The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  CUSTOMERS CONFUSED BY RESTAURANT TOILETS

  Customers at a pizza restaurant in Zhengzhou, China, were baffled when the diner began using banana and peach signs on the gents’ and ladies’ toilet doors. Research showed that every visitor to the toilets hesitated before going inside. One said: “We were not sure which one stands for men. Does the banana represent a slim woman or is it some sort of phallic symbol?”

  COUPLE CELEBRATE WITH 50-YEAR-OLD TINNED CHICKEN

  A Manchester, England, couple celebrated 50 years of marriage in 2006 by eating a tin of chicken they had been given on their wedding day. Les and Beryl Bailey had kept the can – part of a wedding gift hamper – as a memento of their big day in 1956 and vowed not to open it until their golden wedding anniversary. Les happily reported that the chicken was as good as new. He said: “I had it with some potatoes and vegetables and it went down a treat.”

  MAN DRESSED AS BREATHALYZER ARRESTED FOR DRINK-DRIVING

  James Miller was stopped by Oxford, Ohio, police on suspicion of drink-driving in 2009 after he was spotted driving the wrong way down a one-way street while wearing a breathalyzer costume. After being pulled over by police, the 18-year-old, who was wearing the costume for a Halloween party, stuffed chewing gum into his mouth and insisted he hadn’t been drinking. However officers said they found an open can of beer by the driver’s seat, a partial case of beer on the front passenger seat and more alcohol in the trunk. Unfortunately for the fake breathalyzer, a real blood alcohol test showed him to be almost twice the legal limit.

  TEETH IN CHOCOLATE BAR WERE HER OWN

  Merryl Baker was appalled to find three teeth in a Galaxy Double Nut and Raisin chocolate bar in 1995. She complained to the manufacturer, Mars, and her story was widely reported in the UK press. Shortly afterwards she visited her dentist who, on examining her mouth, informed her that three of her back teeth were missing. “I feel such a fool,” she said.

  MAN CHOOSES BEER DESIGN FOR COFFIN

  A Chicago man is planning to be buried in a coffin resembling a giant can of his favourite beer. Bill Bramanti paid $2,000 in 2008 to have a coffin painted in the design of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and meanwhile the 67-year-old is using it as a cooler until his time is ready.

  WOMAN SWALLOWS SPOON WHILE EATING PASTA

  While eating a plate of pasta at a restaurant in Australia, a woman accidentally swallowed a six-inch-long spoon. The 26-year-old Sydney woman was devouring spaghetti when she suddenly had a laughing fit and gulped down the spoon as well.

  DRUNKEN FARMER DRIVES TRACTOR DOWN STEPS

  A Polish farmer tried to drive his two-ton tractor down steps in the centre of the city of Tczew in 2008 as part of a drunken bet. Tomasz Jankowski was arrested for damaging public property after the tractor became wedged against a wall of the steps as he attempted to negotiate a corner. He said later: “After a few vodkas the staircase seemed a lot wider than it really was and nowhere near as steep.”

  CARELESS WISPA FETCHES $400

  A chocolate Wispa bar that had been stuffed down the back of a sofa for five years fetched $400 when it was sold on eBay in 2008. When student Rebecca Wells from Stoke-on-Trent found the snack – which had a best before date of 28 April 2004 – her first instinct was to eat it but she then thought that because Cadbury’s had stopped making Wispas in 2003, it might have some nostalgic value.

  DRUNK DRIVER HANDS WHEEL TO ANOTHER DRUNK

  Perhaps aware that he was being watched by a police patrol car, a drunk driver got out of his car and switched places with his passenger in Long Island in 2009. The problem was, the new driver was also drunk – and when they started moving again, their car began tailgating another vehicle, causing it to go onto the shoulder. Both men were charged with driving while intoxicated.

  DEPUTY SHERIFF SUES OVER ANCHOVIES IN PIZZA

  Wayne Andrews, a deputy sheriff from Boulder, Colorado, was a regular customer at a local restaurant, Pasta Jay’s, where he particularly enjoyed the vegetarian pizza. However he could never figure out what the delicious secret ingredient in the sauce was – until he learned one day that it was anchovies, which were against his dietary restrictions. He promptly sued the restaurant for misrepresentation and in 1995 was awarded $463.24 – the cost of all the pizzas he had eaten there over the previous five years.

