“ALIEN” SIGNALS CAME FROM MICROWAVE
Astronomers using a radio telescope at an Australian university believed they had discovered sensational evidence of alien life when they picked up a distinctive signal every evening around dinner time. They later realized that the signal was coming from the microwave oven downstairs.
GREAT WHITE EATS ANTI-SHARK DEVICE
An electronic device designed to ward sharks away from surfers failed so spectacularly during a trial off South Africa that it was eaten by a great white.
FUGITIVE FOUND THROUGH UPDATED FACEBOOK STATUS
After pleading guilty to assault as the result of a bar fight in Lockport, New York, Chris Crego failed to show up for sentencing. Police officers tracked him down six months later via his Facebook page which helpfully listed his address, the name of the Indiana tattoo parlour where he worked and even his working hours.
PAGERS ALARM BUSINESSMAN
A Ukrainian businessman who bought a pager for each member of his staff as a New Year’s gift was so shocked when all 50 went off simultaneously on the back seat that he crashed his car into a lamp post. He was returning from the pager shop when the accident happened. After assessing the damage to his car, he looked to see what important message the pagers had to impart. It read: “Congratulations on a successful purchase!”
INVENTOR CONVERTS DEAD CATS INTO DIESEL
A German inventor has come up with a method of making cheap diesel fuel from dead cats. Dr Christian Koch says the corpse of an adult cat can produce 2.5 litres of fuel, which means that around 20 cats are needed for a full tank.
MAN SHOOTS SLOW-FLUSHING TOILET
Angry with a slow-flushing toilet at a restaurant, Raymond Cruz, from Schererville, Indiana, took out his gun and blew it to pieces in 1999.
VIGILANTE ROBOT PROWLS STREETS OF ATLANTA
Plagued by crime, an Atlanta, Georgia, bar owner has built a water pistol-wielding robot to patrol the streets. Rufus Terrill has devised the Bum Bot, a talking security guard with bright red lights, a spotlight, video camera and a water cannon on a spinning turret. Terrill claims that since its introduction in September 2007, the Bum Bot has already made his neighbourhood a safer place, although some residents said they found the red box with the menacing voice somewhat intimidating.
AUTHOR’S 13 YEARS OF WORK IS REDUCED TO SHREDS
At the end of 13 years writing a weighty tome about the Swedish economy, business consultant Ulf af Trolle finally took his 250-page manuscript to be copied. Alas it took only seconds for his life’s work to be reduced to 50,000 strips of paper when an employee confused the copier with the shredder.
SLEEPING WOMAN SENDS EMAILS
In the first recorded case of its kind, a 44-year-old woman logged on to the Internet and sent three emails while sleepwalking. Researchers from the University of Toledo, Ohio, reported how, after going to bed at 10 p.m., the woman got up two hours later while still asleep. She then sleepwalked to the next room, turned on the computer, connected to the Internet, logged on to her email account by typing her username and password, and composed and sent three emails, asking friends over for drinks and caviar. It was only when a would-be guest phoned the next day to accept, that the woman realized what she had done.
MAN SELLS IMAGINARY FRIEND
A Welshman sold his imaginary friend for a reported $3,100 on eBay in 2007 after attracting 31 bids. His sales pitch read: “My imaginary friend Jon Malipieman is getting too old for me now. I am now 27 and I feel I am growing out of him. He is very friendly. Along with him, I will send you what he likes and dislikes, his favourite things to do and his personal self-portrait.”
GERMAN INVENTION BARKS TOILET TRAINING ORDERS
In 2004, a German inventor came up with a device that berates men if they try to use the toilet standing up. It tells them: “Put the seat back down right away, you are definitely not to pee standing up.”
VISITORS TO CRAWLEY RECEIVE RUDE WELCOME
Commuters driving to work in Crawley, West Sussex, were greeted by an obscene message one morning in 2006 after computer hackers had gained remote access to the council’s digital roadside signs. Instead of giving information about parking availability in the town, the signs told visitors to “Fuck Off”. A council spokesman said: “The hackers gained access to our computer at 6.45 a.m., but the first we knew of it was a phone call from a member of the public two hours later. Why they picked on Crawley, I have no idea. We apologize for any offence, but I think people realize this was not the work of the council.”
