Around the weird:news of the bizarre

Cops: Teen Tried to Steal Cruiser's Gas
Mar 17, 5:03 PM (ET)

LAMBERTVILLE, Mich. (AP) - A Monroe County sheriff's detective on a stakeout to catch an arsonist arrested the suspect as he tried to steal gas from the officer's cruiser. Officers were placed around homes currently under construction after police had gotten two arson complaints within the past week.

Several officers, including Detective Thomas Redmond, watched the 17-year-old walk away from his Lambertville home early Sunday carrying a bucket before he approached Redmond's unmarked vehicle.

Police say the teen unscrewed the gas cap and started siphoning the fuel before Redmond got out of the car and chased him.

Authorities say the teen later admitted to the two arsons as well as three other arsons in 2006.

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At Auction, UFO Home Didn't Take Off
Mar 17, 5:40 PM (ET)

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - The sale price for a Chattanooga, Tenn., house shaped like a flying saucer is nothing to phone home about.

The Space House sold at auction Saturday for a down-to-earth bid of $135,000. Auctioneer Terry Posey says he's surprised bidding didn't go higher. The sale of the 38-year-old, three-bedroom structure perched on six "landing gear" legs attracted worldwide attention.

Posey says Pearl Johnson of Cincinnati bought the mountainside house but didn't want to discuss the transaction.

The house has a retractable staircase that lowers to the ground. A neighbor says that feature came in handy for one former owner who was having an argument with her husband. She pulled up the stairway, drove her husband's truck underneath it so he couldn't get the stairs down and left him stuck inside.

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Millions of Bees Loose on Calif. Highway
Mar 17, 7:26 AM (ET)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the insects flipped over on a California highway.

The California Highway Patrol says 8-to-12 million bees escaped Sunday from the crates in which they were stored and swarmed over an area of Highway 99 and stung officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers trying to clear the accident.

CHP Officer Michael Bradley says a tractor trailer flipped over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Wash. The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30,000 bees.

Bradley says several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling.

The bees had been used in the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops.

 

WOMAN HELD IN ATTEMPT TO SMUGGLE COCAINE USING HER KIDS

London..A Mexican woman was charged last Thursday with trying to smuggle 33 pounds of cocaine into Britain, by strapping bags of the drug to the legs of her two children. Elisa Vazquez Sanchez 40, was detained at London's Heathrow airport after customs officers found cocaine strapped to the legs of her children ages 11 and 13, after the three arrived on a flight from Mexico. Authorities said the cocaine had an estimated street value of $1.36 million. On Thursday, a judge at Uxbridge Magistrates Court ordered her detained. Her relationship witht her children was not disclosed. The girl was freed without charges, but the boy was freed on bail and ordered to appear at a police station on April 10. Both children are now in custody of social services. "We never cease to be amazed at the lenghts to which some people will go to hide drugs from us when they pass throughout our controls", customs official Bob Gaiger said!

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

RESTAURANT OWNER USES HAM AS A WEAPON

Gloucester, Mass. A meat theif is no match for an angry restaurant owner swinging a ham. Joe Scola says he heard a noise in his Scola's Place restaurant in Gloucester, Mass. and saw a man trying to get away with his arms full of his meat supplies, taken from his freezer. Scola says that when he caught up with the man and started taking back his stock, the man raised a 5-pound log of Italian frozen meat to use as a weapon. The restaurant owner had a forzen ham in his hand and slammed it into the mans face, causing a gash. The stunned thief dropped the loot and ran. So far police said, they havwen't caught the perpertrator! good job:thumbsup:

The Associated Press

 

83-YEAR OLD FOILS WOULD BE PURSE SNATCHER

Santa Fe, N.M...An 83-yr. old great-grandmother thwarted a would be purse snatcher with a gasoline pump nozzle and an iron grip. Bernie Garcia said a young man approached her as she was buying gasoline for her van and sked her for money. When she told him she had spent all her spare change, he then tried to grab her purse. She fought back, spraying his shirt with gasoline. Both of them kept hold of the purse, and he pulled her to the ground and dragged her a short distance, her still clutching onto her purse, finally another man confronted him. The would be mugger then jumped into a vehicle and fled the scene. Police stopped the car minutes later. The man and his accomplice face robbery and conspiracy charges. The little old women is fine:thumbsup:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

'Hypnotist' thief hunted in Italy. (BBC).