  MAN LOSES 160 POUNDS ON GARLIC AND ONION DIET

  Momir Zmiric, of Split, Croatia, saw his weight drop from 26 stone to 14½ stone in just six months – thanks to his new diet of garlic and onions. A friend said: “He looks great but his breath is really rancid.”

  PENSIONERS GO ON DRUNKEN RAMPAGE AT CARE HOME

  Four elderly residents at a nursing home in Dumfries, Scotland, became so unruly during a vodka binge in 2008 that the police had to be called, after staff were unable to maintain control. One was so drunk that he apparently offered the other residents free sex.

  OFFICERS UNEARTH VODKA PIPELINE

  In 2006, Russian customs officers discovered a mile-long pipeline that was pumping vodka into Latvia. The tunnel had been laid six feet underground by crooks in order to pump homemade vodka across the border and into Latvia, where it was then sold. The discovery was made when council workmen dug holes to plant trees in the area.

  FUGITIVE LEADS COPS ON 90 MILES PER HOUR CHASE FOR BURRITO

  Wanted on multiple drugs charges, a man led police officers on a 90 miles per hour chase through two Indiana counties in 2009 – just so that he could taste a burrito. The high-speed pursuit lasted 16 minutes until the driver suddenly pulled into a Taco Bell outlet near Fort Wayne. He told officers he knew he was going to jail for a while and wanted to enjoy one last burrito.

  WOMAN BUYS 10,000 CHOCOLATE BARS

  A woman entered a branch of Woolworths in London in 2004 and bought 10,656 Mars Bars at a total cost of over $4,000. She asked for all the Mars Bars the store had – including ones in the stock room – and then watched her chauffeur load the 200 boxes into the back of a waiting car. A Woolworths spokesman said: “We have no idea what she wanted that many Mars Bars for but it raises all sorts of questions.”

  PRIEST FINDS FOETUS IN CHEESE SPREAD BOTTLE

  Opening a food parcel from an unknown donor, a Filipino priest discovered a four-month-old human foetus inside a bottle of cheese spread. Monsignor Gerry Santos had just celebrated Mass at a church in Manila when he made the startling find. He said his family were unable to continue eating lunch.

  PENSIONER CALLS 911 OVER PIZZA DELAY

  Eighty-six-year-old Dorothy Densmore was arrested in 2005 for calling the emergency services because she couldn’t get a single slice of pizza delivered to her apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina. She dialled 911 twenty times in less than half an hour and demanded that police arrest the pizza parlour employee who called her a “crazy old coot” over the phone. When the police arrived to calm the situation, she allegedly bit the hand of an officer.

  MOTORCYCLIST FAILS TO NOTICE LEG MISSING

  A 54-year-old Japanese motorcyclist rode his bike for over a mile in 2007 before realizing that he had lost a leg. It had become detached when he hit a central safety barrier while negotiating a bend. Despite being in great pain he didn’t notice the limb was missing until he stopped at the next junction.

  WOMAN CRASHES INTO STORE, THEN TRIES TO BUy BEER

  A 74-year-old woman accidentally drove her car through the front window of a Los Angeles convenience store in 2008, causing $8,000 of damage, before stepping from the wreckage and trying to buy a six-pack of Budweiser. “I don’t know how she managed to walk,” said the cashier who declined to serve her and called the police instead.

  SKYDIVER WATCHES AS BALLOON LEAVES WITHOUT HIM

  A Frenchman’s daring bid to skydive from the edge of space in 2008 ended in farce when the balloon that was to take him 25 miles up into the skies drifted off without him. After two decades of preparation and $20 million of investment, 64-year-old Michel Fournier was intending to ascend by balloon to an altitude four time
s higher than that of a cruising commercial jet and then freefall at speeds of more than 1,000 miles per hour, breaking the sound barrier in the process. Instead he could only look on helplessly as the helium balloon detached itself while being inflated at an airfield in Saskatchewan, Canada, and floated away into the heavens, leaving him stranded on the ground in his pressurized capsule. Mr Fournier is no stranger to failure: his 2003 attempt was aborted when strong winds shredded his balloon before it even became airborne.

  FLIGHT DIVERTED DUE TO FART

  A 2006 American Airlines flight from Washington to Dallas was forced to divert to Nashville, Tennessee, after passengers smelled smoke on the plane. It turned out to be the result of a woman passenger lighting matches in the bathroom to cover up the smell of her personal gas. American Airlines banned her from flying with them in future.

