News of the Weird

[ianb@sun670.telecom.tandem.com (zen machine)]

Co' ca'i na`y cho ma^'y ba'c ddo.c gia?i tri' cuo^'i tua^`n.
The^' mo*'i bie^'t tre^n ddo*`i na`y co' nhie^`u ngu*o*`i...
qua' qua'i! :))

Cheers,
Ian
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Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an 
airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills 

A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend 
in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced
shooting beer cans off each other's head

A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety record 
showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the use of safety 
goggles on the job. According to Industrial Machinery News, the
film's depiction of gory industrial accidents was so graphic that
twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in their rush to leave 
the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man required 
seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while 
watching the film.

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons,
setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but
by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had 
boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and 
back pain. 

Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a 
book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page
manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips
of paper in seconds when a worker confused the copier with the shredder.

A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days 
later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, 
he went out for a sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him
paged [over the loudspeaker]. Police officers recognized his name 
and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car he had 
stolen over the lunch hour.

Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing
a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a 
photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the
copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought 
the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" 
was working, the suspect confessed.

When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused 
to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened
to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police 
and was arrested.

A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking,"
stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an 
officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.
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