SWEDES MIX COCKTAIL FROM RED BULL AND SOAP
Teenagers at the 2004 Oestersjoe music festival in Karlshamn, Sweden, were so intent on getting drunk they downed containers of an alcohol-based liquid soap from the toilets. They mixed cocktails of energy drink Red Bull and soap containing 62 per cent alcohol from the portable toilets. The head of the firm that supplied the toilets said: “It only took one night for most of the soap to disappear. I thought either they were being fastidiously clean or something odd was going on, since the soap usually lasts for a month.”
BEER-LOVER GETS STUCK IN OPEN DRAIN
A German man’s love of beer proved his undoing in 2009 after he fell intoan open drain – and couldn’t get out because of his beer belly. Gerhard Wilder, 46, from Bochum, was wedged so tightly that he had to be freed by firefighters. After embarrassing pictures of his plight appeared in the German media, he vowed to stay off the beer and go on a diet.
STABBED MAN ORDERS COFFEE
A man walked into a restaurant in Warren, Michigan, in 2009 with a five-inch knife sticking in his chest and calmly ordered a cup of coffee. He told staff at the diner that he was waiting for an ambulance. It transpired that the 52-year-old man had been stabbed by a mugger and had then walked a mile to the restaurant after calling 911. One employee described the incident as “like something out of a movie”, adding: “It kind of freaked us all out.”
AMERICAN DINER LIBERATES LOBSTERS
An American tourist dining in a restaurant in Kinsale, County Cork, paid $900 for all of the 40 live lobsters sitting in a tank waiting to be cooked and released them unharmed into the sea. When the customer bought all 40, the restaurant manager said: “I thought he was throwing a party.”
LIFEGUARD FINDS “LEMONADE” HAS EXTRA STING
Deciding that he needed a drink while working in the heat, a lifeguard in Queensland, Australia, went to the club house and drank what he thought was lemonade from a bottle. In fact, it was a sample bottle filled with the tentacles of the deadly Box jellyfish. The lifeguard survived – just.
ONLY CAKE IN CONTEST, BUT STILL CAME SECOND
When her Victoria sponge earned second place in a 2007 cake competition at her village fete, Jenny Brown was naturally delighted – that is, until she found out hers was the only entry. The 62-year-old grandmother from Wimblington, Cambridgeshire, said: “My friend came over to me at the fete and said I had come second. I asked her how many more entries there had been but she just started laughing and said I was the only one.” Her effort was apparently marked down by the judges because of indentations on the top of her sponge from the oven rack.
MAN SETS CAB ON FIRE WHILE COOKING SAUSAGES
A drunken German accidentally set fire to the cab of his truck after deciding to cook himself some sausages while driving. Walter Reckling, who was three times over the legal alcohol limit, usually restricted the small gas cooker to roadside use but on this occasion he was running late with a delivery so he elected to cook while at the wheel. He was cooking two sausages while driving through Saxony when the cooker suddenly toppled over, setting fire to the truck cab and putting him in hospital, where he was treated for smoke inhalation.
CUSTOMER SUES OVER INADEQUATE SOUP CAN INSTRUCTIONS
David Sugar, from Petersburg, Ohio, sued Campbell’s Soup Company in 2003 for facial burns he received when the contents of a soup can exploded – the result of him heating the can before opening it. He maintained that the accident was Campbell’s fault because he simply followed the instructions on the can, which said “Heat, stirring occasionally” but did not stipulate that the can needed to be opened first in order to stir the soup.
GARLIC BREATH LANDS DRIVER IN TROUBLE
Stopped by a police patrol in Perth, Australia, in 1997, a motorist chewed on a clove of garlic before breathing in the face of an officer. He was charged with assault, which under Australian law includes “the direct or indirect application of force, including gas or odour, in such a manner as to cause personal discomfort”.
CONFUSED DRUNK LOSES HIS BEARINGS
After a night’s drinking in 2010, a teenager called the emergency services because he thought he was hanging perilously above the sea off the edge of a cliff – but his mind was so muddled, he was really a mile inland. Police officers, fire crews and the coastguard conducted a search of the seafront at Bournemouth, Dorset, only for the 19-year-old to be found clinging to a tree on a steep slope next to a car park over a mile away. Asked if the teenager was embarrassed, a coastguard official said: “We hope so.”