  SAILOR WRECKS ROUND-THE-WORLD TRIP – TWICE

  In 2002, British yachtsman Jim Hughes was preparing for an epic round-the-world voyage when his plans were scuppered by the intervention of Icelandic fisherman Eriker Olafsson. While Hughes’s boat, Dragon Song, was moored in the Solent near Portsmouth, Olafsson’s vessel managed to get tangled in its moorings and dragged it along, causing $40,000 of damage. By August 2003, Hughes was ready to try again, only for Olafsson to appear on the scene once more. A year and a day after the first collision, Olafsson, who had been drinking, spotted the Dragon Song moored in the Solent and sailed over to apologize. But he promptly smashed into it again, causing a further $30,000 worth of repairs. After Olafsson was fined for criminal damage, a distraught Hughes reflected: “Of all the yachts in all the harbours in all the world he has to crash into mine – twice. I can never rest sound or leave her alone again unless Olafsson has sailed off into the distance, never to return. I will never, ever sail anywhere near Iceland, just on the off chance that he will be there.” Meanwhile Olafsson, who paid compensation for both accidents, was said to be planning his own round-the-world trip.

  VANITY NUMBER PLATE LEADS TO $19,000 PARKING FINES

  The owner of a car with the personalized number plate XXXXXXX received more than $19,000 worth of parking tickets intended for other vehicles. Traffic wardens in Birmingham, Alabama, automatically entered seven letter Xs onto their forms when issuing tickets to cars without plates. Unfortunately the default code for unidentified vehicles matched the vanity plate of Scottie Robinson from nearby Huntsville who at one stage was receiving up to ten fines a day – all for parking offences committed in different areas of a city that he had visited only once in five years.

  NUNS FINED FOR SPEEDING ON WAY TO SEE POPE

  Three nuns who hurried towards Pope Benedict XVI’s holiday home after learning that he had suffered a minor accident in 2009 were fined nearly $500 after being stopped by police for speeding at 120 miles per hour. Asked why she was speeding, the driver of the Ford Fiesta, Sister Tavoletta, told police: “We had heard how the Pope had fallen over and we were on our way to make sure he was OK.” A spokesman for Turin’s police department said: “Hopefully Sister Tavoletta will mention her bad driving the next time she goes to confession.”

  WOMAN SELLS CAR AFTER DISCOVERING SPIDER

  Shortly after buying a second-hand sports car, 27-year-old Michelle Holloway, from Yeovil, Somerset, felt compelled to sell it for a $250 loss because she had spotted a tiny spider on the driver’s seat. Despite now having to rely on lifts to get to work at a local hospital, Miss Holloway insisted she had no regrets about selling her car. “I couldn’t keep it after that,” she said. “If the spider had come out while I was driving, I would have crashed.”

  MILLIPEDES BRING TRAIN TO A HALT

  Rail passengers in Honshu, Japan, were delayed for two hours when their train was brought to a halt after running over an army of millipedes. As they were crushed, the insects’ body fluids were squashed out, acting as a lubricant and causing the train’s wheels to slip on the track.

  PASSENGER LIES ABOUT BOMB TO SAVE MUM’S BLUSHES

  A passenger told security staff at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport that he had a bomb in his luggage – because he didn’t want his mother to know it was really a penis pump. Twenty-nine-year-old Mardin Azad Amin was preparing to fly to Turkey in 2006 when security officers spotted the suspicious-looking black object in his bag but he decided to lie about it because his mother was standing nearby.

  FLYING UNDERPANTS CAUSE HIGHWAY CRASH

  A pair of flying underpants caused a crash on a German highway in 2003 when they landed on a driver’s face and blocked his view. One of a group of naked men travelling in a van threw the underwear into a Volkswagen Passat as they overtook it on a busy stretch of autobahn near Gotha. Unable to see, the Volkswagen driver promptly rammed into the back of a truck. Nobody was hurt in the crash but police officers admitted they had no idea why the men in the van were driving along naked.

  FLAMING NERVE! SEMI-NAKED MAN RIDES SPEEDING BARSTOOL WITH BACKSIDE ON FIRE

  Police officers in Tauranga, New Zealand, dealt with one of their stranger cases in 2003 – that of a semi-naked man speeding down the street on a motorized barstool with his backside on fire. John Sullivan, who confessed to having “had a few” before his explicit ride and who claimed his barstool could reach 50 miles per hour, was sentenced to 200 hours’ community service for driving his contraption in a public place with no warrant and no registration. The court heard that the flames came courtesy of one of his party tricks, which involved a piece of rolled-up newspaper and a cigarette lighter.

