Category: news of the weird

Kay Martin, a secretary to a New Zealand MP, got the fright of her life a few weeks ago. According to the Auckland Sunday Star, she and a friend were chatting over a drink when they heard a chicken squawking. The bird sounded in some distress, so they went outside to investigate, thinking perhaps that it had escaped from one of the neighbors. But, there were no chickens anywhere. Then Martin realized with horror that the sound was coming from her own kitchen – coming, in fact, from the oven, where she had put a chicken in to roast half an hour earlier. ”It was as if it was shrieking at me from its grave,” she says. ”It was so bizarre I just froze.” As they approached the oven, the squawking reached a crescendo. They took the tray out, and as the chicken began to cool, the squawking died away. Martin chopped the neck off and threw it in the sink. She noticed that the vocal chords were intact. ”Steam was coming up the neck from the stuffing,” says Martin, and this had caused the dead bird to squawk. She has not cooked chicken since.

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft

I was once with a tour group visiting the UK. As we filed past the immigration officer (at Heathrow), each one showed his passport, was asked why (s)he was visiting [“Well sir, I’m with this group that is visiting your lovely …”], and got a one-week tourist visa stamp. When it was my turn, I said I was going to topple the oppressive government and the entire class system, teach everyone to cook like the French, and free the masses from their servitude, but since I didn’t want to stay and experience the ensuing chaos, I might as well get a tourist visa too.He said, “Normally I’d tell you such a job is rather a large undertaking, and stamp you for two weeks, but I suspect you’re kidding,” and gave me the same as the rest.

* HE’S GOT A WIENER! — The FBI in Nashville is looking for a robber who successfully held up a bank by pointing a hot dog at a teller. *… AND ONE OF THOSE 3 MUSCATELS BARS, PLEASE — A Filipino man got 75 lashes for having two liquor-flavored chocolate bars at an airport in alcohol- dry Saudi Arabia. * DON’T TELL THE TIME IF YOU CAN’T DO THE TIME — A Reno, Nev., armed robbery suspect, hiding from police in a tree at 4 a.m., was arrested when his wrist- watch alarm sounded. * O TANNEN BOMB — Police in Pittsburgh have identified a 31-year-old man as the person who was too lazy to lug his Christmas tree down to the street, choosing instead to toss it out his sixth-floor window on Christmas Day. The tree hit a power line on the way down, knocking out electricity to about 400 customers. * WE ARE SPAMILY — Hormel Foods has announced that it will open a 16,000-square-foot Spam Museum and Visitor Center in Austin, Minn.

Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned out
section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest
fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete
with scuba tanks on his back, flippers, and facemask. A
post-mortem revealed tthat the person died not from burns, but
from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a
positive identification. Investigators then set about to
determine how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a
forest fire. It was revealed that on the day of the fire, the
person went for a diving trip off the coast some 20 miles from
the forest. The fire fighters, seeking to control the fire as
quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very
large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean and then
flown to the forest fire and emptied. You guessed it. One minute
our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next he
was doing the breaststroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the
air. Apparently he extinguished exactly 5’10” of the fire. Some
days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

This article was taken from the California Examiner, March
20,1998

1. Which state has the fewest counties?2. How many state names are one syllable?3. Which state passed a resolution in order that its name be pronounced properly.4. In which state is there a well pumping oil from the ground under the state capitol building?5. In which state were the most Revolutionary War battles fought?6. How many states are named after a president? — Scroll Down For Answers —1. Alaska, has no counties.2. only Maine3. Arkansas4. Oklahoma5. South Carolina6. Washington

At a Christmas party in Melbourne last year the staff decided to pull a joke on their boss who had a habit of playing serious practical jokes on everyone else.When he went to the toilet, they went through his wallet and found his Lotto ticket. Then, they wrote down his numbers and called over the waitress to set up a little prank.She came back half an hour later and asked if anyone wanted to know the night’s Lotto numbers, then proceeded to read them out loud before setting the numbers on the table. The boss looked at the numbers, then casually pulled out his wallet and compared them. He became really silent, put his wallet back in his jacket and sat down again breathing really rapidly, and looking totally blown away. After a couple of minutes he pulled out his wallet and Lotto ticket again, and checked the numbers, very carefully. Then, he sculled his drink, stood up on his chair and shouted out to the whole room: ‘I just want to let you all know something. I’ve been having an affair with my secretary for months. I don’t like any of you, and I have hated working for this company. You can all go to Hell, ‘cos I’ve just won a shit-load of money, and I’m leaving!’End of job. End of marriage.End of story.

A woman who was a science fiction fan had all of her checks personalized with Star Wars character Han Solo (Harrison Ford) saying his famous line — ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’. Lots of people complimented her on how cool the checks were. When those checks had all been used up, she had tired of Star Wars and ordered new checks with religious scenes from the Bible that the same company was offering. Unfortunately, the Bible checks had room for a quote on them as well.Some faceless computer or person on the company production line must have figured that she wanted to keep the same quote that she used before. Well….. NOW her checks have: Moses parting the Red Sea saying: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’, David stands in front of Goliath saying: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ Noah is building his ark, also saying ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’. Moses coming down off Mt. Sinai with the ten commandments saying: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden captioned: ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’. Can you just imagine the reaction she gets now when she writes a check?

