strange stuff

From strange crimes to strange celebrity deaths, read all of the latest weird and strange stuff news stories on Newser.com

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Goat Faces Down Rapist in Court

Kenyan man gets 10 years for defiling animal

(Newser) - Weird enough is that a 28-year-old man in Kenya got hit with a 10-year jail sentence for bestiality after being caught having sex with a goat. (The Star has the details on how the goat's owner spotted his neighbor in the act.) But weirder still is that the...

City to Girl: You Can't Sell Mistletoe, but You Can Beg

11-year-old runs into rules of vendors and panhandlers

(Newser) - An 11-year-old entrepreneur in Portland, Oregon, got a strange lesson in grown-up economics when she tried to sell mistletoe near the city's public market, reports KATU . A security guard informed her she'd have to move outside the city park's boundaries—or she could just plunk down on...

2K Dead Mice Dropped on Guam's Snake War

They're packed with Tylenol to kill invasive creatures

(Newser) - Guam has a new weapon in its war against brown tree snakes : an army of Tylenol-filled dead mice. The creatures have been dropped onto a US Air Force base using miniature cardboard parachutes, NBC News reports. The snakes, an invasive species, feast on exotic local birds and cause power outages,...

Prisoner Escapes... So He Can Go to Dentist

Then turns himself back in, goes back to jail

(Newser) - A Swedish prisoner managed to escape the minimum-security facility where he was being held, but rather than head for the hills, he went to ... the dentist. He had asked for medical care but had not received it, he claims. "My whole face was swollen. I just couldn't stand...

New Robo-Cop: 'R2-D2's Evil Twin'

300-pound Silicon Valley robot aims to keep an eye on things

(Newser) - Its makers don't like to compare it to "RoboCop or Terminator"—but it's hard not to. The K5 Autonomous Data Machine is an electronic security guard developed in Silicon Valley by a company called Knightscope, Fox News reports. It's five feet tall, weighs 300 pounds,...

Lawyers Discover Teacher Quietly Held $6M Fortune

It took lawyers 2 years to learn extent of Kathleen Magowan's wealth

(Newser) - Kathleen Magowan lived a humble life until her death at 87 in 2011: She taught elementary school for 35 years in Simsbury, Connecticut; lived in a 100-year-old house that eventually sold for $250,000; and told lawyers a few years ago that she guessed her estate was worth about $40,...

$7.5M Bitcoin Fortune Buried in Landfill

 $7.5M Bitcoin Fortune 
 Buried in Landfill 
in case you missed it
Dec 1, 2013 1:02 PM CST

$7.5M Bitcoin Fortune Buried in Landfill

James Howells accidentally tossed a crucial hard drive over the summer

(Newser) - Sitting beneath about four feet of garbage in an area of a Welsh landfill the size of a football field sits a fortune—in the form of a computer hard drive that James Howells threw out this summer while cleaning up his workspace. On it: the cryptographic "private key"...

Man Ablaze Runs Into Church, Pastor Dies in Fire

Not clear how John Sterner became engulfed in flames

(Newser) - An awful story out of Ocean City, Maryland, last week, where a man who was engulfed in flames ran into a church, set it on fire, and ended up dead along with the church's pastor. Investigators think John Sterner, 56, was for some reason covered in a flammable substance,...

Man Builds Deadly Arsenal Using Airport Store Items
Man Builds Deadly Arsenal Using Airport Store Items
in case you missed it
Nov 30, 2013 6:00 PM CST

Man Builds Deadly Arsenal Using Airport Store Items

Including a gun, grenade, crossbow—and they all work

(Newser) - You may already find it ridiculous that you can't bring the tiniest pair of scissors through an airport security checkpoint, but you'll find it even more absurd after reading this: A North Carolina programmer is proving that even with all those security restrictions, it's still possible to...