DRUNKEN CROAT IN PENIS MISHAP
After swearing loudly at a woman in the street in 2003, a drunken Croat shoved his penis through her garden fence . . . unaware that her dog was on the other side. When the animal bit the intrusive member, the man reported the incident to the police.
FIFTY BRAWL IN ROW OVER LAST PACKET OF PEANUTS
An argument over who should have the last packet of peanuts in a club triggered a street fight involving 50 people. Dozens of police officers were called to the High Brooms Working Men’s Club in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 2010 and used CS gas to quell the riot. One witness said: “Everything was fine until two guys started arguing at the bar over the last bag of dry roasted nuts. The next thing it was a mass brawl with half the club punching and kicking each other. To be perfectly honest, it spoiled the evening.”
SNAKE DRINK PACKS A BITE
Preserving deadly snakes in alcohol makes for a popular drink in China, but a man named Li got more than he bargained for in 2003 when he uncorked a bottle of liquor in which a snake had been pickled for a year. As he lifted the bottle to his mouth, the snake, which had somehow survived its 12-month immersion, reared up and bit him on the neck.
MAN CALLS COPS OVER SANDWICH SAUCE
The ingredients for a spicy Italian sandwich were clearly so important to Reginald Peterson, from Jacksonville, Florida, that he twice called the police emergency number 911 after his local Subway shop left off the sauce. Locked out of the store after witnesses said he became belligerent, the burly construction worker initially rang 911 to ensure that the police could have his sandwiches made correctly. His second call was to complain that officers weren’t arriving fast enough. When police officers did show up, they arrested Peterson on a charge of making false 911 calls. He told them to throw the sauceless sandwiches in the garbage.
TOURIST ACCIDENTALLY ORDERS $1,700 BOTTLE OF WINE
A British tourist in Prague misread the price on a restaurant wine list and ordered a $1,702 bottle of wine by mistake. Berkshire estate agent Andy Freegard was dining with girlfriend Helen Kelly in the Czech capital in 2003 when he picked a Chateau Margaux 1987 Premier Grand Cru Classe which he thought was $34. However he began to get worried when waiters started flocking to his table to sniff the cork, and when Miss Kelly asked the head waiter for the price in sterling, the reply came back “£1,000”. Mr Freegard said: “We realized something was not right when the standard of service improved dramatically. And when they brought out the decanter I was very concerned. After we learned the truth we knew we couldn’t send it back. Taking each sip was heartbreaking, knowing it was $85 wortha gulp.”
DRUNK FALLS ASLEEP IN HIS OLD HOUSE
After an evening’s drinking in 2003, a man staggered home and fell asleep – but in a house where he had last lived seven years earlier. Police were called when Giles Mottram found a complete stranger, Mark Norley, asleep in his bed at Axbridge, Somerset. Norley, a 34-year-old research scientist, was taken by police to his mother’s home nearby “to sleep it off”. Homeowner Harry Mottram said: “It was like a kind of latter-day Goldilocks and the Three Bears, except the sleeping drunk had dark hair and we are not a family of woodland bears.”
GIRL SEES RELIGIOUS MESSAGE IN TOMATO
Shasta Aslam, a 14-year-old Muslim girl from Huddersfield, Yorkshire, cut a tomato in half in 1997 and found that the veins on the fruit spelled out in Arabic “There is only one God” on one side and “Mohammed is the m
essenger” on the other. Over 50 worshippers a day visited her home to see the fruit over the ensuing weeks. “God made me buy that tomato,” said Shasta. The previous year, hundreds of people had flocked to the home of a man in Bolton who believed he had received a message from Allah in an aubergine.
THIEF INJURED BY FROZEN CHICKEN
Having stolen a frozen chicken in a raid on a butcher’s shop at Macksville, near Sydney, an Australian thief then used the bird as a tool to break into a nearby café. But in doing so, he accidentally slashed his wrist open and was forced to phone an ambulance for help. He was arrested shortly after being treated by paramedics.
