-- Within two days of each other in August, in the Kansas towns of Lawrence and Dodge City, runaway tourist-attraction stagecoaches crashed. The Lawrence coach veered into a ditch, injuring one man. A horse on the Dodge City coach slipped down on the street, then took off, carrying the coach into a parked car, after which it overturned and bloodied five elderly passengers.

-- Opponents of Thailand's prime minister Banharn Sipla-archa said he lied about his birthday this year when he claimed it was Aug. 19 and not July 20, and they claimed that he changed the date on the advice of an astrologer so he could be a Leo and thus a better leader. And in June, India's new prime minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, said he moved into his official residence a week ahead of schedule because his astrologers said it would be better for him.

-- A Washington Post story in May on marital abuse in central and southern African nations found that among certain ethnic groups, only 3 percent of wives think they should report a beating to the police. Said one social worker, "A lot of men -- and women -- think that beating your wife is something you do if you really care about her." In some groups, said another, if a man's wife dies without his having beaten her, he rehabilitates his manhood by beating the corpse.

-- The New York Times reported in September on Tokyo's trendy "host clubs" which feature young men as servers and dance partners and which cater only to women -- largely middle-aged women who say such clubs are virtually the only places in the country in which they can be treated well and not be expected to wait on men. And the Los Angeles Times reported in August on the success of the long-standing, 370-female Takarazuka Revue, whose most successful production number has its women cross-dressing and portraying the kind of man many Japanese women do not often get to see, according to them: the suave, romantic, affectionate, considerate male.

-- In August, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported on the modernization of the traditional Mongolian meal of boodog, which is goat broiled inside a "bag" (which is merely the carefully cut and tied skin of the goat): The goat is no longer barbecued over an open fire; it is now typically cooked with a blow torch.

-- The Islamic Court that sets rules for the northern half of Mogadishu, Somalia, announced in September that men must have beards, as did the prophet Mohammed. Said the court chairman, "Those who shave like Elvis Presley, Sylvester Stallone, and the U.S. Marines will not go unpunished." Two weeks later, Afghanistan's new ruling Taleban leadership made a similar decree for male government employees.

-- In September, Peggy-Sue Khumalo, 23, the recently-crowned Miss South Africa, said she would soon sacrifice a goat to her ancestors in gratitude for her success. She also said that if she won the Miss World title in India in November, she would step up her spiritual gratitude to slaughter a cow and 10 oxen.

-- By custom in the mountain region of northern Albania, a teen-age daughter whose father passes away may make a lifetime commitment to dress and behave and conduct business as a male so as to assure that her family is not left unprotected by the absence of a man. According to a July Knight-Ridder report, other males in the villages know about the transformation and generally accept the new "men" with full male privileges.

-- The Latest in Pervert Technology: Police in Toronto, Ontario, arrested a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher in September for allegedly videotaping under the skirts of about 30 women via a "shoe cam" pinpoint-sized lens connected by wires to a camera hidden in his waist pouch. And in July, Portland, Ore., police accused Jess Mitchell Townsend, 36, of rigging a "toilet cam" in public ladies' rooms over the last two years with the wide-angle lens barely visible from inside the tank.

-- In August, Tennessee became the latest state to recognize the inadequacy of its anti-perversion statutes when it charged an Eagleville man only with indecent exposure because the state has no law against what police really believe he did, which was to have sexual intercourse with a miniature horse. But on Sept. 30, a previous oversight in Florida was corrected when its first-ever anti-necrophilia law took effect.

-- Physicians writing in the February 1996 issue of the journal Genitourinary Medicine reported having to prescribe surgery for a man with genital pain. The man reluctantly admitted that about 12 years before, during sex play, his wife had inserted a mascara brush into his urethral opening and that the tip of the brush broke off. Doctors found that fibrous tissue had covered the brush piece, trapping it.

-- This year as usual, summertime brought out foot fetishists, including a man described as age 25 and husky, who posed as a national shoe company representative in August and got at least one woman in Parsippany, N.J., to remove her shoe so he could inspect it nasally, and including a Boston high school teacher who was suspended in June for allegedly sucking the toes of a female student after school.

-- For at least the fifth time in News of the Weird's nine years, a girl or young woman has been convicted of dressing as a male for the purpose of improving her chances of dating another girl or young woman. A 17-year-old girl was convicted in Kingsport, Tenn., in September of three counts of sexual assault by fraud against another 17-year-old girl.

-- A 28-year-old expert mountain climber fell to his death near Redding, Calif., in September as he was demonstrating safety techniques to a group of teen-agers. He had severed his main line to demonstrate the security of the second line, but the second line failed. And two racehorses with eight victories between them died at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., in August, when they crashed into each other head-on during a morning workout.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere.)

-- Overcoming Disabilities: In September, wheelchair-using men in Frankfurt, Germany (no legs), and Pompano Beach, Fla. (missing part of a leg and one eye), attempted bank robberies but were thwarted when a customer and a cop, respectively, rushed in and tipped over the wheelchairs. Also in September, police in East Providence, R.I., arrested Bronna-Jo Carmody for drug trafficking out of her apartment, where she is confined because of her use of crutches and an oxygen machine.

-- On Oct. 3, self-described virgin Doreen Lioy, 41, exchanged vows in San Quentin prison's waiting room with 13-time murderer Richard Ramirez (California's notorious "Night Stalker"). It is the first marriage for both. She wore white; he wore blue. She was raised a Roman Catholic; he is a Satanist.

His side of the aisle was crowded with three relatives; her family refused to attend. After the ceremony, she returned to her houseboat in San Rafael; he returned to death row. Lioy said Ramirez proposed in 1988 but that it wasn't until recently that she thought he was ready to settle down (presumably because he just got out of several years' solitary confinement). Said one observer, "Doreen brings out the best in Richard. They complement each other."

-- Nancy Ho Belli, who wed lawyer Melvin Belli three months before his July death, filed a lawsuit in August in San Francisco against another Belli relative for improperly keeping the skeletal remains of a man named Elmer, which Mr. Belli purchased in the 1940s. A spokesman said the relative would "go to jail before revealing Elmer's whereabouts."

-- Lynne Plaskett, 46, running for re-election as a county councilwoman in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., said on TV's "Maury Povich Show" in September that she was cured of the often-fatal T-cell lymphoma 20 years ago by a small UFO disk that hovered over her bed and scanned her body before disappearing.

-- Stock-car racing legend Richard Petty, running for North Carolina secretary of state, paid a $65 fine in September for improperly bumping a car that wouldn't let him pass in the left lane on Interstate 85. According to a state trooper, Petty said if the driver got in front of him again, he was going to knock his "rear end" off the road. Petty told a reporter, "Now if it had been a NASCAR showdown, [the driver] would have been over in the ditch somewhere."

-- Robert Dorton barricaded himself in his residential motel room in Billings, Mont., in August and held police off for more than 30 hours, firing dozens of shots at them, because he feared authorities were about to take away his 15 pet rats, some of which were reported to be the size of cats. Before the siege, according to animal-control officer Mary Locke, Dorton kissed one of the rats and referred to them as "my brothers." Right then, she said, "I knew what I was up against."

-- An unidentified woman who refused to give her name was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean, about two miles out, near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in September, dressed in street clothes. She told one of the rescuers, "I'm fine, my family is here," and said she had been eating seaweed for the three days she had been in the water. She said she was "in transition," that she had just come up to get some air. She was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital.

-- School bus driver Kerri Lynn Patavino, 28, was convicted of statutory rape in Bridgeport, Conn., in August for having sex with a 14-year-old passenger, who said she put a spell on him and made him lick her blood. According to the boy, the two had sex more than a dozen times, and she sent him love letters signed in blood. Patavino admitted that she is a follower of Wicca, an ancient, witchcraft-practicing religion.

-- Mr. Esyededeea Aesfyza, 46, was sentenced to six months in jail in Washington, D.C., in June for having painted swastikas at more than 100 public places in town in the previous three years. In court, Aesfyza, dressed in a long white robe with a green sash, expounded on his love of swastikas, said he prayed to them and said they are a symbol against circumcision.

-- According to documents obtained by a Canadian magazine in August, Canada's military representative in the United States, Maj. Gen. Donald Williams, billed taxpayers improperly to have his house cleaned and for ordinary civilian clothing and golf course green fees, and Mrs. Williams charged off about $100 for armpit-waxing.

-- In August, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that hundreds of former pro athletes, some of whom, like Joe Montana and Bo Jackson, earned millions of dollars a year, were also paid worker compensation benefits under California's lenient law that makes such payments for injured workers an absolute entitlement. Some other states, by contrast, restrict pro athletes' claims.

-- In June, the government of Saskatchewan said it was unsuccessful in trying to return to the manufacturer almost 1,000 5-inch-long "wooden demonstrators" designed for school condom-education classes. Schools refused to use them, and opponents of the program called for disposal via a "weenie roast."

Wayne Dumond made News of the Weird in 1988 when he won $110,000 in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against an Arkansas sheriff. Vigilantes had castrated Dumond as an alleged rapist, and the sheriff had displayed Dumond's privates in a jar on his desk as a souvenir, which a jury said was unnecessary ridicule. In 1990, the Parole Board recommended Dumond be freed based on DNA evidence that showed it unlikely he had committed the rape, but then-Gov. Bill Clinton, who was a friend of the rape victim's mother, rejected the recommendation. In September 1996, Gov. Mike Huckabee ordered Dumond released, based on that DNA evidence.

Jimmy Hogg, 77, collapsed and died of a heart attack in September on the first hole of a Fife, Scotland, golf course. His four partners paused briefly as an ambulance took the body away, then resumed their round, with one making the required statement, "I'm sure Jimmy would have wanted us to do that." And earlier in the month, Arthur Mooney, 67, similarly died in the Spirit Mountain Casino in Grande Ronde, Ore., but customers continued to play slot machines while the body lay nearby on the floor for an hour.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or 74777.3206@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere.)

-- More Anal-Retentive Suspects: Charinassa Fairley was charged in July with killing her husband in Baton Rouge, La., after police found a checklist that included the notations "Make a prank call to him; offer food and love; make him take a bath with you. Put on gloves" and "Make love like never before for the last time. Lay down after he falls asleep. Pop him." And in September, former Navy Ensign Dana R. Collins, 35, was convicted of the murder of a colleague after police found a to-do list that included the items "Take him out," "Cut him up/take head/fingers and toes," "Put him in 2 bags," and "Drive body to Pennsylvania. Keep head and fingers and toes -- scatter on way back." And after Gary Lynn Davis, 43, was arrested in July and charged with sexual assaults on several children around Adrian, Pa., police found in his home a neatly printed, three-page list of 125 "Boys and Girls I've Been With" that included abbreviations for the acts committed with each.

-- The New York Attorney General's office announced in September that a new state law banning prison inmates from throwing bodily fluids at guards did not cover one pressing problem: Some inmates recently mailed their semen in plastic pouches to their wives or girlfriends as an expression of love, and the envelopes squished open when run through mail-sorting machines, splattering workers. However, since the inmates did not intend to splatter them, the law does not apply.

-- In July, artist Victoria Baldwin prevailed in her lawsuit against the Sydney, Australia, salon Synergy over a bad haircut she got last year. She won $750 plus $234 to compensate her for the hats she had to buy to disguise the cut, which she described as so bad that she looked like Hillary Clinton.

-- Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit in Lufkin, Texas, against the Walt Disney Co., objecting to three recent films marketed to family audiences that they say actually contained subliminal sexual messages: "The Little Mermaid" supposedly has a scene in which a minister has an erection; a voiceover in one scene in "Aladdin" whispers "Take off your clothes"; and "The Lion King" contains a scene in which the word "sex" is formed with clouds, grass and flower petals.

-- Scott Byron Morrison, 47, in jail awaiting trial for the 1995 murder of his ex-wife, filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Calgary (Alberta) General Hospital in August. Morrison claims that if the hospital had properly treated him for a mental illness, he would not have been released and would not, four days later, have killed the woman with a shotgun blast.

-- Earlier this year, unsuccessful Puyallup, Wash., school-board candidate Dale Washam filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Washington state Republican party and others because, he said, the Republicans stole the 1994 "Contract With America" idea from him. Washam said he originated the concept of holding political candidates to their promises when he ran in 1991, 1992 and 1993.

-- Customer Jerry Merich filed a lawsuit against the Starbucks Corp. in July over a 1995 injury in which a Starbucks employee in the company's Littleton, Colo., shop greeted him with a "high five" slap of the hand and caused a shoulder injury which left Merich unable to work for six months.

-- In August, Chris Bowdish's Chevron gas station in Lake Oswego, Ore., offered free mammograms administered by local hospital personnel. Said Bowdish, "You can tune up your body while you're having your car tuned up."

-- A Minneapolis firm is marketing an electronic device that allows people to see whether they have the proper temperament to become parents in that it "cries" at random intervals (more often on the "cranky" setting than on the "easy" setting) and stops only when the "parent" reacts properly. To stop the crying, a probe must be held in place for up to 35 minutes to simulate the time required to feed, bathe and comfort the crying infant. Shaking or tilting the device causes it to register an "abuse" signal.

-- At a trade fair in Vienna, Austria, in August, body-paint artist Karl Machhamer demonstrated his design for a skin-tight latex condom, custom-painted onto a penis. He plans to market bottles with enough paint for three applications, along with instructions, for about $8. The main drawback is the seven-minute wait while the paint dries.

-- In July, Philadelphia inventor Bill Killian introduced the Lawn Buddy message machine, in which a 5-inch-tall mechanical animal arises from a flower pot placed by the front door, announces that the resident is away, and invites the visitor to say a message. Killian says it will be on the market in early 1997 for about $30.

-- Earlier this year and backed by $100,000 in federal, state and private grants, Kodiak, Alaska, photographer Marion Stirrup developed PlanTea, a nutrient-rich mix of kelp, fish bone meal, dried beet root powder and other ingredients, which she touts as a superior plant food. Stirrup says the list of ingredients came to her telepathically from her 16-inch palm plant, georgiane (which prefers its name spelled with a lower-case G, Stirrup said).

-- Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (7) The person believed to be missing and dead but who attends his own funeral and shocks the mourners, as did Dulal Chandra Das, who turned up in October after having merely gone off from his home in Calcutta, India, to pray for a while. And (8) the episodes of just-desserts shootings in hunting season, as when Clifford Shellman allegedly shot to death another hunter in May near Blooming Grove, N.Y., after the two inadvertently coaxed each other closer together by sounding their turkey lures.

-- In August, a 60-year-old stray-dog caretaker was killed in Los Angeles when four large sacks of dog food fell on top of her in her home. And in August, the Ontario Labour Ministry issued a warning after two professional divers drowned in June and July in ponds while searching for golf balls for Sports Quest Inc., which runs a $500,000-a-year business of reselling "experienced golf balls." And Basilio Re died in the village of Vigogna, Italy, in July, during a party to celebrate his 100th birthday, when a gust of wind blew off his hat and he suffered a heart attack chasing it.