CHEATING HUSBAND ACCIDENTALLY CALLS WIFE DURING SEX ROMP
An adulterous Finn pressed all the wrong buttons as he made love in a car, unwittingly prompting his cell phone to call home just in time for his wife to hear his mistress moan, “I love you”. When her husband later arrived home, the wife attacked him with an axe.
CALIFORNIAN SHOOTS RELUCTANT LAWNMOWER
Francis Karnes of Sacramento, California, was charged with reckless endangerment after he pulled a gun and shot his lawnmower when it wouldn’t start.
WOMAN TRIES TO PATENT HERSELF
Donna Rawlinson MacLean, a poet and casino waitress from Bristol, England, filed an application to patent herself in 2000. She insisted that she met all the requirements for a patent, including being useful and novel. She said: “It has taken me 30 years of hard labour for me to discover and invent myself, and now I wish to protect my invention from unauthorized exploitation, genetic or otherwise.”
JUDGE JAILS HIS OWN STENOGRAPHER
A judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, jailed his own court stenographer in 2007 for working too slowly. Circuit Judge Charles Greene sent Ann Margaret Smith to prison for contempt of court because she had failed to finish a typescript needed for an appeal hearing.
HOTEL COUNTS COST OF ONE-CENT ROOM ERROR
A four-star hotel near Venice was left counting the cost in 2009 after its website mistakenly offered a romantic weekend in the Italian city for one cent. A night at the 151-room Crowne Plaza in Quarto D’Altino, 15 miles from Venice, usually costs up to $190. The cut-price offer, an error by the hotel group’s head office in Atlanta, Georgia, only appeared for one night but in that short time the Crowne Plaza received bookings for the equivalent of 1,400 room nights. Sales manager Fulvio Danesin said the hotel, which was honouring the reservations, stood to lose over $100,000.
FRUSTRATED WIFE BECOMES COMPUTER HACKER
A woman became so angry at her husband chatting online to women until four o’clock in the morning that she literally became a computer hacker. The aptly named Kelli Michetti, of Grafton, Ohio, decided to put a stop to his antics by severing the computer’s power cable with a meat cleaver. When that didn’t work, she used the same implement to hack into his computer, bludgeoning the monitor while he tried to fend her off. She was fined $200 for domestic violence and resisting arrest.
AMERICA LAUNCHES ROBOT GIRLFRIEND
The world’s first robot girlfriend was launched in Las Vegas in 2010 – a life-size rubber doll who can have sex with her owner and talk about football. The 5-foot 7-inch, dark-haired robot comes complete with artificial intelligence, flesh-like synthetic skin and five contrasting personalities. Wild Wendy is outgoing and adventurous, Frigid Farrah is reserved and shy, Mature Martha is matriarchal and caring, a young unnamed doll has a naïve personality, and S & M Susan caters for more adventurous types. Combined with her laptop, the doll costs up to $9,000 and is described by her inventor, New Jersey-based Douglas Hines, as “ready for action”. He said the aim was to make the doll someone to whom the owner could talk and relate. “She can carry out simple conversations and knows exactly what you like. If you like football, she likes football. She can’t vacuum, she can’t cook but she can do almost anything else – if you know what I mean.”
SATNAV DIRECTS WOMAN DRIVER ONTO RAILWAY TRACK
A 52-year-old driver ended up on a railway line in 2007 after following directions from her car’s satellite navigation system. She
was waiting at a level crossing in Pevensey, East Sussex, when the device told her to turn left, whereupon she drove her Ford Fiesta on to the track, blocking two lines. The woman explained to police that she turned on to the track “because my satnav device told me to”.
HIDDEN SPY CAMERA TAKEN TO GARBAGE DUMP
A $20,000 spy camera that was concealed in a garbage bag with the intention of catching illegal tippers was accidentally thrown out by council workers. The expensive hi-tech camera was cunningly placed inside a black bag beside a notorious fly-tipping site in Chichester, West Sussex, but the disguise was so good that council workers took it to the dump in the belief that it was genuine garbage.