DRINKERS PAY TO CRY INTO THEIR BEER
A bar for depressed drinkers opened in Nanjing, China, in 2004 with customers paying $3 an hour, in addition to their drinks, to weep and wail to their heart’s content. To help them burst into tears, tissues and menthol drops were provided at the bar, along with onions and red peppers. While melancholy music played in the background, dolls were made available for customers to throw around or beat to a pulp so that they could vent their anger and frustration over a broken relationship.
WOMAN FINDS CONDOM IN LOAF
A Slovakian woman cut into a loaf of freshly baked bread in 2006 – and found a condom inside. Petra Zeleznikova thought that the bread – purchased that morning from a local supermarket – had an unusually rubbery texture. The condom had not been used.
MAN DRINKS BOTTLE OF VODKA IN AIRPORT SECURITY LINE
A passenger nearly died at Germany’s Nuremberg airport in 2007 after he drank a bottle of vodka at a security check instead of surrendering it to officials. The 64-year-old man, who was on his way home to Dresden from a holiday in Egypt, was told that under new regulations governing the carrying of liquids on board an airplane, he would either have to throw out the bottle or pay a fee to have his hand luggage checked as cargo. Instead he decided to down two pints of vodka on the spot – and was immediately rushed to a clinic with suspected alcohol poisoning, thereby delaying his journey home for at least a week.
ANGRY RESIDENTS URINATE ON RESTAURANT ROOF
Residents in a New York apartment block overlooking a newly opened delicatessen became so annoyed by what they considered to be excessive noise from patrons and garbage collections that they started urinating on the restaurant’s glass roof. The owner put up a sign directing offenders to use a bathroom instead.
BUSINESSMAN BUYS $60,000 ROUND OF DRINKS
A German businessman walked into a London nightclub in 2001 and announced to everyone present: “The drinks are on me.” His round came to a little under $60,000, including a ten per cent tip.
MAN CHANGES NAME TO “HAPPY ADJUSTABLE SPANNERS”
Daniel Westfallen, from Hornchurch, Essex, legally changed his name to Happy Adjustable Spanners for a bet on a drunken night out. All of his friends put names into a hat and Happy Spanners came out. His boss then picked Adjustable as a middle name.
FOOD HEALTH CHIEF STRUCK DOWN WITH SALMONELLA
Franz Fischler, the European food and farm commissioner, missed the launch of the new European Food Safety Authority in 2002 because he was struck down with salmonella poisoning.
WOMAN FINED FOR SMUGGLING SAUSAGE IN DIAPERS
A woman was fined $300 in 2008 for trying to smuggle spicy sausage across the US/Mexico border in babies diapers. Customs inspectors became suspicious when the 21-year-old from South Texas declared that the chunky diapers were “soiled”. On examination, it was found that the diapers contained several links of pork sausage, or chorizo, and that they had been deliberately folded in such a way as to appear soiled.
PIONEERS LOSE FIRST CHEESE IN SPACE
An attempt by a group of English cheesemakers to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing by launching a lump of cheddar into space ended in ignominy in 2009 when organizers lost track of it minutes after lift-off. From a field in Wiltshire they had launched a weather balloon attached by a pole to a capsule containing a digital camera, a GPS tracking device and the 300-gram lump of cheddar glued to a plate. The idea was that the cheese would fly 19 miles into the upper atmosphere before the balloon burst and the capsule floated back to Earth on a parachute. However within ten minutes of taking off the tracking system failed. Dom Lane, one of the brains behind the mission, said: “We wanted to take a photograph of a piece of cheddar floating majestically in the firmament with the curve of the Earth below it, but we don’t know where it’s gone. We think it’s somewhere in the East of England – possibly in Essex or Hertfordshire.”
MAN STAPLES PENIS TO BURNING CRUCIFIX FOR $300
Thomas Hendry won a 1999 “How Far Will You Go?” contest at Trader McKendry’s Tavern, Christchurch, New Zealand, by stapling his penis to a crucifix and setting it on fire. He said he coveted the $300 first prize because he had outstanding bills to pay and thought he could do better than an earlier contestant who had merely pierced his foreskin with a safety pin. Hendry’s mother, who was watching, added: “I’m just very relieved that he won. I would have hated for someone to go through all that and lose.”