  TOURIST GETS LOST IN AIRPORT FOR A WEEK

  A confused Greek traveller managed to get lost in a tiny local airport in Germany for a whole week in 2008. Christianos Kaklamanis, 38, spent seven days wandering aimlessly around Hanover airport before travel agent Sabine Berger spotted him and alerted police. She said: “I saw him a few times and at first just thought he was flying in and out of the airport a lot.”

  PILOT ASKS PASSENGERS FOR LIFT HOME

  A British Airways pilot about to land a plane in Manchester in 2006 asked passengers over the intercom whether any of them could give him a lift home. He then stood at the cabin door as everyone got off but there were no offers. A BA spokesman said of the unusual request: “Never let it be said our pilots lack ingenuity.”

  IMPATIENT DRIVER BITES DAWDLING PEDESTRIAN

  In Iasi, Romania, in 2009, a road rage driver bit a pedestrian who was taking too long to cross the road. Mihai Nicoara told police that the furious motorist jumped from his car and sank his teeth into his stomach at a crossing.

  WIFE BRINGS HOME WRONG CAR

  Betty Vaughn was dreading telling her husband Edgar what had happened to their car while she had been on a shopping trip. The passenger-side mirror was missing and there was no sign of the garage door opener. When Edgar arrived home in Louisville, Kentucky, the retired schoolteacher nervously showed him the damage. Edgar walked round to the front of the car and noticed that the Transylvania University plate had also been removed. “I can’t believe anybody would take that!” exclaimed Betty. “We’ve been vandalized!” Then Edgar noticed the tyres weren’t the right brand – and, perhaps more significantly, the licence plate was different. He checked the glove compartment and confirmed that Betty had brought home the wrong car! It turned out that the Vaughns’ blue 1992 Toyota Camry had been parked two cars away from Charles Lester’s 1993 model. Both vehicles had been left unlocked. After the respective cars had been returned to their rightful owners, Betty said: “It could have happened to anyone.”

  MAN TRIES TO ENTER CANADA ON STREET SWEEPER

  Damon J. Francis tried to cross the border from the US into Canada in 2001 . . . on a street sweeper. He had crashed a white Cadillac through a fence into the parking lot of the Michigan company where he had once worked and swapped it for a stolen street sweeper, which he then rode towards the Canadian border. He pleaded not guilty to theft by reason of insanity.

  DRUNKEN GERMANS FLY 2,000 MILES DURING TOLlET BREAK

  Two drunken Ger
mans, apparently looking for a toilet during a 2000 conference at Frankfurt airport, got on a plane by mistake and flew to Moscow, 1,000 miles away. The 20-year-old men were wandering round the airport when they found themselves on the tarmac and boarded a shuttle bus which drove to an aircraft bound for the Russian capital. “They got in and sat in the back of the airplane which then flew to Moscow,” said the Frankfurt state prosecutor. “They weren’t even at the airport to fly anywhere.” On arrival in Moscow, they noticed it was cold and realized they had no passports, let alone entry visas. Russian police put them on a flight back to Frankfurt where they were met by Federal Border Police who charged them with joyriding.

  ELDERLY WOMEN BRAWL OVER HANDICAPPED PARKING SPACE

  A row in 1998 between two elderly ladies over a handicapped parking space left one in hospital with a broken hip and the other facing criminal charges. The trouble started when 88-year-old Edna Gilliam pulled into a handicapped parking space at the Kaiser Hospital, Santa Clara, California. Unfortunately 67-year-old Gloria Owens, who was bringing her 98-year-old mother for a hospital appointment, had been waiting patiently for the very same space. Owens immediately went over to Gilliam’s car and knocked on the window, only to be totally ignored because Gilliam was hard of hearing. As Gilliam then left her car and began walking to the hospital, Owens approached her from behind, grabbed her sweater and spun her around. In the ensuing altercation, Gilliam was knocked to the pavement, fracturing her right hip. Owens was put on three years’ probation and given 200 hours’ community service. “It’s somewhat bizarre for ladies of this age to be involved in physical confrontation,” said a police officer. “Obviously there were some emotional hot buttons pushed.”