RESTING TRADER TRIGGERS BOND VALUE PLUNGE
A sudden nosedive in the value of French ten-year bond futures was sparked on 23 July 1998 by a London bank trader leaning absent-mindedly on his computer keyboard. In doing so, he accidentally pressed the “Instant Sell” button for a prolonged period.
ACTRESS CHARGED WITH HOLDING TECH SUPPORT MAN HOSTAGE
A Canadian actress/playwright was charged with holding a technical support man hostage after losing her Internet connection. With a deadline looming, Carol Sinclair, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, lost her connection with ISP Aliant and spent several frustrating days trying to get someone to fix the problem. “I was polite the first 20 times,” she said. “But each one gave me the same routine: ‘Is the modem connected? Are the lights blipping?’ And then each one would say: ‘It should be working. The problem must be with your computer.’ I was a little stressed. I had six days to do a month’s work.” Eventually she resorted to impersonating a man’s voice and got a repairman – 21-year-old David Scott – sent out the next day. When he said he couldn’t fix the problem either, Sinclair allegedly told him that he was not leaving until her Internet was working and that she was taking him hostage. According to police, he made his getaway by claiming he needed to fetch a disk from his truck and then driving off. Denying the charges, Sinclair said: “He is a huge, strapping young man; I’m a Buddhist, a wimp, a pacifist.”
“PRAYING” COUPLE WERE RECHARGING CELL PHONE
For more than a month in 2002, priests at a church in Milan observed a South American couple sitting attentively in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary for an hour at a time. Naturally the priests assumed the devout pair were seeking spiritual guidance until a cleaner noticed an electricity cable poking out from behind the statue. It turned out the couple had been recharging their cell phone from the electricity socket used to light up the statue.
WOMAN WINS ONLINE AUCTION TO SLAP STRANGER WITH FISH
British student Lucy Berry paid over $300 in 2006 for the privilege of slapping a complete stranger around the face with a wet fish. Inspired by the Monty Python fish-slapping dance, Ben Fillmore staged an auction on eBay to raise money for charity. As the successful bidder, 23-year-old Ms Berry was allowed to nominate the type of fish used in the slapping and chose two rainbow trout. Afterwards she described the experience as “extremely satisfying”.
COMPUTER ORDERS CENTENARIAN TO START SCHOOL
A 105-year-old retired Swiss teacher was ordered to attend elementary school in 1998 after a computer cut a century off his age. The mix-up occurred because a list of residents in Echallens contained only the last two digits of their birth dates and so the pensioner, along with 65 five-year-olds in the town, received a letter telling him to start school. An apologetic town hall secretary said afterwards: “We have changed the computer programme in question.”
MAGISTRATE’S MUSICAL TIE GOES OFF DURING SENTENCING
Just as he was passing sentence on an offender at court in Luton, Bedfordshire, in December 2000, magistrate Hector Graham’s musical tie – an early Christmas present from his wife – launched into an impromptu version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. The red-faced magistrate explained that he did not know how to turn the tie off, which was unfortunate as it then went into two more Christmas songs, concluding with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”.
GIRL PUTS “MOANING” GRANDMOTHER ON EBAY
Ten-year-old Zoe Pemberton, from Clacton, Essex, put her “moaning” grandmother up for sale on eBay – and was offered $3,000 for her before the auction was halted. Zoe described grandma Marion Goodall as “rare and annoying and moaning a lot”.
SUICIDE CALLERS ARE ASKED TO BE PATIENT
Nine out of ten Chinese people who called into a suicide prevention hotline during 2004 were greeted by an engaged signal.
GIRL, 3, BUYS $12,000 DIGGER ON THE INTERNET
While her parents were asleep, a three-year-old New Zealand girl bought a mechanical digger for $12,000 on an Internet auction site. Pipi Quinlan, from Auckland, logged onto the family computer and found the Trade Me auction site that her mother had been using earlier. She then submitted what turned out to be a winning bid for a giant earthmoving digger. The first her parents knew about the transaction was when they received a series of emails from Trade Me. Mother Sarah sighed: “Pipi doesn’t even like tractors.”
