Fun_People Archive
14 Oct
Weirdness [347] - 30 Sept 1994

Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 12:30:11 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness [347] - 30 Sept 1994

Excerpts from WEIRDNUZ.347 (News of the Weird, September 30, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd

* The New York Times reported in August on Zimbabwe's recent salutary birth
control performance, an effort led by more than 800 family-planning
missionaries who regularly tour the countryside.  The achievement has also
helped produce a new export industry:  Zimbabwe now sells wooden penises
for use by family-planning programs in other African countries for
demonstrating how to apply condoms. [New York Times, 9-4-94]

* A New York City Emergency Medical Services crew that was called to a
Macy's restroom on July 25 diagnosed the contents of a plastic bag that a
cleaning woman had found in a toilet as a fetus.  A few minutes later, a
crew from the city medical examiner's office arrived and correctly
determined that the bag contained spaghetti. [Albany Times Union-AP, 7-26-94]

* According to England's Manchester Guardian newspaper in August, members
of a village in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea had to that point
raised about $530 in a legal defense fund for O. J. Simpson.  [The Guardian,
8-14-94]

* The regional airline Markair apologized to passenger Rosalyna Lopez in
July for a May incident in which a flight attendant on a
Tucson-to-Washington, D. C., flight ordered her to stop talking in Spanish
to a relative traveling with her.  "No Spanish!" said the flight attendant.
"English only!  Do you understand that?" [Albuquerque Journal, 7-26-94]

* In August, New York City criminal court judge Sheryl Parker ruled that
the well-known Times Square tourist hustle known as "three-card monte" was
legal, thus freeing dealer Eric Hunt of criminal charges.  (Players try to
follow the path of one red card thrown in with two black ones; police
routinely describe players' chances of winning as "zero" because of dealers'
sleight of hand and intimidation.)  Asked one officer, "What is that judge,
about 100 years old?" [New York Post, 8-17-94]

* In July, at an international travel baggage exposition in Japan, a
prototype suitcase-car, manufactured by the government of Toyooka City, in
partnership with an electronics firm, was introduced.  The device looks like
an ordinary, large plastic suitcase but can be converted into a
battery-driven automobile capable of transporting a rider at about 6 miles
an hour.  A spokesman for the manufacturer admitted its drawbacks:  It cost
about as much as a real car, and it weighs more than passengers are
permitted to carry aboard airliners. [Manchester Guardian Weekly, 6-12-94]

* In September, after a six-month investigation, the California Department
of Health Services decided that it was merely stress, and not mysterious
fumes, that rendered several hospital emergency-room workers unconscious in
February in Riverside, Calif.  One of the workers, who has been hospitalized
since February and who has undergone three bone operations, called the
diagnosis of stress "absurd and ridiculous." [New York Times, 9-4-94]

* In August near Mont Saint-Michel, France, Marie- Noelle Guillernee, 42,
drowned in a deep water hole at a tourist attraction when she tried to save
her 6-year- old daughter.  Dozens of tourists were watching the ten-minute
rescue attempt, and none attempted to assist the woman or called for help.
Spectators reported hearing one tourist say, "I got the whole thing on
tape." [Newark Star-Ledger-AP, 8-29-94]

Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the personal use of readers.  No commercial use may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

© 1994 Peter Langston