Fun_People Archive
25 Nov
Weirdness #404 - 3Nov95 

Date: Sat, 25 Nov 95 03:30:48 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Weirdness #404 - 3Nov95

Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.404 (News of the Weird, November 3, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd

* Earlier this year, Michael Eugene Price was granted retrials in two armed
robbery cases after an Oklahoma appeals court ruled that trial judges had
been erring in telling juries that defendants are "presumed not guilty"
instead of "presumed innocent."  He had been serving 32 and 35 years,
respectively, but in his first retrial in March, he was again found guilty
and sentenced to 60 years, and in his second retrial, in October, he was
again found guilty and sentenced to 65 years. [Dallas Morning News-AP, 10-
6-95]

* In September, police in Meadville, Pa., announced that the summer drought
in the area was responsible for their success in finding marijuana farmers.
Said a police spokesman, almost all of the vegetation is brown because of
the drought, but the marijuana stays green because the owners take such good
care of the plants. [USA Today, 9-12-95]

* In July, a 25-year-old female sixth-grade science teacher in Muroran,
Japan, exasperated at the rowdiness of her students, slashed one of her
wrists in front of them in an attempt to scare them into being quiet.  She
had to be rushed to the hospital. [The Daily Mainichi, 7-12-95]

* In August, ... six people on a farm near Nazlat Imara, Egypt, drowned
after diving one at a time into a well trying to capture a chicken that had
fallen in.  The chicken survived. [Toronto Sun- AP, 8-4-95]

* A July international men's conference in Ottawa was attended by nearly
150 men (who paid $350 each), which was a vast improvement over the previous
year's attendance of five.  One difference was that this year, the
conference was not organized in-house but was contracted out to two women.
[Barrie Examiner-CP, 7-3-95]

* A March Gallup Organization survey for CNN and U. S. News & World Report
found that 80% of men considered themselves above-average drivers. [Columbus
Dispatch, 3-19-95]

* Poland's leading "playwright of the absurd," Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz,
was buried in Soviet territory when he committed suicide in 1939, but his
casket was sent to his beloved Polish mountains for reburial in 1988.  In
May 1995, a special commission celebrating Witkiewicz's work discovered
that, somehow, Witkiewicz's casket contained the body of a woman.  [Edmonton
Journal, 5-6-95]

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 []