In January, Mittens the kitten and Charcoal the Chihuahua made news as hermaphrodites that veterinarians had recommended be considered part of a particular gender. Mittens, of the town of Heart\u2019s Desire, Newfoundland, was scheduled for \u201cgender assignment\u201d surgery to become male. Charcoal, of Boise, Idaho, is recovering from surgery to leave her exclusively female. News reports didn\u2019t disclose why \u201cmale\u201d was chosen for Mittens. But the doctor speaking about Charcoal said urination is less stressful for female dogs than males.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Good Ol\u2019 Boy<\/strong> <\/p>\n Unclear On The Concept<\/strong> <\/p>\n Compelling Explanations<\/strong> <\/p>\n New World Order<\/strong> <\/p>\n Fine Points Of The Law<\/strong> <\/p>\n Bound To Dominate<\/strong> <\/p>\n Weird News You Can Use<\/strong> <\/p>\n Undignified Deaths<\/strong> <\/p>\n Recurring Themes<\/strong> <\/p>\n What Researchers Do<\/strong> <\/p>\n Weird News Classic From July 2011<\/strong> <\/p>\n The Continuing Crisis<\/strong> <\/p>\n Elephant Love<\/strong> <\/p>\n Clich\u00e9s Come To Life<\/strong> <\/p>\n Least Competent Criminals<\/strong> <\/p>\n Weird News Classic From Sept. 2011<\/strong> <\/p>\n Suspicions Confirmed<\/strong> In January, Mittens the kitten and Charcoal the Chihuahua made news as hermaphrodites that veterinarians had recommended be considered part of a particular gender. Mittens, of the town of Heart\u2019s Desire, Newfoundland, was scheduled for \u201cgender assignment\u201d surgery to become male. Charcoal, of Boise, Idaho, is recovering from surgery to leave her exclusively female. News [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,40],"yoast_head":"\n
\nA miles-long traffic jam on Interstate 20 near Tuscaloosa, Ala., was caused by an 18-wheeler that jackknifed and overturned when the 57-year-old driver took his hands off the wheel to pull out a tooth with his fingers. Efforts to haul the truck from the roadside required an hours-long detour of traffic off the interstate. The driver\u2019s mission was successful; he had the tooth in his pocket when he was rescued.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Luis Moreno Jr., 26, was pursued by police in Fort Lee, N.J., after he entered a carpool lane on the George Washington Bridge because he appeared to be alone in his SUV. After ignoring several signals to pull over, he finally stopped. When he was informed of his offense, he told the officer, \u201cI have two passengers in the back,\u201d and rolled down a window to show them sitting in the vehicle\u2019s third row, apparently satisfying the officer. However, as Moreno pulled away, one passenger began screaming and banging on the back door. Moreno sped off with his hostages, but was subsequently stopped again and charged with kidnapping and criminal restrain.
\n\u2014 Mike Montemayor, until recently a county commissioner in Laredo, Texas, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in June. He had argued that he should get a light sentence because, after all, he had helped FBI agents in a sting of three other officials accused of bribery. However, the prosecutor countered that Montemayor had in fact tried to steal the recording devices and Apple computer the FBI had loaned to him to do the undercover work. He got six years in prison and a $109,000 fine.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Briton Roberto Collins, 51, was sentenced to 13 months in jail by Manchester Crown Court after being caught standing on a ladies\u2019 room toilet and peering into the next stall. He told police he stood up only to better scratch an itch. He said he was in the ladies\u2019 room only because he was wearing faulty glasses and thought it was the men\u2019s room.
\n\u2014 Poet Les Merton, 70, had a more difficult time explaining why a child-porn website had his credit card information. Merton holds the appointed title of Cornish Bard in Cornwall, England. He is the author of the Official Encyclopedia of the Cornish Pasty. He explained in Truro Crown Court that he must have mindlessly entered his credit card information while he was researching the 19th-century Russian figure Rasputin.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Last year, in Middle East school markets, the worldwide publishing giant HarperCollins sold a popular atlas whose maps pretended there was no such country as Israel. The space that is Israel was merged into Jordan, Syria and Gaza. The company said it was merely honoring \u201clocal preferences\u201d of potential atlas purchasers, whom HarperCollins presumed were Arabs who wished that Israel did not exist. In January, the company changed course, saying it \u201cregretted\u201d its decision and recalled all stock.
