Strange Stuff: Weird Crimes, Crazy Laws, and Other Interesting News Stories - Page 186

Airline Pilot Busted for Seattle Carjacking

Nov 6, 2012 12:15 AM CST

Pilot Busted for Airport Carjacking

Police say drunk pilot stole car hours before Seattle-to-Tokyo flight

(Newser) - A commercial pilot has been arrested for a bizarre carjacking just hours before he was supposed to fly a plane from Seattle to Tokyo. Police say the Omni Air pilot climbed into a stranger's rental car at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and refused to leave even after the driver pulled...

Canada's Yukon Has a Dare: Drink Garnished With ... Toe

Nov 5, 2012 11:38 AM CST

Canada's Yukon Has a Dare: Drink Garnished With ... Toe

The 'Sourtoe Cocktail' has been served for nearly 40 years

(Newser) - Olives, limes, maraschino cherries, and pickled toes? That's right: In the Yukon Territory, one Dawson City saloon serves a drink garnished with a human toe. The tradition began in 1973, after a riverboat captain found a toe preserved in a pickle jar and decided it would be a good...

Kentucky, SC:
No Booze Sales
Tomorrow

Nov 5, 2012 10:46 AM CST

Kentucky, SC: No Booze Sales Tomorrow

Prohibition-era relic lives on

(Newser) - Residents of South Carolina and Kentucky who want to toast the winning candidate—or drown their sorrows—tomorrow had better buy that booze today. Yahoo reports on a quirky holdover from Prohibition days: Laws in both states bar the sale of alcohol on Election Day. The bans herald back to...

Cop Tasers 10-Year-Old
on Playground

Cop Tasers 10-Year-Old on Playground

Boy refused to help clean his car, says lawsuit

(Newser) - A police officer in New Mexico faces a lawsuit after using his Taser on a 10-year-old boy in a school playground, reports Courthouse News Service . The officer was at school for a career day, and he reportedly asked a group of boys to clean his police car. According to the...

Christianity's 'Holiest Site' May Close Over Unpaid Bills

Nov 3, 2012 5:25 PM CDT

Christianity's 'Holiest Site' May Close Over Unpaid Bills

Water company says Jerusalem church owes it $2.1M

(Newser) - Can we call this an unholy water dispute? The Greek Orthodox Church is threatening to shut down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—the most revered site in Christendom—over unpaid water bills, the AFP reports. An Israeli water company says the church owes $2.1 million in back bills,...

Best Defense Against
Asteroids? Try Paintballs

Best Defense Against Asteroids? Try Paintballs

MIT grad student wins award with novel idea

(Newser) - If an asteroid were speeding toward a calamitous collision with Earth, we might be able to knock it off track by ... painting it white. The PopSci blog picks up on the novel idea by MIT grad student Sung Wook Paek: Let's say scientists determined that an asteroid were going...

Grandma Claims
Lotto Just in Time

Nov 3, 2012 5:42 AM CDT

Grandma Claims Lotto Just in Time

$23M ticket sat in her car for months

(Newser) - For more than five months—while Julie Cervera struggled to pay a $600 electrical bill, feed her family and keep the cable company from shutting off her service because she couldn't pay—she was a millionaire without knowing it. Meanwhile, her $23 million lottery ticket languished forgotten in the...

Reporter Sues
Over 'Mock
Kidnapping'
at Gunpoint

Nov 2, 2012 5:41 PM CDT

Reporter Sues Over 'Mock Kidnapping' at Gunpoint

She allegedly stripped, uttered 'last words'

(Newser) - Some practical joke: A pair of reporters kidnapped a prominent Kyrgyzstan journalist and put a gun to her head before revealing it was all just for laughs, the BBC reports. Now Nazira Aytbekova is filing charges against the reporters, saying they held her at gunpoint and made her strip to...

30 Cadets Injured
in All-Out 'Brawl'

Nov 2, 2012 4:10 PM CDT

30 Cadets Injured in All-Out 'Brawl'

Sergeant-tossing ritual leaves 6 hospitalized

(Newser) - An Air Force ritual devolved into an all-out melee last week that left 30 cadets injured and six hospitalized—with concussions, cuts, and an arm bite, NBC News reports. It was all part of the unauthorized "First Shirt/First Snow" ritual, in which cadets toss a sergeant into a snow...

NY Art Museum to Open Exhibit of ... Smells

Nov 2, 2012 3:50 PM CDT

NY Art Museum to Open Exhibit of ... Smells

Chandler Burr explains the world of 'olfactory art'

(Newser) - You won't be able to go and see the special exhibit the New York Museum of Art and Design is opening on November 13—but you will be able to go and smell it. The show, The Art of Scent: 1889-2012 is a first-of-its-kind exhibition of what Chandler Burr...