South Africa Hotel Offers Fake Slum Experience

This 'Shanty Town' has under-floor heating

(Newser) - Well, this is ... interesting: You can now pay half the average South African's monthly salary—or $82 a night—to stay in a slum. Not a real one, as some one billion people worldwide do; instead, Gizmodo reports, South Africa's Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa is offering the...

Guy Switched at Birth Gets $317K to Make Up for It

He was born to rich family, but ended up raised in poverty

(Newser) - Imagine it: You're raised in a tiny apartment by a single mom and grow up to be a truck driver ... only to find out you were actually born to a wealthy family and accidentally switched at birth, and the baby raised in your place grew up to be the...

'Topless Hairstylist' Faces Criminal Charges

But not for what you might think

(Newser) - A woman who allegedly offered topless hairstyling services in northern Colorado faces criminal charges. But police say the problem isn't cutting hair without a top. It's cutting hair without a license. The Longmont Times-Call reports 46-year-old Suzette Hall was arrested Wednesday night on suspicion of practicing cosmetology without...

Guy Fined $600 Over Crazy Sex
 Guy Fined $600 Over Crazy Sex 
Nov 29, 2013 3:26 PM CST

Guy Fined $600 Over Crazy Sex

Adam Disney broke bed, pulled down curtains in heat of passion

(Newser) - A British man's night of wild passion ended up with him fined nearly $600 yesterday, the Liverpool Echo reports. Adam Disney, 28, was out with a female friend in September when—well, we'll just let the defense attorney take it from here: "They had been drinking and...

German Cop May Have Killed Man, Eaten Him

Two men met on cannibal website

(Newser) - A police officer in eastern Germany may have eaten parts of a man he allegedly murdered after the pair met on a cannibalism website. Police found remains of the 59-year-old victim on the officer's property in Saxony, der Spiegel reports via the tabloid Bild. "The agreement (between the...

Man's Prank on Sister Snarls Traffic for Hours

Brother pretends there are explosives in sister's car

(Newser) - A man's prank call to his sister resulted in the closure of an interstate highway in California yesterday. During the afternoon, the man called up his sister anonymously to warn her that there was a bomb in her car, 10News reports. She pulled over on I-15 and called 911,...

Florida Dad: Space Rocks Hit My Son

Testing suggests he's right

(Newser) - Did cosmic debris crash through the atmosphere from outer space to give a 7-year-old Florida boy a nasty gash on his head as he played in his driveway? Steven Lippard's dad believes it did, and initial testing on the pea-sized fragments of rock found in the driveway suggests he...

This Guy Has Been Arrested More Than 1.5K Times

And he's spending Thanksgiving in jail

(Newser) - Henry Earl is spending Thanksgiving in jail—which wouldn't be all that newsworthy, were it not for the fact that Earl has racked up more than 1,500 arrests over the past 43 years, and has spent three of the past five Thanksgivings in the slammer. The 64-year-old's...

Whale Explodes All Over Researcher

Trapped gas inside causes biologist to get doused in gunk

(Newser) - Doesn't it just suck when you're trying to slice open a dead sperm whale, and it ends up exploding right in your face? That's what happened to biologist Bjarni Mikkelsen in Denmark's Faroe Islands this week, the New York Daily News reports. What was Mikkelsen doing...

Surprise: Maine Lobster Caught in ... California

It's the first one seen off Bay Area coast

(Newser) - A fishing boat out of Sausalito, Calif., caught a creature a long way from home in one of its crab traps—a Maine lobster, reports NorCalFishingNews.com . The 8-pounder turned up near the Farallon Islands, thus becoming the first Maine lobster ever spotted off the Bay Area coast, reports the...

Man Says He Was Raised by Wolves

Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja says he traded words for growls

(Newser) - A six-year-old boy was taken into the mountains to help a goatherd, but when the man died, the boy was left alone—until a mother wolf nosed some meat his way. So says Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja, now in his late 60s and long back among humans in the Spanish town...

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