Police in Italy have issued footage of a man who is suspected of hypnotising supermarket checkout staff to hand over money from their cash registers.
In every case, the last thing staff reportedly remember is the thief leaning over and saying: "Look into my eyes", before finding the till empty.
In the latest incident captured on CCTV, he targeted a bank at Ancona in northern Italy, then calmly walked out.
A female bank clerk reportedly handed over nearly 800 euros.
The cashier who was shown the video footage has no memory of the incident, according to Italian media, and only realised what had happened when she saw the money missing.
CCTV from the bank showed her apparently being hypnotised by the man, according to the reports. Italian police believe the suspect could be of Indian or North African extraction.

Hmmm...He could use the same trick with the police or the judge: "look into my eyes, you're not going to arrest me" "look into my eyes, you're going to release me"...:guffaw:

 

How really bizzare Hormiga or a really good con-man:alienblush:

TROUT RELEASED IN 1983, CAUGHT 25 YEARS LATER

Green River, Wyo.
Some people catch fish and release them. Bill Wentgert releases them and then catches them, a quarter-century later. In April 1983, Wengert and another state Game and Fish Department biologist stocked some 12,000 young trout in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in southwest Wyoming, said spokesman Lucy Wold. Wengert was ice fishing recently on the reservoir and caught a 23-inch Mackinaw trout, a type of lake trout. Wengert noticed the trout's right pelvic fin had been clipped, indicating it was from the hatchery they had stocked. On furthur examinination, and the data, Wengert determined the fish was stocked on April 14, 1983! wow, that's a long life for a fish:wtf:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Man writes check on 2-ply toilet paper

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - An upstate New York man embroiled in a dispute over his water bill is not being allowed to pay off his debt with a check written on toilet paper. Ron Borgna tried to settle his $2,509.66 bill with a check written on floral print, two-ply toilet paper Wednesday.

 

:guffaw:How stupid can people be?!

 

Missing N.Y. pastor found at Ohio strip club

RIVERSIDE, Ohio - Police say a pastor who was reported missing from his home in western New York has been found at an Ohio strip club.

 

As an employee of a hotel and working in this industry for over 25 years, this one makes me cringe.

Truck Crashes Into Ark. Motel Room
Mar 29, 10:11 AM

MAGNOLIA, Ark. (AP) - Blake Icenhower got a one-ton wake-up call.

As the 19-year-old laid in bed Friday morning at a hotel, co-worker Hoby Armstrong went outside to start his Dodge diesel truck. Armstrong said he started the engine and stepped out of the cab.

That's when the lifted truck roared through the motel's brick-and-mortar wall, pushed aside a bed and went toward Icenhower. Icenhower said Armstrong was able to jump back into the cab and stop the truck a foot away from hitting him.

Armstrong suffered a scrape to his arm.

If the truck had struck two brick support beams less than five feet away, the top floor might have collapsed, motel owner Ken Patel said.

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Steven Seagull Returns to Motel for Cake
Mar 28, 10:13 PM (ET)

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) - Steven Seagull has returned to the Super 8 motel here, looking for his customary cake doughnut. Year after year, the ring-billed gull has tapped at the lobby's front door until a staff member gives him the doughnut, said general manager Jodi Chambers.

"If it's quiet in the lobby, you can hear him tapping on it," Chambers said. "But if we're busy, he starts squawking like crazy."

Steven returned Wednesday.

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Drunken Man Awakes Inside Garbage Truck
Mar 29, 11:18 AM (ET)

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - William M. Bowen woke up after a night of drinking with friends and realized he was inside a commercial trash-collection truck full of waste.

The driver had just emptied a commercial trash bin into his truck and was about to activate its compactor when he heard Bowen screaming.

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Cook Accused of Spitting on Fan's Burger
Mar 28, 6:58 PM (ET)

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. (AP) - A fast-food cook and Seattle Seahawks fan has been accused of spitting on a hamburger ordered by a man wearing Pittsburgh Steelers attire.

Kitsap County sheriff's deputies say the 37-year-old customer was with his daughters at the Port Orchard-area eatery last Saturday. He reportedly traded remarks with an employee about Super Bowl XL in which the Seahawks lost to the Steelers.

When the customer opened his food container, he says there was spittle on the burger. He demanded a refund and called the fast-foot outlet's district manager.

