The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  GOING COMMANDO LEADS TO DIVORCE

  Romanian Emese Nagy divorced her husband in 2001 because he refused to wear underpants. She said she didn’t know about his little foible before they married.

  MAN ACCUSED OF HITTING MOTHER WITH SAUSAGE

  A man from Deland, Florida, was charged with battery in 2008 after police said he admitted hitting his mother on the head with a three-pound pack of Polish sausage. Gregory Allen Praeger, 46, had apparently been cooking in the kitchen when he argued with his mother and threw the sausage at her, grazing her head.

  BANKING ERROR ENDS 35-YEAR MARRIAGE

  A Brazilian couple were awarded over $16,000 compensation in 2003 after a banking error ended their 35-year marriage. Maria Rodrigues filed for divorce after her bank wrongly informed her that her husband, Luiz Gonzaga, had a joint account with another woman. Following a five-year struggle he finally managed to prove his innocence in a court of law but his ex-wife rather took the shine off his success by announcing that she was perfectly happy to stay divorced.

  COUPLE ROW OVER CONDOM MIX-UP

  A couple from Rotherham, Yorkshire, accused supermarket chain Tesco of nearly wrecking their four-year relationship after it mistakenly included condoms in their online shopping list. Lynn Newby was set to break up with boyfriend Andy Allott after discovering that one of his listed “Favourites” was a packet of 12 condoms. She knew she hadn’t bought them, so she accused Mr Allott of having an affair behind her back. When he denied all knowledge of the condoms, the couple challenged Tesco whose internal investigation revealed that the error was the work of a new member of staff in the marketing department. Tesco sent them a letter of apology and a cheque for $200.

  LOVESICK DANE RUNS UP $117,000 PHONE BILL ON CALLS TO INDIAN SWEETHEART

  A 24-year-old man from Kolding, Denmark, loved the sound of his Indian sweetheart’s voice so much that he ran up a phone bill of over $117,000. The long-distance lovebirds once spent 21 out of 24 hours on the phone to each other, and it was not unusual for him to spend more than $5,000 a week on calls to India. Yet bizarrely the two had never even met. They got in touch through a magazine that publishes the names and phone numbers of people all over the world who want to get to know foreigners.

  HUSBAND SPENDS 50 YEARS IN TREE AFTER ROW

  An Indian man has spent more than half a century living in a tree after a quarrel with his wife. Gayadhar Parida took to staying in a mango tree in Orissa state over a “tiny issue” with his wife in the 1950s and has since refused all pleas to come back to the house. He accepts food offered to him by family members but comes down from his tree house only to drink water from a pool.

  RAMPANT SPANIARD SUES WIFE FOR NEGLECT

  In 2004, a Spanish man tried to have his wife charged with domestic abuse because she refused to have sex with him on five consecutive nights.

  MAN, 88, KILLS WIFE IN ROW OVER UROSTOMY BAG

  An 88-year-old Canadian resident was convicted of the manslaughter of his wife of 56 years following an argument over who should change his urostomy bag. Joao Almeida strangled wife Evangelina in the kitchen of their Edmonton, Alberta, home in 2006 in a dispute over the surgical bag that diverts urine away from the bladder.

  BOY TRIES TO WIN GIRL’S HEART WITH BLOOD INJECTION

  A 22-year-old Cambodian man was arrested in 2007 after injecting a woman with his own blood in a desperate bid to win her affections. He had apparently fallen in love with her when they were classmates in 2004 but when she spurned his advances he took drastic action and injected a syringe of his blood into her rib cage and waist as she walked home from school. A police officer remarked: “He thought that if he could not marry her, at least his blood can stay inside her body.”

  WOMAN SETS FIRE TO EX-HUSBAND’S PENIS

  A Russian woman set fire to her ex-husband’s penis while he sat naked watching TV and drinking vodka. Although the couple had divorced three years previously they continued to share an apartment in Moscow. Describing his ordeal, the man said: “It was monstrously painful. I was burning like a torch. I don’t know what I did to deserve it.”

  LOVE RIVAL “ASSAULTED WITH FROZEN FISH”

  In 1991, a man was charged with assault in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after hitting a love rival in the face with a frozen fish, thereby causing a broken nose.