\n\u2014 Montanan John Abarr told the Great Falls Tribune that his Rocky Mountain Knights of the Ku Klux Klan oppose the \u201cnew world order\u201d pushing a \u201cone government\u201d system on the planet. But, he said, the group also stands against discrimination based on race, religion or sexual orientation. \u201cWhite supremacy is the old Klan,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the new Klan.\u201d He said, robes and hoods will still be required, as will \u201csecret rituals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe Supreme Court of Canada turned down Joel Ifergan\u2019s appeal, thus leaving his winning-number lottery ticket from 2008 worthless. He had bought two tickets seconds before the 9 pm deadline, and the tickets had started to print on the store\u2019s machine, but only the first one carried that day\u2019s date. By the time the second one \u2014 which had the winning numbers for the $27 million jackpot \u2014 had gone through the lottery\u2019s central computer system and back to the store\u2019s printer, the program had already kicked over to the following day and to the next week\u2019s drawing.<\/p>\n
\nIn January, the British Columbia Supreme Court awarded Alissa Afonina $1.5 million for her auto-accident brain injury. Before the accident, she had been a demure, high-achieving student. Following the collision, she had no impulse control, became \u201cisolated,\u201d had \u201coutbursts,\u201d made \u201cinappropriate sexual comments,\u201d and was only able to earn a living as a dominatrix. Alfonina\u2019s mother, also injured in the accident, was awarded $940,000.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 It turns out that a person having a heart attack is usually safer when he is in an ambulance headed to a hospital than when he is a patient in a hospital, according to a study by University of North Carolina researchers. It takes non-ER hospital staff three hours to comply with hospital protocols in ordering and evaluating tests. On the other hand, ER and ambulance staff treat every case of cardiac symptoms as life-threatening. The study found the mortality rate for heart-attack victims treated in emergency rooms is 4 percent, compared to 40 percent for patients already admitted for other reasons and then suffering heart attacks.
\n\u2014 While nearly all Americans now enjoy low gasoline prices, residents of sea-locked Alaskan towns such as Barrow, Kotzebue, Nome and Ketchikan have continued to pay $7 a gallon. The towns can be supplied with gas only during a four-month breather from icy sea conditions. They received their final winter shipments last summer. The price the supplier was forced to pay then will dictate pump prices until May or June.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Police in Seville, Spain, reported that a 23-year-old medical student visiting from Poland accidentally fell to her death at the famous Puente de Triana bridge when she maneuvered herself into position on a ledge to take a \u201cselfie.\u201d It was the third \u201cselfie\u201d death on the Iberian peninsula in five months. In August a tourist couple (both also from Poland) fell to their deaths while posing for their photo at Cabo de Roca, Portugal.