 

I was planning to post this earlier...

from http://www.news.com.au

Tourist "breaks ear off" Easter Island statue

A TOURIST has been arrested after allegedly stealing the right earlobe from one of the gigantic Moai statues on Easter Island.
Marko Kulju, 26, from Finland, faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of $A21,100 if he is convicted.
The world renowned statues were carved from volcanic rock between 400 and 1000 years ago and represent deceased ancestors of their originators.
Kulju was seen fleeing the scene with a piece of the statue in his hand, according to a local woman who told authorities she also saw the theft on Sunday at Anakena beach. Police later identified the accused by the tattoos the woman saw on his body.
Kulju used his hands to tear off the earlobe which broke into several large pieces, Easter Island Police Chief Cristian Gonzalez told AP.
Kulju ran away with at least one of the pieces from the four-metre-high Moai, he said.

"Fortunately, this type of thing does not happen every day, but it does happen, and it is almost impossible to control because on Easter Island there are sites of great archaeological value everywhere and the park guards cannot prevent all such incidents," said Easter Island government official Liliana Castro.
Damaging Moais is punishable under a law protecting national monuments and Easter Island authorities are assessing the statue to see if it can be repaired, Castro said.
While some of the 400 Moais are more than 20-metres tall, most are around six metres and weigh about 20 tonnes.
The statues gaze out across the southern Pacific Ocean more than 3700 kilometres west of Chile, which annexed Easter Island in the 19th century.
The Easter Island statues were nominated, but not chosen, as one of the new seven wonders of the world in a global poll conducted by a non-profit organisation last year. Among the monuments edging them out of the competition were India's Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China and Rome's Colosseum.


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I have to say, when we heard it on the news, everyone's first thought was "I wonder how drunk he was?" :lol: :lol:

 

That's horrible that some chump would desecrate a historical place like that:borg: many freak-shows out there:scream:

DRUNKEN MAN AWAKENS INSIDE A TRASH TRUCK

Muncie, Ind...William M. Bowen woke up after a night of drinking with friends and relalized he was inside a trash dumpster, full of trash and waste. The driver had just empitied a commercial bin and was about to activate the truck's compactor when he heard Bowen screaming.He told police he had been drinking at a bar until about 3 am, but didn't realize or recall how he ended up in the trash bin, and wouldn't identify his drinking buddies. He was treated for minor injuries! [I"ve been buzzed, but not to that extent]:scream:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

5th-Grader Finds Mistake at Smithsonian

Apr 2, 9:00 PM (ET)

ALLEGAN, Mich. (AP) - Is fifth-grader Kenton Stufflebeam smarter than the Smithsonian? The 11-year-old boy, who lives in Allegan but attends Alamo Elementary School near Kalamazoo, went with his family during winter break to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Since it opened in 1981, millions of people have paraded past the museum's Tower of Time, a display involving prehistoric time. Not one visitor had reported anything amiss with the exhibit until Kenton noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, identified the Precambrian as an era.

Kenton knew that was wrong. His fifth-grade teacher, John Chapman, had nearly made the same mistake in a classroom earth-science lesson before catching himself.

"I knew Mr. Chapman wouldn't tell all these students" bad information, the boy told the Kalamazoo Gazette for a story published Wednesday.

So Kevin Stufflebeam took his son to the museum's information desk to report Kenton's concern on a comment form. Last week, the boy received a letter from the museum acknowledging that his observation was "spot on."

"The Precambrian is a dimensionless unit of time, which embraces all the time between the origin of Earth and the beginning of the Cambrian Period of geologic time," the letter says.

The solution to the problem would not involve advanced science but rather simply painting over the word "era," the note says.

"We did forward a copy of the comment and our paleobiology department's response to the head of the exhibits department," said Lorraine Ramsdell, educational technician for the museum.

While no previous visitors to the museum had brought up the error, it has long rankled the paleobiology department's staff, who noticed it even before the Tower of Time was erected 27 years ago, she said.

"The question is, why was it put up with that on it in the first place?" Ramsdell said.

Excited as he was to receive the correspondence from museum officials, he couldn't help but point out that it was addressed to Kenton Slufflebeam.

In Allegany.

 

BODY OF REVERED MONK STOLEN FROM MONASTERY

Yangon, Myanmar
A group of armed men stole the body of one of Myanmar's most revered Buddhist monk's whose corpse has been preserved in a glass coffin since he died more than 4 years ago EWWW:cardie: Officials said the coffin containing the body of Saydaw Bhaddanta Vinaya, was stolen for the monastary in eastern Myanmar where he had preached. The officials said at least 9 armed men wearning camouflage clothing carried out the theft! my question is WHY, what the hell are they going to do with his dead body?:alienblush:

The Associated Press

 

^Umm...okay. I don't really see anyone actually wanting to buy the body of a dead Monk, unless they intend on holding the corpse ransom The weirdness of people never cease to amaze me :lol: