If you spent your year worrying about Angelina and Brad or Tom and Katie or Nick and Jessica, or, heaven forbid, even the important things like Delay, de war and de natural disasters, you probably mis... more
A documentary, "The Indigo Revolution," debuts in January, with World Indigo Weekend scheduled for Jan. 27 to Jan. 29, touting "special," high-energy kids regarded by their doting parents as psychic a... more
British store owners seeking to drive away obnoxious, congregating teenagers have turned to security consultant Howard Stapleton's recent invention, similar to a dog whistle, that emits a high-frequen... more
While Canadian "global warming" protesters express alarm at the dwindling outdoor hockey season (fewer months with ice, fewer days cold enough for hard ice), a growing number of "hockey" players are t... more
The Official Shoe of Illegal Immigrants: Artist Judi Werthein's high-top sneaker "Brinco" went on sale recently ($215 a pair) at boutiques in San Diego and New York City, with tiny accessories (compas... more
"Cow-tipping" (the legendary prank of sneaking up on a dozing cow and pushing her over) was exposed as a near-impossibility by researchers at the University of British Columbia, according to a Novembe... more
Among the "10 Worst Jobs in Science" in Popular Science's annual November listing: Harvard researchers in Borneo who catch orangutan urine (in plastic sheets, the way firefighters catch jumpers) for s... more
At 10 p.m. on Oct. 19, Ralph Parker, 93, in his Chevrolet Malibu, eased up to a tollbooth on Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg, Fla., inattentive to the fact that there was a dead body lodged in his wi... more
As traditionally domineering husbands reach retirement age in Japan, the wives of as many as half of them may suffer some degree of Retired Husband Syndrome (rashes, ulcers, other stress symptoms), ac... more
Student Sarah Sevick filed a formal complaint in September with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, of violating the Americans With Disabili... more
The Ohio High School Athletic Association apologized to football player Bobby Martin of Colonel White High in Dayton after the referees barred him from a September game because he was not wearing the ... more
Brett Backwell, Australian rules football player for Gleneig, a suburb of Adelaide, whose broken finger has hampered his playing for three years, decided in September to forgo bone fusion in favor of ... more
In September, nine-year veteran weathercaster Scott Stevens of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, Idaho, resigned to pursue his obsession of proving that the massiveness of Hurricane Katrina must have been caused ... more
Fire officials in Warrnambool, Australia, continue to investigate a Sept. 15 incident in which the carpet of a downtown business burned in several spots, following loud crackling noises, as Frank Clew... more
Another Underreported Success Story in the Rebuilding of Iraq: "Abu Mustafa" (a nickname) is part of a small market of vendors of pornographic videos operating in Baghdad, according to an August Reute... more
Two extreme sports enjoying modest success recently (according to stories in, respectively, Time magazine and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin): (1) Yak-skiing in Manali, India (A person on skis and holding... more
Update: In July 2004, as News of the Weird mentioned, a federal appeals court ruled that the leak-safety standards for the long-awaited nuclear waste depository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain were too wea... more
-- In court papers filed in 1994 but which only recently drew public attention, lawyers for the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., challenged a child-support claim against a priest by pointing ou... more
In July, film director David Lynch announced that he had formed a foundation to raise $7 billion to fund 8,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners to bring world peace by creating a "unified field... more
In July, after word got out that the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" could be fitted with an online update to make some of its scenes explicitly sexual, an 85-year-old grandmother in New Yo... more
Even though India now has 80,000 licensed dentists, nearly 100 "street dentists" continue to operate in dusty, open-air "offices," performing extractions and "fitting" used dentures for, typically, 1 ... more
Mark Nuckols, a business student at Dartmouth, has begun selling a tofu-like food, Hufu, that is flavored to resemble what he believes is the taste of human flesh. His target audience is those who alr... more
A subculture of hip-hop music has developed recently among computer science professionals, who taunt each other in verse much as mainstream rap artists do, according to a June report on Wired.com. "Ge... more
The Jordan River, considered by believers to have been the gateway to the Garden of Eden (and by Christians to have been where Jesus was baptized), is now more than 50 percent raw sewage and agricultu... more
Willie Windsor, 54, of Phoenix has for several years lived as a full-time baby, wearing frilly dresses, diapers and bonnets, sucking on a pacifier, eating Gerber cuisine, and habitually clutching a ra... more
Sonette Ehlers of Kleinmond, South Africa, recently invented a tampon-like sheath that she says will reduce the disturbing number of rapes that plague that country, but local anti-violence leaders are... more
Gerardo Flores, 19, was convicted of murder in June in Lufkin, Texas, in the death of the 5-month-old fetus of his girlfriend, Erica Basoria. Flores admitted that he had stood on Basoria's stomach sev... more
Yamaha Corp. recently introduced the MyRoom, which is a customizable, soundproof, shed-like structure, with 27 square feet of floor space, for installation inside notoriously crowded Japanese homes, s... more
In an era of tight education budgets, one category of Texas school spending seems unrestrained, according to a May Houston Chronicle story: high school football stadiums. More than 20 new or planned f... more