  PHONE COMPANY PROMOTION EXPOSES HUSBAND’S INFIDELITY

  A cheating husband contemplated suing British Telecom in 1999 after a promotional campaign unwittingly alerted his wife to the fact that he was having an affair. Under pressure from competitors in the telephone sector, BT sent the couple a letter pointing out that a number which frequently appeared on their phone bills was not one of their cheap rate “friends and family” numbers. The puzzled wife soon dialled the number and discovered that her husband had been having an affair with one of their neighbours for several years. Thrown out of his house, the husband complained: “I wonder what my chances of suing BT would be. They have wrecked a 40-year marriage.” A BT spokesman said only that the company was “always looking to encourage our customers to maximize any benefit of the discount scheme”.

  YOUNG RUNAWAYS SCRAP DEATH PACT

  A real-life Romeo and Juliet ran away to the desert north of Phoenix, Arizona, vowing to kill themselves because their families disapproved of the relationship. Michael Tillery, 18, and Stefanie Townsend, 16, left a note saying that next time they were seen they would be dead in each other’s arms. A frantic search was launched and finally the young lovers were spotted – making their way home again. After two days together they had realized they weren’t compatible after all.

  WIFE KILLED OVER LOUSY COFFEE

  An Italian man admitted killing his 72-year-old wife in 2001 because she made him a bad cup of coffee.

  HUSBAND BURNS DOWN HOUSE IN UNDERPANT TANTRUM

  A husband who petulantly threw old clothes into the garden and set fire to them because he couldn’t find any clean underpants ended up accidentally burning his house down. Ivo Jerbic was so angry about his wife’s unwillingness to throw anything out of their house in Zagreb, Croatia, that he took matters into his own hands and started a fire of old clothes in the garden. But the blaze quickly spread to the house, burning it to the ground.

  COUPLE DIVORCE OVER ONLINE AFFAIR

  Trapped in an unhappy marriage, Sana and Adnan Klaric sought love in Internet chat rooms, only to end up romancing each other online under false names. The couple, from Zenica, Bosnia, met on an online forum while she was in an Internet café and he was at work, and began chatting under the names Sweetie and Prince of Joy. After pouring out their hearts to one other about their marriage problems, they arranged to meet outside a shop, each carrying a single rose for identification – but there was no happy ending when they realized what had happened. Instead both filed for divorce, with each accusing the other of being unfaithful. Adnan lamented: “I still find it hard to believe that the Sweetie who wrote such wonderful things to me on the Internet is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years.”

  JUDGE ORDERS WALL TO SEPARATE WARRING SPOUSES

  When Chana and Simon Taub both refused to move out of their Brooklyn home following the acrimonious break-up of their marriage, a judge came up with a novel solution to keep the bickering pair apart – he ordered a wall to be built straight down the middle of the ground floor accommodation. Erected at the end of 2006, the wall separated the living room from the staircase of the three-story house. Under the terms of the agreement Chana lived on the top floor and had access to the kitchen on the first floor while Simon got the ground floor living room and the dining room on the first floor. So that they didn’t run into each other on the first floor, the door between the dining room and the kitchen was barricaded on both sides. The points of contention between the couple were numerous. She accused her husband of more than 20 years of bugging her phones, and she also said that she had to flush the toilet after him and put on his socks for him. He said she own
ed too many shoes.

  WOMAN HITS BOYFRIEND WITH TOILET SEAT

  Discovering her boyfriend smoking cocaine in the bathroom, an 18-year-old woman from Fort Pierce, Florida, turned on the shower with the intention of washing away the drugs. But when he refused to hand over his stash, a row broke out, which ended in her hitting him with the toilet seat. He was charged with possession of cocaine and she was charged with battery.