CONCERNED FATHER SELLS HAUNTED RUBBER DUCK
A supposedly possessed rubber duck was sold on eBay for $107.50 in 2004 after a man heard his 18-month-old son telling scary stories about fights he’d had with the duck. He also said the child had been bitten by the rubber duck.
WOMAN INVENTS COMPUTER BEAVER
Los Angeles artist and inventor Kasey McMahon has combined IT and taxidermy to create a computer housed in a dead beaver. She said: “I started thinking about the most ridiculous thing to put a computer into and decided it had to be a beaver.”
PENSIONER CONFUSED BY ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH
An Isle of Wight pensioner who dialled the emergency services to report that someone was drilling a hole in the wall of her house had been confused by the noise of her electric toothbrush.
SCIENTISTS UNRAVEL MYSTERIES OF KNOTS
In a detailed 2007 paper, two scientists from the Department of Physics at the University of California in San Diego provided mathematical proof that hair, string or anything else of the kind will inevitably become tangled in knots – a process termed “spontaneous knotting of an agitated string”. Dorian M. Rayner and Douglas E. Smith conducted 3,415 trials analyzing 120 different types of knot.
WORKER DIES IN QUEST FOR BETTER RECEPTION
Unable to get any reception on his cell phone, a 46-year-old construction worker in Custer County, South Dakota, persuaded his colleagues to raise him in a boom, 30 feet off the ground. But the boom’s truck tipped over backwards, hurling the man to his death.
GERMANS KEEP WARM WITH INCONTINENCE PADS
An enterprising German power-plant chief discovered an alternative, environmentally friendly source of energy in the form of incontinence pads. Thomas Lesche, director of a Bremen incinerator plant, announced in 2003 that he had signed a pioneering deal with a local retirement home to buy up to 100 tons of used pads and soiled tissues each year. “The pollution emissions with used pads are far lower than with oil or coal,” he said, adding proudly: “I do not know of any other plant in Europe that turns incontinence pads into energy.”
WOMAN BLAMES GADGET FOR EXCESSIVE CLAPPING
In 1993, a New York appeals court rejected a claim brought by housewife Edna Hobbs against San Francisco company Joseph Enterprises, manufacturer of The Clapper, a sound-activated electrical switch. The complainant said that in trying to switch on the gadget, she had clapped her hands until they bled. The judge ruled that she hadn’t adjusted the sensitivity controls properly.
“ALIEN” TRANSMISSION TURNS OUT TO BE RANDY RAM
For several days British intelligence analysts were mystified by strange high-frequency noises coming from one of their stations in Yorkshire. Staff at the Government Communications Headquarters said the 2003 transmission was unlike anything they had encountered before, leading them to believe it could be coming from spies or even aliens. Intriguingly, the signal only occurred during the day, and only Scarborough aerials could pick it u
p. Finally after extensive investigation, it was discovered that a ram in the Scarborough area had been rubbing its horns against the aerial masts in between servicing some local ewes. A GCHQ spokesman said: “It’s possible the ram was attracted to the mast which may have given off some kind of tingling sensation, but it was probably just a post to rub against.”
SPELL-CHECK CHANGES YEARBOOK NAMES
A computer spell-checker ran amok in 2008, giving several students at Middleton Area High School, Pennsylvania, interesting new names in the yearbook. As a result Max Zupanovic was listed as Max Supernova, Kathy Carbaugh appeared as Kathy Airbag and Alessandra Ippolito became Alexandria Impolite.
REAL WORM CAUSES COMPUTER TO CRASH
When Mark Taylor’s computer crashed, he feared he had a worm virus in the system, but a technician who was called out to investigate discovered that the problem was caused by an actual earthworm. The five-inch worm had crawled through an air vent of the house in Yeovil, Somerset, and wrapped itself around the laptop’s internal fan. By the time the worm was found, it had been burned to a frazzle by the overheating workings of the computer. Taylor said: “I couldn’t help thinking that people get computer worms all the time, but not real life ones. So at least I was different.”
The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Page 23