Weird News

A collection of weird and strange news articles from around the Internet.

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Woman in 'Shakira shaking' contest sues
NEW YORK - A woman who said she fell off a slippery bar and injured herself while dancing in a "Shake-It-Like-Shakira" contest is suing the Manhattan saloon that sponsored the competition.

Man says Bibles in pocket stopped bullet
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A 54-year-old Orange Park man credits two small Bibles in his shirt pocket for saving his life when they stopped a bullet.

Ghost masks doom alleged armed robbers
MARYSVILLE, Calif. (AP) - A pair of armed robbers thought that wearing ghost masks would guard their identity. Instead, it led to their undoing, investigators say. A witness saw the ghosts run out the back door of the Best Buy Cigarettes store in rural Marysville the day before Halloween, watching as they jumped into a two-door Mazda sports car.

Children Dropped Off At Unknown Tampa Home
TAMPA, Fla. -- Tampa police identified the parents of the two children dropped off at a home in the Sulphur Springs area. Terry Latimore and Cristinia Dennard were reportedly the parents of the 3-year-old girl and 1-year-old boy left at an unknown residence Tuesday morning. The children weren't harmed.

Ky. Poll Worker Charged With Choking Voter
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A poll worker in south Louisville was arrested Tuesday morning and charged with assault and interfering with an election, an official said.

Suicide bid sparks punch-up among spectators
BERLIN (Reuters) - A young woman's rooftop suicide bid in Germany sparked a mass brawl between spectators encouraging the 21-year-old to jump and a group of homeless people trying to protect her, authorities said Tuesday.

Cool Links

A collection of cool, weird and funny links from around the Internet.

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Strange Statues around the World
Collection of Strange Statues around the World

Stages of Life
The various stages of life of men vs. women.

1,000,000,000 Thank Yous
Know anyone who could use a million Thank Yous?

Harry Potter and Star Wars

THEOLOGICAL THERMODYNAMICS
This document reproduces two classics of science parody/humor. The first appeared in Applied Optics (1972, 11 A14). It applies the physics of thermodynamics to conclude that Heaven is hotter than Hell. The second is a response which combines Biblical evidence with thermodynamics to argue that, while heaven is devilishly hot, hell it hotter still. It appeared in the Journal of Irreproducible Results in 1979.

Joke of the Day

3 months to live

A woman was in the hospital after feeling very ill. The doctor says to her, "I have some bad news for you. You only have three months to live." "Oh that's terrible," the woman sighs, "what am I going do?" The doctor replies, "Marry an insurance agent." "Will I live longer?" asks the woman. " No," replies the doctor, "but it will SEEM longer."

1519 - Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great pomp as would befit a returning god.

1520 - Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 persons.

1576 - Eighty Years' War: Pacification of Ghent - The States-General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.

1602 - The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened to the public.

1620 - The Battle of White Mountain, the first battle in the Thirty Years' War, takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.

1793 - In Paris, the French Revolutionary government opens the Louvre to the public as a museum.

1837 - Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which would later become Mount Holyoke College

1861 - American Civil War: The "Trent Affair" – The USS San Jacinto stops the United Kingdom mailship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.

1864 - U.S. presidential election, 1864: Abraham Lincoln is reelected in an overwhelming victory over George McClellan.

1889 - Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.

1892 - U.S. presidential election, 1892: Grover Cleveland is elected over Benjamin Harrison and James B. Weaver to win the second of his non-consecutive terms.

1895 - While experimenting with electricity Wilhelm Röntgen discovers x-rays.

1899 - The Bronx Zoo opens

1917 - People's Commissars gives authority to Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin

1923 - Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

1932 - U.S. presidential election, 1932: Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover in a landslide victory.

1933 - Great Depression: New Deal - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.

1935 - A dozen labor leaders come together to announce the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), an organization charged with pushing the cause for industrial unionism.

1935 - Fernand Bouisson becomes Prime Minister of France

1937 - The Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude ("the eternal Jew") opens in Munich.

1937 - The Chinese Youth Journalist Association was created in Shanghai. The day has become Chinese Journalist Day.

1939 - Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.

1939 - In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes an assassination attempt while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

1941 - Albanian Communist Party founded.

1942 - Holocaust: In Ternopil, western Ukraine, German SS deport about 2,400 Jews from Ternopil ghetto to the Belzec death camp, so called "Second Aktion". When the Germans captured Ternopil, about 18,000 Jews lived in the city.

1942 - World War II: Operation Torch - United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.

1942 - World War II: French resistance coup in Algiers, by which 400 Civil French patriots neutralized Vichyst XIXth Army Corps during 15 hours, arrested vichyst generals (Juin, Darlan, etc.), and so allowed the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers, then, from there, to the whole French North Africa.

1950 - Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.

1950 - Pope Pius XII witnesses the "Miracle of the Sun" while at the Vatican"[1]

1960 - U.S. presidential election, 1960: John F. Kennedy is elected over Richard M. Nixon, becoming the youngest man elected to that office.

1965 - The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.

1965 - The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War.

1965 - The soap opera Days of Our Lives debuts on NBC in the United States.

1966 - Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate.

1966 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.

1971 - The fourth album of British rock group Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin IV) is released, including one of the group's most well known songs, "Stairway to Heaven".

1973 - The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay 2.9 million USD.

1974 - In Salt Lake City, Utah, Carol DaRonch narrowly escapes abduction by serial killer Ted Bundy.

1979 - Foundation of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action).

1987 - Remembrance Day Bombing: In Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, an Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes, at a ceremony honouring Britain's war dead, killing eleven people.

1988 - U.S. presidential election, 1988: George H. W. Bush is elected over Michael Dukakis.

1991 - Marion Barry is reelected mayor of Washington, D.C..

1994 - For the first time in 40 years the United States Republican Party takes control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in midterm congressional elections.

1997 - US president Bill Clinton speaks at a dinner sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, the USA's largest gay rights organisation.

2002 - Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences".

2004 - War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2005 - Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Corzine is elected governor of New Jersey.