Fun_People Archive
10 Mar
Weirdness #368

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 95 12:22:33 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness #368

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.368 (News of the Weird, February 24, 1995)
By: Chuck Shepherd
Via: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)

* The New York Times reported in January that among United Nations Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's suggestions for greater UN recognition in
1995--its 50th anniversary--were advertisements featuring a beautiful woman
in an expensive car driving by the UN building and exclaiming, "Ah, the
United Nations!" [N. Y. Times, 1-3-95]

* After a 34-year-old man somehow convinced a 19-year-old Central Bible
College student to submit to a gynecological exam in his motel room so she
could be cleared for a "scholarship" offer, Springfield, Mo., prosecutors
said in January that the man's only crime apparently was a misdemeanor
deceptive business practice.  And police in Nashville, Tenn., are in a
quandary this month about whether to charge Raymond Mitchell, 45, with a
crime.  Six women reported that he telephoned them, convinced them to
blindfold themselves and to wait for him, and had sex with them.  Each of
the women said she assumed it was a boyfriend calling.  One woman had sex
with Mitchell in that manner several times without realizing he was a
stranger.  [Springfield News-Leader, 1-15-94, 1-18-95; Tennessean, 1-22-
95, 1-26-95]

* James R. Scott was convicted in November of removing sandbags from a
Mississippi River levee during the 1993 floods, causing millions of dollars
in damages and closing the only bridge for 100 miles that connected Missouri
and Illinois.  According to a witness at Scott's trial, Scott, of Fowler,
Ill., did it to strand his wife in Missouri "so he could have a party at
his house." [Columbia Tribune-AP, 11-1-94]

* In her Chicago trial in November for trying to hire a hit man to kill her
husband, physician Wynne Superson denied the charge and testified that her
desire to see her husband dead was just a fantasy.  However, prosecutors
produced a tape in which a police informant discussed a hit man with
Superson, who said she could not afford to pay money but would offer the
hit man oral sex every day for the next ten years. [Chicago Tribune,
11-11-94]
[Maybe I've been watching too much TV, but I thought hit men usually wanted
half in advance... -psl]

* In June, the U. S. Army revealed to Congress that in 1964 and 1965 its
scientists had gone into stockyards in six cities, sneaked up on cattle,
and sprayed them with ordinary deodorant.  The Army wanted to see how
difficult it would be for the Soviets to sneak into stockyards and spread
hoof-and-mouth germs in order to poison the U. S. meat supply. [Albuquerque
Journal-AP, 8-5- 94]

* Last spring, New Jersey officials stopped a rash of purse- snatchings in
restrooms along the Garden State Parkway by removing hooks from ladies' room
stall doors.  (Thieves would reach over the stall doors and remove purses,
which women had hung on hooks while they used the toilet.)  According to a
Philadelphia Inquirer story in June, the thieves then reinstalled the hooks
at their own expense, facilitating the theft rate to rise once again.
[Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-14-94]

* Jack Wright of Kingston, Ontario, the Guinness Book record holder for the
owner of the most cats at one time (689), quoted in the Toronto Star in
April:  "You can visualize a hundred cats.  Beyond that, you can't.  Two
hundred, five hundred, it all looks the same." [Sault Star-Toronto Star-CP,
4-28-94]

Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate.  All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers.  No commercial use may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.

© 1995 Peter Langston