  RUSSIAN JUMPS FIVE FLOORS – TWICE – TO ESCAPE NAGGING

  A Russian man survived in 2009 after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from the fifth-floor balcony of his Moscow apartment – twice. Alexei Roskov, 22, said he jumped the second time because he couldn’t bear his wife’s nagging about the first time. Wife Yekaterina had watched in horror as her drunken husband opened the kitchen window of their apartment and hurled himself out. Amazingly he managed to stagger back upstairs with barely a scratch after the 50-foot fall. But while his wife called an ambulance and berated him for his stupidity, he jumped again. He said afterwards: “I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and heard my wife screaming angrily at me, I thought it was best if I left the room again – out of the window.”

  MAN BITES HEAD OFF GIRLFRIEND’S PYTHON

  A man punished his girlfriend during a fight in 2007 by biting off the head of her pet snake. Shane Cooke, a 33-year-old bricklayer from Keady, Northern Ireland, picked up the cherished pet of Coleen McGleenon, put it in his mouth and threw its severed head at her, remarking: “Your snake tasted lovely.” His lawyer said that Cooke had been consuming alcoholic drinks for several hours before the attack.

  FORGETFUL HUSBAND LEAVES WIFE AT GAS STATION

  A Macedonian man drove six hours across Italy and into Germany in 2005 before noticing that he had left his wife at a gas station. Ljubomir Ivanov, 35, only realized he had forgotten his wife Iskra when he received a call on his mobile phone from police to say that she was still waiting for him at the gas station near Pesaro in central Italy. He explained: “I filled up the tank with petrol, paid and then just drove off. I was very tired and not thinking straight. She usually sits in the back seat so I didn’t really see she wasn’t there.”

  DRUNK RIDES HORSE INTO BANK

  Having had one too many drinks for the road at his local bar, a German equestrian decided to sleep it off for the night by riding his horse into a bank foyer. Wolfgang Heinrich, 40, had been out riding his horse Sammy in April 2007 when he stopped to have a drink with friends but on leaving the bar he realized he was too drunk to ride all the way back to his home in Wiesenburg. So, keen to get out of the cold, he decided to use his bank card to open up a nearby bank foyer and take himself and Sammy inside for the night. Heinrich was found fast asleep with his horse by customer Stephan Hanelt who went to the bank to withdraw money early the following morning. “It was a bit of a shock to find a man and horse asleep in the foyer of the bank,” said Herr Hanelt. “I rang the police straight away.” Heinrich was let off with a warning, but bank staff were less impressed when they had to clean up after the horse, who had left a deposit of his own on the floor of the foyer.

  WOMAN MISTAKES HEARING AID FOR CANDY

  An Idaho pensioner almost ate her own hearing aid in 2009 after mistaking it for a chocolate candy. Eighty-seven-year-old Violet Bishop, of Coeur d’Alene, was watching TV when she fancied a snack, so she decided to dip into a box of chocolate candies she had bought for Halloween trick or treaters. However one sweet was so chewy she had to remove it from her mouth – and that’s when she realized it was her hearing aid that had fallen out of her ear and into the box. She said: “As I ate the Milk Duds, I was aware that one was not as fresh as the others. It was rather crunchy and I just could not get it to soften up, no matter how hard I tried.”

  HOSPITAL SERVES UP HUMAN TONGUE

  Eating a chicken risotto at a hospital canteen in Izola, Slovenia, in 2008, a doctor was puzzled by a strange looking piece of meat. He insisted it was not chicken but was startled when tests showed that it was part of a human tongue. Hospital managers said the tongue portion may have been dropped accidentally into the food by a doctor who had gone to the canteen immediately after treating a patient. They added reassuringly that they have never used patients’ parts in any of their dishes.

  DRIVER BELTS IN BEER RATHER THAN YOUNG BOY

  When police in Australia’s Northern Territory pulled over a driver in 2008, they were amazed to see that he had secured a load of beer with a seat belt but not a five-year-old boy. The 30 cans of beer were safely buckled up on the rear seat but the child was left unrestrained. When officers pointed out the anomaly to the driver, they said he looked at them blankly.

  MAN HIDES SEX TOYS IN SAUSAGE

  Staff at a butcher’s shop in Mannheim, Germany, were startled to find that a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai. After buying two large sausages earlier in the day, the man returned to the butcher’s and asked a shop assistant to wrap and cool them until he left for Dubai the next day. But the assistant noticed the sausages were much heavier and when the police were called they found that the man had removed some of the meat and packed two dildos inside. A police spokesman revealed: “It was two latex dildos with a natural look.”

