched a frenzied attack on her hand, clamping their razor-like teeth onto her fingers. She finally managed to free herself from the hungry predators by banging them against the side of the tank. After undergoing extensive surgery, she told doctors that she was trying to do her son a favour and had thought the tank’s occupants were just well-fed goldfish.
DRUNKEN MONKEYS RAID VILLAGE
A gang of drunken monkeys rampaged through an Indian village in 2005 after stealing a specially prepared alcoholic brew. The animals snatched the liquor – made from marijuana leaves in readiness for a religious festival – from pots stored outside the villagers’ huts in Baralapokhari and proceeded to run amok. The residents hit back at the inebriated attackers with sticks and eventually drove them away, but not before several monkeys had passed out and three humans had been injured.
HORNY BULL LUSTS AFTER FARMER
A Polish farmer finished up in hospital in 2008 after a bull chased him around a field because it thought he was a cow. The amorous bull tore off 68-year-old Stan Markowski’s clothes after catching the scent of cows on them at the dairy farm in Wies Dlugie. His daughter explained: “The bull smelt my dad who had just been with cows and thought he was a cow ready for mating. But when my dad pushed him off, the bull went mad and began to charge and toss him around the field, tearing his clothes and hurling him to the ground. He eventually managed to get away and ran home – terrified, bleeding and completely naked.”
RECLINING CHAIR SWALLOWS TERRIER
Firefighters in Chicago were forced to saw a mechanical reclining chair in half in 2010 to rescue a small dog that had been swallowed by the contraption. Eighty-seven-year-old Ken Makris phoned the emergency services to report that his terrier, Ebonyser, had got trapped in the chair after its electrical controls stopped working. The crew of three managed to take the chair apart and free Ebonyser who suffered nerve damage in the ordeal but was said to be well enough to go for a walk the following day.
PARROT STEALS TOURIST’S PASSPORT
When a tour bus stopped on a highway on New Zealand’s South Island in 2009, a wild kea parrot spotted a Scotsman’s passport in a bag in the luggage compartment and flew off with it into dense bush. Police admitted that it was unlikely the passport would ever be recovered in the vast Fiordland rainforest. The unnamed passport holder lamented: “My passport is somewhere out there in Fiordland. The kea’s probably using it for fraudulent claims or something.”
MAN SWAPS WIFE FOR GOAT
A Bulgarian farmer swapped his wife for a goat – because she couldn’t give him kids. Stoil Panayotov, 54, reportedly exchanged his third wife for Elena, an eight-year-old goat, at a livestock market in Plovdiv in 2008. He was quoted as saying: “The day before, a friend told me that he has had no luck with women and that he really liked my wife. The goat has given birth to three kids and my wife to none, so the deal was more profitable to the goat owner. I got a second-hand goat and he got a brand new wife.”
LIVE ALLIGATOR FOUND IN CAR REAR WINDOW
Police officers on night patrol in Texas pulled
over a motorist for erratic driving but when they shone their torches into the vehicle they found a six-foot-long alligator staring menacingly at them from the rear window. The alligator, which had been travelling in the back seat, had crawled up to the area behind the headrests to form a deterrent that was infinitely more effective than any car alarm. The driver said he had found the reptile by the side of the road near Houston. He was charged with illegal possession of an alligator.
MAN CAUGHT SHORT IN LION’S CAGE
When a 19-year-old Venezuelan needed to answer a call of nature, he had a closer encounter with nature than he would have liked. For he chose to go to the toilet in an animal enclosure at a zoo, unaware perhaps that the occupant was a lion. The man was squatting with his pants around his ankles when the lion, taking exception to his presence, pounced. Luckily a friend managed to deter the beast with a brick, and the pair scrambled to safety.
US MILITARY CALLS UP PARROT FOR DRAFT
When Sharon Garmize, of Wright Township, Pennsylvania, received a letter from the US Selective Service in 1998 ordering Sam Garmize to register for the military draft, it came as something of a surprise – not least because Sam is a parrot. Sharon shrugged off the order, saying: “They probably wouldn’t want him because he has only four toes, green hair and no teeth.” She suspected that a family friend may have listed Sam as a family member in a survey a few years earlier because since then a bank had offered Sam a credit card with a $2,000 limit, a tuxedo shop had offered him a nice deal just in time for the prom, and a student foreign exchange programme had asked him to study abroad.