\n\u2014 In January, a tourist visiting the Spanish island of Ibiza with her boyfriend jumped up joyously as he proposed marriage to her. She lost her balance and fell 65 feet off a cliff to her death.<\/p>\n
\nBritish tourist Peter Cousins, 55, is dealing with a medical bill of $250,000 after he decided that the middle of a Nevada desert was a good place to have sex. His choice resulted in a heart attack, an emergency rescue, a five-day hospital stay and a break-up with his girlfriend.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cEntomologists are not like other people,\u201d Wired.com reported in January. The magazine revealed that two of them had \u201cproudly\u201d issued \u201cbirth announcements\u201d for the \u201chuman bot fly,\u201d whose larvae one had let gestate beneath his skin for two months. Scientist Piotr Naskrecki and photographer Gil Wizen had been inadvertently bitten while on assignment in Belize. They decided the egg-laying attack on a human being was an important opportunity for research. After all, Naskrecki said, he had never seen an adult bot fly \u201ccrawl out\u201d of its host.<\/p>\n
\nThere are several stories about men who accidentally fell, posterior first, onto compressed-air nozzles and \u201cself-inflated,\u201d to resemble \u201cdough boys\u201d \u2014 usually with fatal results. In May, 2011, in Opotiki, New Zealand, trucker Steven McCormack found himself in similar circumstances. Had it not been for quick-thinking colleagues who pulled him away, he would have been killed. McCormack was hospitalized in severe pain, but the air gradually seeped from his body.<\/p>\n
\nDarryl Isaacs, 50, a personal-injury lawyer who does heavy advertising in Louisville, Ky., was hospitalized in fair condition after being rammed from behind by a car while he was riding his bicycle. Isaacs calls himself the \u201cHeavy Hitter\u201d and the \u201cKentucky Hammer\u201d for his aggressiveness on victims of traffic collisions. The driver who struck Isaacs told police the sun got in his eyes.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 India TV reported that a wild male elephant from an adjoining sanctuary who broke into the Nandan Kanan Zoo in Odisha was besotted with a female, Heera. The male cast aside two other females who were trying to protect Heera and mated with her. The male lingered overnight until zookeepers were finally able to shoo him away.
\n\u2014 A frisky male elephant crushed four cars in 10 days in January at Thailand\u2019s Khao Yai National Park. A park veterinarian said the behavior was the result of the stress of the mating season. Only the last of the four cars was occupied. No injuries were serious.<\/p>\n
\nMargaretta Evans, 63, reported her missing son to the Myrtle Beach, S.C., Police Department in January. She said Jason Callahan had been missing since \u201cearly June of 1995\u201d when he left home to follow the Grateful Dead on tour in California and Illinois. He would, she said, be 38 at present.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 Two men remain at large after stealing an ATM from Casino Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, in January. They smashed through glass front doors, then unbolted the machine. Managers told police the ATM was empty, disabled and scheduled to be moved to another location later that day. A Calgary police officer expressed bemusement at the city\u2019s recent ATM smash-and-grab epidemic, since the machines are hard to unbolt, hard to open and are emptied several times a day. \u201cIt\u2019s a very ineffective way to make a living,\u201d he says.
\n\u2014 Police in Champaign, Ill., charged Clayton Dial, 23, with robbery on New Year\u2019s night for carrying a pellet gun into the Kamakura Japanese restaurant and demanding money from the hostess. He fled quickly when chef Tetsuji Miwa walked over, holding his large sushi knife. \u201cHe saw the blade,\u201d Miwa said later, and \u201cstarted running.\u201d Miwa and two co-workers gave chase and held him for police.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMy ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live,\u201d explained Alfred David, 79, who is known in his native Belgium as \u201cMonsieur Pingouin\u201d (Mr. Penguin). David acquired the name because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official. Mr. Pingouin started a penguin museum that ultimately held 3,500 items. He created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September (2011) Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014 An examination of New York City records through NYC Open Data found that the five most common first names of taxicab drivers licensed by the city are variations in the spelling of the name \u201cMohammed.\u201d
\n\u2014 The last McDonald\u2019s burger to be sold in Iceland before the chain abandoned the country in 2009 has been on open display at the National Museum of Iceland. It was recently moved to the Bus Hostel in Reykjavik, \u201cstill in good condition,\u201d according to the hostel manager. \u201cSome people have even stolen some of the fries,\u201d he said.
\n\u2014 Harvard University medical researcher Mark Shrime documented how easily made-up research can wind up in journals that mimic reputable academic journals by submitting an article composed by software that generates text in a random manner. The article was about \u201cthe surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals.\u201d It was authored by \u201cPinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles.\u201d Of 37 journals, 17 accepted it. Some journals told Shrime he would have to pay a standard $500 fee for publication. Shrime warned that some of the journals have titles dangerously close to those of highly respected journals. He cautions skepticism about journals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"