[763] in Humor
HUMOR: NoTW 2/24/95
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Tue Mar 14 14:19:32 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 14:13:50 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 12:48:41 -0500
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.368 (News of the Weird, February 24, 1995)
by Chuck Shepherd
LEAD STORY
* After a 34-year-old man somehow convinced a 19-year-old Central Bible
College student to submit to a gynecological exam in his motel room so
she could be cleared for a "scholarship" offer, Springfield, Mo.,
prosecutors said in January that the man's only crime apparently was a
misdemeanor deceptive business practice. And police in Nashville, Tenn.,
are in a quandary this month about whether to charge Raymond Mitchell,
45, with a crime. Six women reported that he telephoned them, convinced
them to blindfold themselves and to wait for him, and had sex with them.
Each of the women said she assumed it was a boyfriend calling. One woman
had sex with Mitchell in that manner several times without realizing he
was a stranger. [Springfield News-Leader, 1-15-94, 1-18-95; Tennessean,
1-22-95, 1-26-95]
BRIGHT IDEAS
* The New York Times reported in January that among United Nations
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's suggestions for greater UN
recognition in 1995--its 50th anniversary--were advertisements featuring
a beautiful woman in an expensive car driving by the UN building and
exclaiming, "Ah, the United Nations!" [N. Y. Times, 1-3-95]
* In December, two avid Beethoven fans acquired a four-inch-long lock of
the composer's hair for $7,300 at a Sotheby's auction in London and plan
to have it tested to confirm historical suspicions that the composer had
African blood and had syphilis. The hair allegedly was snipped by
Beethoven's father in 1827. [The State (Columbia, S. C.)-AP, 12-18-94]
* Police in Bimghamton, N. Y., finally were able to fingerprint Lane L.
Fontes on December 13 and thus learned he was wanted for parole violations
in Virginia. They had to wait until his fingers healed because Fontes,
who had been arrested two weeks earlier for leaving the scene of a car
accident, had deliberately chewed the skin off of the tips of all ten
fingers just after he was arrested, making it impossible to fingerprint
him. [AP wirecopy, 12-14-94]
* James R. Scott was convicted in November of removing sandbags from a
Mississippi River levee during the 1993 floods, causing millions of
dollars in damages and closing the only bridge for 100 miles that
connected Missouri and Illinois. According to a witness at Scott's trial,
Scott, of Fowler, Ill., did it to strand his wife in Missouri "so he could
have a party at his house." [Columbia Tribune-AP, 11-1-94]
* In her Chicago trial in November for trying to hire a hit man to kill
her husband, physician Wynne Superson denied the charge and testified that
her desire to see her husband dead was just a fantasy. However,
prosecutors produced a tape in which a police informant discussed a hit
man with Superson, who said she could not afford to pay money but would
offer the hit man oral sex every day for the next ten years. [Chicago
Tribune, 11-11-94]
* In June, the U. S. Army revealed to Congress that in 1964 and 1965 its
scientists had gone into stockyards in six cities, sneaked up on cattle,
and sprayed them with ordinary deodorant. The Army wanted to see how
difficult it would be for the Soviets to sneak into stockyards and spread
hoof-and-mouth germs in order to poison the U. S. meat supply.
[Albuquerque Journal-AP, 8-5-94]
* Last spring, New Jersey officials stopped a rash of purse-snatchings
in restrooms along the Garden State Parkway by removing hooks from ladies'
room stall doors. (Thieves would reach over the stall doors and remove
purses, which women had hung on hooks while they used the toilet.)
According to a Philadelphia Inquirer story in June, the thieves then
reinstalled the hooks at their own expense, facilitating the theft rate
to rise once again. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 6-14-94]
FEUDS
* As part of a longstanding feud, James Helton petitioned the Sumter (S.
C.) City Council in August to change the name of Goodson Road, which runs
by his property, to Helton Road. The government paved the road ten years
ago and named it for the neighboring Goodson family after asking residents
what name they preferred for the road. Helton's petition pointed out that
his family had lived on the road since 1907 (versus 1935 for the Goodsons)
and that on the day of the name survey, the Heltons weren't home.
[Charleston Post & Courier, 8-13-94]
* In September, an employee of the Myers Construction Company was
convicted of misdemeanor assault against the owner of a competing company,
Herbert M. Miller. While Miller was in his bulldozer working on the
Stewartstown Station development in York, Pa., in June 1993, three Myers
employees blocked his way in their earth-moving machines, and when Miller
tried to go over a curb around them, one followed him, caught up to him,
and used his machine's "bulldozer bucket" to lift Miller's bulldozer off
the ground and tip it over. [York Daily Record, 9-16-94, 9-17-94]
* In September, St. Louis, Mo., police accused Joseph Monti, 87, of
shooting to death former mob figure Frank Parrino outside Parrino's tavern
in July. According to police, the reason Monti gave for the killing was
that Parrino beat Monti up once in the mid-1960s when Monti told Parrino
to leave his club because he was making too much noise. [St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, 9-17-94]
CREME DE LA WEIRD
* In January, anesthesiologist Channagirie Manjanatha pleaded guilty to
criminal negligence in Regina, Saskatchewan, for leaving the room for 15
minutes during surgery to make a phone call, thus leaving an oxygen
machine unmonitored, which resulted in brain damage to the patient. And
in November, the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners suspended
neurosurgeon Raymond Sattler for nine incidents including one in which he
took a lunch break in the middle of aneurysm surgery, leaving the
patient's brain exposed with no other physician in the room. [Edmonton
Journal-CP, 1-7-95; Charlotte Observer-AP, 11-25-94; ]
MISCELLANEOUS ELOQUENCE
* Jack Wright of Kingston, Ontario, the Guinness Book record holder for
the owner of the most cats at one time (689), quoted in the Toronto Star
in April: "You can visualize a hundred cats. Beyond that, you can't.
Two hundred, five hundred, it all looks the same." [Sault Star-Toronto
Star-CP, 4-28-94]
Copyright 1995, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the entertainment of readers. No commercial use may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