  STUDENTS MISTAKE GRANDAD’S ASHES FOR INSTANT COFFEE

  Staying at a friend’s country cottage in the Czech Republic in 2004, a group of students decided to relieve their hangovers with a cup of coffee. Spotting a tin full of grainy substance on the mantelpiece at Jakub Havlat’s cottage, they thought it was instant coffee and made themselves a drink. It was only afterwards when Havlat returned that they discovered they had actually drunk his grandfather’s ashes. One of the students said: “We grabbed the first tin we found, put what we thought was coffee in mugs and poured hot water over it. It was barely drinkable and we thought it was probably just a bit old but we needed a drink to sober up and so we just downed it. When our friend came home and realized what had happened, he said to us: ‘You idiots, you’ve drunk my grandfather’s remains.’ We sobered up immediately.”

  POLICE CHIEF RESIGNS IN BURGER SCANDAL

  Inverness, Florida, police chief Joseph Elizarde was forced to resign after arresting the proprietor of a Happy Days Diner in 2002 when the proprietor told him that the two hamburgers ordered 20 minutes earlier were still not ready.

  DRUNK WAKES TO FIND PENIS TATTOO ON LEG

  After a heavy vodka-drinking session, Joel Stefansson, 27, from Umea, Sweden, agreed to let a tattoo artist ink in any design he liked. However when he woke up, he found to his dismay that the artist had tattooed a six-inch penis on his right leg adjacent to his real one.

  MAN EXISTS SOLELY ON MARS BARS

  A Liverpool man claimed in 2008 that he had eaten nothing but Mars Bars for the previous 17 years. Keith Sorrell, 37, said he eats at least a dozen a day – for breakfast, lunch and dinner – and even orders Mars Bar drinks mixed with vodka or rum when he goes to the pub. Keith, who is single, said: “My love of Mars Bars started at school with one or two between meals. All my pocket money went on them and one day I realized I couldn’t get by without them. Now I can easily polish off 12 a day, more at weekends. I’m totally addicted.”

  “YOU CAN’T BUY QUICHE BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT 21”

  An over-zealous supermarket cashier refused to let an office worker buy a slice of cheese and onion quiche because she “looked under 21”. Christine Cuddihy, who was in fact 24, wanted the quiche for supper but the checkout woman at the Tesco store near Coventry, West Midlands, had other ideas and demanded she produce her driving licence to prove that she was over 21. Miss Cuddihy said: “I told her I was certain the proof of age laws do not apply to quiche, but she was adamant. It was very embarrassing. What on earth is dangerous about a slice of quiche? It’s not even like I was buying a whole quiche to binge on.” Tesco apologized for the incident and confirmed that shoppers do not have to prove their age to buy quiche. “We’re at a loss to say what happened
here,” added a spokesman.

  DRUNK NEARLY CRUSHED BY GARBAGE TRUCK

  William Bowen, from Muncie, Indiana, had a lucky escape in 2008 after waking up in a garbage truck just as the contents were on the point of being crushed. Bowen had fallen asleep in a garbage bin, which had then been emptied into the truck, but the driver heard screams as he was about to activate its compactor. “He looked up and this gentleman was standing out the top of our truck,” said the waste disposal company supervisor. “This gentleman was extremely intoxicated.” Bowen said he had no idea how he ended up in the bin. The last thing he remembered was drinking in a bar with some buddies around 3 a.m.

  WIFE’S COOKING DRIVES MAN TO BLOW UP KITCHEN

  A Romanian man tried to blow up his kitchen because his wife was such a lousy cook. Viorel Leahu, from Todiresti, said he decided to punish his wife for her terrible food. The explosion damaged the room and left him with an injured hand.

  SUSPECT FORCED TO EAT 50 BANANAS

  A man arrested in 2007 on suspicion of stealing and swallowing a $1,000 necklace was forced by Indian police to eat 50 bananas as a laxative so that the incriminating evidence could be retrieved. The man had initially denied any involvement in the theft until an X-ray of his stomach proved his guilt.