MAN SAYS SUPERMARKET WINE RUINED HIS LOVE LIFE
A man demanded compensation from a supermarket in Aylesford, Kent, because he claimed that a bottle of wine he bought there had ruined his love life. He said his date didn’t like the wine and consequently left early, and he never saw her again.
JAILBIRD SUES OVER POP TART
Christopher Lyons, a convicted drug dealer serving time in a US jail, filed a $310,000 lawsuit against Kellogg’s in 1994 claiming that a “defective” Pop Tart had injured his mouth and caused him nightmares, resulting in 72 hours of sleep deprivation.
WOMAN SHOCKED BY EXPLODING ARTICHOKE
A 53-year-old woman from Trieste, Italy, was recovering from shock in 2003 after an artichoke she was peeling exploded. She said the vegetable emitted sparks, then a small flame before blowing up in her hands. At first police feared the exploding artichoke was the work of a terrorist who had been planting devices in food products in Italian supermarkets for the past ten years but forensic tests revealed no trace of explosives, leading experts to conclude that it was a bizarre natural phenomenon.
GRIM REAPER SEEN WALKING ALONG ENGLISH SEAFRONT
Having travelled all the way from Nelson, Lancashire, to the resort of Morecambe in 2007 to celebrate a friend’s birthday, 31-year-old Christopher Kelly was determined to enjoy himself. So he downed several beers and vodkas, as a result of which he found himself wandering alone on the beach in the early hours of the morning. There, he contrived to become stuck in a pit of treacherous wet sand, from which he only escaped after losing his shoes, pants and jacket. Cold and wet, he staggered across to Morecambe Town Hall, spied an open window and climbed in. As he ambled through the building, he found a camera and a mobile phone, and tried without success to call his friends. He was now in such a state that he accidentally soiled himself and was forced to deposit his few remaining items of clothing in a bin bag. Inside one of the rooms he chanced upon a “Grim Reaper” fancy dress costume, with a mask attached to the hood. He put this on and, dressed as the harbinger of doom (minus scythe), left the building and wandered off along the seafront, where he was captured on CCTV cameras. He tried to turn himself in at a police station, but it was unmanned and he had to wait for three hours until officers arrived and arrested him for burglary. As the prosecutor at Lancaster Magistrates Court relayed details of Kelly’s eventful night, one probation officer was forced to leave the courtroom in fits of laughter. Kelly was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs. His lawyer said: “He doesn’t remember very much about all this.”
SOZZLED SANTA FALLS THROUGH STORE WINDOW
A Santa Claus at a Southampton, England, department store thought it would be a good idea to drink red wine in his grotto so that his cheeks would acquire a nice rosy glow. But when Graham Webb stood up, he lost his balance and fell through a plate glass window.
RESTAURANT OWNE
R FORGETS TO EVACUATE GUESTS IN FIRE
When fire broke out at a restaurant in Vienna, Austria, in 2003, the owner fled the building together with his staff but in the commotion forgot to evacuate his guests. Around 20 diners were still sitting at their tables when firefighters arrived – even though the room was filled with smoke.
DRINKING CONTEST WINNER SUES ORGANIZERS FOR LETTING HIM GET DRUNK
The winner of a “drink-all-you-can” competition sued the organizers for $1 million after falling down drunk and knocking himself unconscious. John Remley, 67, claimed the owner of a café in Norwood, Ohio, should not have let him get drunk.
MAN FOUND NAKED AND COVERED IN NACHO CHEESE
Michael Monn was arrested in Maryville, Tennessee, in 2004 after officers spotted him running naked from the scene of a burglary, his body covered in nacho cheese. He had cheese in his hair, on his face and on his shoulders, and, according to the police, smelled strongly of alcohol. The court heard that Monn had marked his 23rd birthday by getting “highly intoxicated” and breaking into a pool bar where he stole a box of snacks and the cheese. He pleaded guilty to burglary, theft, vandalism, indecent exposure and public intoxication. It is thought his naked state and the cheesy dip may have been connected to the open bottle of vodka found in his Jeep.
The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Page 44