Monday Morning Eye Openers:Imaginative and creative people are often not recognized by their contemporaries. History is full of illustrations. Consider some of these:Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. Someone once said of him: ‘He doesn’t wear socks and forgets to cut his hair. Could he be mentally retarded?’Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him, ‘As a composer, he is hopeless.’A well-known magazine editor told Emily Dickinson her poems were unpublishable because they failed to rhyme.When Thomas Edison was a boy, his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn.F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21 but his employers would not let him wait on customers because he ‘didn’t have enough sense.’A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had ‘no good ideas.’Caruso’s music teacher told him, ‘You can’t sing, you have no voice at all.’The director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna told Madame Schumann Heink that she would never be a singer and advised her to buy a sewing machine.An infamous review of William Wordsworth’s greatest poem began with the sentence, ‘This simply will not do.’Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.Werner Von Braun flunked ninth-grade algebra.Fred Waring was once rejected from his high school chorus.Socrates was called ‘an immoral corrupter of youth.’Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been retired from the Navy as ‘unfit for service’ until he flew over both poles.Louis Pasteur was rated as ‘mediocre’ in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a captain and came out a private.Louisa May Alcott was told by an editor that she could never write anything that had popular appeal.Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade and failed the entrance exams to Sandhurst twice before he finally passed. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a ‘senior citizen.’Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.Babe Ruth, considered by sport historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for the most strikeouts.Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s 10,000 word story about a ‘soaring’ Seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975, it had sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.Colonel Sanders was considered ‘too old’ to start a business.After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, ‘Can’t Act!, Slightly Bald! Can dance a little!’An ‘expert’ said of Vince Lombardi, ‘He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.’Carol Channing became a star after being told she wasn’t good enough to be in a chorus.Gertrude Stein submitted her poems to editors for 20 years before she had one accepted.The Beatles were rejected innumerable times before Parlophone finally took them on in 1962.

Teen-age girls often have babies fathered by men: The Sunday Oregonian, September 24Low Wages Said Key to Poverty: Newsday, July 11Man shoots neighbor with machete: The Miami Herald, July 3Tomatoes come in big, little, medium sizes: The Daily Progress, Charlottesville, Virginia, March 30Real newspaper headlinesThese are actual newspaper headlines gathered from papers across the United States and world.Dirty-Air Cities Far Deadlier Than Clean Ones, Study Shows: The New York Times, March 10Man Run Over by Freight Train Dies: The Los Angeles Times, March 2Scientists see quakes in L.A. future: The Oregonian, January 28Wachtler tells graduates that life in jail is demeaning: The Buffalo News, February 26Free Advice: Bundle up when out in the cold: Lexington Herald-Leader, January 26

If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from
Holland called Holes?

Why do we say something is out of whack? What’s a whack?

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

When someone asks you, “A penny for your thoughts”, and you put
your two cents in, what happens to the other penny?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why do croutons come in airtight packages? It’s just stale bread
to begin with.

When cheese gets it’s picture taken, what does it say?

Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a
person drives a race car not called a racist?

Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?

Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

Why isn’t 11 pronounced onety one?

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it
follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted,
cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and
dry cleaners depressed?

Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?

What hair color do they put on the drivers licenses of bald men?

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole
lot more as they get older, then it dawned on me . . . they’re
cramming for their final exam.

I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little
spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use?
Toothpicks?

Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office?
What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don’t they just
put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen could
look for them while they deliver the mail?

If it’s true that we are here to help others, then what exactly
are the others here for?

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

No one ever says, “It’s only a game”, when their team is
winning.

Whatever happened to preparations A through G?

Take OneThe following story was reported some years ago in the Las Vegas Sun: A man approached the cashiers’ cage at Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas, pulled a shotgun and was given an amount of cash. (Note that casino cages are located at the rear of the casino to discourage such activities.)The man tucked his shotgun under a trench coat and started to walk casually out of the casino. He was immediately surrounded by casino guards who walked with him so as not to cause a scene.Evaluating his situation, the man entered the casino and sat down at a card game in progress. He remained seated there for several hands, still surrounded by security personnel. The game continued uninterrupted.Finally, perhaps with the thought of creating escape-aiding confusion, the man upended the table sending cards and chips flying. He was immediately set upon by the card players who had to be restrained by the security guards from killing the interloper.The game resumed shortly thereafter and the thief was taken to the hospital.Take TwoThis story even made the “America’s Dumbest Criminals” book … In Peoria, Illinois, police were called to the scene of a home burglary. It turned out that only one major item was missing — an entire houseful of new wall-to-wall carpet.The officers on the scene had no idea how to track a hot carpet. As they headed outside into the newly fallen snow to look around, they found footprints and a long, scraped trail. The officers followed the trail to a neighbor’s front door. When the police entered the house, they found the stolen carpet recut and laid to fit its new home.The man who lived there insisted that he had purchased the rug, but police showed him his own trail. He was arrested and charged with the crime.