Elephant Can
'Speak' Korean

Nov 2, 2012 6:15 AM CDT

Elephant Can 'Speak' Korean

Koshik apparently learned to make human sounds to bond with zookeepers

(Newser) - Who needs Doctor Doolittle when animals are learning to speak human languages? First a Beluga whale learns how to say "out" to a diver, and now an elephant in a South Korean zoo has learned to say five words, reports the BBC . Koshik, a male Asian elephant, can "...

For Sale: Naming Rights
to Broke Japan City

Nov 1, 2012 6:52 PM CDT

For Sale: Naming Rights to Broke Japan City

It's called Izumisano, for now

(Newser) - It's come to this in Izumisano, Japan: The city is so broke it hopes to sell its naming rights to the highest bidder, reports AFP . Izumisano owes more than $1 billion to creditors, mainly because it sank so much money into "building roads and other infrastructure" to its...

Sweden's Jobs
Plan: Pay Youth
to Go to Norway

Nov 1, 2012 1:27 PM CDT

Sweden's Jobs Plan: Pay Youth to Go to Norway

Town offers travel, accommodation in Oslo

(Newser) - Sweden has a new strategy to shrink widespread youth unemployment: Send the kids to Norway. The Swedish government is working with the small town of Soderhamn to fund journeys to Oslo for people between the ages of 18 and 28, the Telegraph reports. "We had an unemployment rate of...

Bank President
Greets Robber
—With Colt .380

Nov 1, 2012 11:18 AM CDT

Bank President Greets Robber —With Colt .380

Peoples Bank in Missouri supports concealed gun rights

(Newser) - A bank robber in a Chucky mask got more than he bargained for when he stole $4,779 from the family-owned Peoples Bank & Trust in Missouri this week—the business end of a Colt .380 handgun. The robbery was witnessed by bank president David W. Thompson, who followed the...

Guy Breaks Into House, Builds Fire, Eats Chinese

Oct 31, 2012 4:05 PM CDT

Guy Breaks Into House, Builds Fire, Eats Chinese

Police still searching for suspect

(Newser) - Eating Chinese takeout in front of a glowing fireplace is a pleasant enough way to spend an evening. But state police in northwestern Pennsylvania say there was just one problem with those plans: The person or persons who made the fire and ate the food didn't live there. Troopers...

Wild Boar Goes on
Rampage in Berlin

Oct 30, 2012 1:42 PM CDT

Wild Boar Goes on Rampage in Berlin

Attacks, injures 4 people

(Newser) - Berlin authorities say they shot and killed a 265-pound wild boar after it attacked and injured four people including a police officer in a residential neighborhood. The boar bit a 74-year-old man on the back and leg, and knocked a 74-year-old woman to the ground and injured her hip yesterday...

'Odd' Views
Persist on
Obama's
Religion:
Poll

Oct 29, 2012 5:45 PM CDT

'Odd' Views Persist on Obama's Religion: Poll

'Makes it difficult to trust the results': blogger

(Newser) - The AP released a shocking poll this week showing that racism is up across America and could cost Obama 5 points—but that poll also contains some weird numbers, blogs mollie at Patheos . First, the less weird: Only 10% think he's Muslim—down from 17% in 2010—while about...

Pub Owner Hides Body
to Keep Police Away

Oct 29, 2012 2:54 PM CDT

Pub Owner Hides Body to Keep Police Away

Jason Chidgey couldn't afford to lose weekend business, court hears

(Newser) - What if you're a pub owner who finds a dead body in the men's bathroom on a Friday? In South Wales, Jason Chidgey's answer was to allegedly hide the body in the upstairs bedroom until Tuesday—so police wouldn't shut him down for the weekend and...

Auction Sells Brazilian's Virginity for ... $780K

Male virgin fetches only $3K in same event

(Newser) - An Australian filmmaker's stunt to make a documentary about virginity—and the losing of it—seems to have worked in a big way: An anonymous Japanese man won an online auction with a bid of $780,000 to be 20-year-old Brazilian Catarina Migliorini's first lover, reports the Huffington...

Visit the Island Where
People 'Forget to Die'

Oct 28, 2012 5:58 PM CDT

Visit the Island Where People 'Forget to Die'

Health tips from the fabled Greek isle of Ikaria

(Newser) - Stricken by cancer and given six months to live, a Greek man living in America moved back to his native island of Ikaria—where the cancer mysteriously disappeared. The tale became folklore on Ikaria, where stories of good health date back 25 centuries. Now a study has confirmed what the...

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