-- Calgary, Alberta, construction worker Michael Pearse, 22, an admitted hothead, pleaded guilty to making threats in 1996 while trying to find a friend's ex-girlfriend, but at his sentencing hearing in November 1998 said he is now a gentle man and had the report of a government neuropsychologist as evidence. The cause of his change: In February 1998, Pearse was hit in the head and knocked out by a crowbar that bounced off a wall after he swung it, and when he came to, he had an amnesia that had turned him into what the doctor said is a "considerate, caring, benign guy," with no aggression at all. The judge postponed sentencing so he could think things over.

-- In November, after French surgeons transplanted an arm and a hand on a man, prominent Italian plastic surgeon Nicolo Scuderi announced that he was ready to perform the world's first penis transplant and in fact had three potential patients. Scuderi said the operation would be less complicated than a reattachment although he was not sure all penile functions would be effective. He said his initial operations would be on transsexual women seeking to become men and not merely on men who seek larger genitals. And the next day, China's Xinhua news agency reported that army surgeons had constructed a new penis, out of abdominal tissue, for a 6-year-old boy who had had an accident.

-- Diane Ellis, Clearwater, Fla., candidate for a state House seat, got 27 percent of the vote despite her persistent, inexplicable claims that her opponent, the son of locally well-known U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, was an imposter from out of state, hired to impersonate the younger Bilirakis.

-- As in every election, several candidates who died during the campaign remained on the ballot, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who took eventual winner Lee Baca down to the wire even though he died four days before the election. In the Yakima, Wash., race for county coroner, incumbent Leonard Birkinbine was re-elected, although he died two days before; he was running unopposed because his only challenger, John Reynolds, had died on Sept. 14, the day before the primary (which he won).

-- In an upset proportional to Jesse (The Body) Ventura's becoming governor of Minnesota, a challenger to the Mendocino County, Calif., district attorney won, despite the incumbent's stature as president of the state association of district attorneys. The new DA is ex-con Norman Vroman, who served time for tax evasion and still owes $1.3 million in back taxes, but is very popular because he favors decriminalization of marijuana. (Vroman says he will prosecute anyone the sheriff arrests, but the newly elected sheriff favors decriminalization of marijuana, also.)

-- A ballot question in the District of Columbia, allowing the cultivation and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, was voted on, and the yes's and no's were counted by computer, but so far the outcome is not known. After the ballots were printed, but before election day, a federal law authored by U.S. Rep. Robert Barr of Georgia passed, forbidding D.C. from spending any money on the medical-marijuana initiative, which includes the money required to type up the computer-generated results and release them to the public.

-- The Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Arkansas, surgeon Fay Boozman, said during the campaign that a "rape exception" for abortion is not necessary because the stress of rape produces hormonal changes in the woman that prevent conception. He did not produce research but said his statement was based on general knowledge in the medical community.

-- In an effort to upgrade her long-shot campaign against incumbent U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Republican Crystal Young, 57 (who beat 8 challengers in the primary), said late in the campaign that the reason she qualifies for Social Security disability payments is the pain she experiences from once having had electromagnetic needles implanted in her body by actress Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine denied ever meeting Young.

-- In an era when Hollywood stars support causes such as Farm Aid, human rights campaigns, and ending child labor, actor Wilford Brimley became the celebrity spokesperson this fall opposing Arizona's Proposition 201, which sought to ban cockfighting (and which ultimately passed). Brimley lives in Utah, but he drove regularly across the border to attend cockfights. "They're magnificent," he said of the roosters. "It's always thrilling to watch."

-- As reported earlier in "News of the Weird," Tennessee state Senate challenger Byron (Low-Tax) Looper was charged with shooting to death the incumbent, Tommy Burks, 14 days before the election. The deceased Burks was one of eight Tennessee state senators to receive the highest-rated endorsement of the National Rifle Association. Burks' widow won the race, and Looper, in jail, still received 571 votes.

-- Voters in Newport, Maine, voted almost 3-1 against a proposed ordinance that would make female public toplessness illegal. The issue had been forced by the propensity of Desiree Davis, 34, to mow her mother's lawn without a shirt, which provoked complaints despite the fact that current law only forbids exposing the genitals and buttocks.

Police in Winston-Salem, N.C., arrested Sidney Reuben Smith, 48, in November after he applied for a checking account at a BB&T bank branch, claiming to be Jerry Cain and possessing Cain's ID. A bank officer called the police. The real Jerry Cain had passed away three weeks earlier after a long illness, a fact known to all at the bank since his widow, Melinda Cain, is a teller there.

In July, British climber Alan Hinkes succeeded in scaling the 26,000-foot-high Nanga Parbot in Pakistan, a year after he had to retire from a previous attempt. As reported in "News of the Weird" last year, Hinkes, after great expense and preparation, was about halfway up when he was eating a Pakistani bread called chapati, which is topped with flour. The wind blew the flour in his face, causing him to sneeze, which resulted in a pulled back muscle that made further climbing impossible.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- Rev. John Wayne "Punkin" Brown Jr., 34, died on Oct. 3 of a rattlesnake bite while ministering at the Rock House Holiness Church in northeast Alabama near Scottsboro. In a landmark book on snake-handling preachers in the South ("Salvation on Sand Mountain" by Dennis Covington), Brown was called the "mad monk," the one most "mired in the ... blood lust of the patriarchs." His wife, Melinda, died in the same way three years ago at a church in Middlesboro, Ky.

-- In September, Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, took three weeks' paid sick leave for depression, reportedly caused by then-imminent budget negotiations he would have to conduct from a minority position, controlling just 42 of the 165-seat Parliament. He pronounced himself well late in the month and returned to work. And in August, Finland's prime minister, Paavo Lipponen, took six days' partly compensated paternity leave after his wife gave birth to a baby girl. The law allows up to 12 days for fathers.

In Toronto in August, a circus performer was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting his estranged wife, and also charged was a circus dwarf who allegedly helped the man and took pictures of the attack. And in Edwardsville, Ill., in September, former circus performer ("bearded lady") Vivian Wheeler filed a lawsuit against a former colleague, a dwarf named Steven Carter, accusing him of attacking her after a night of drinking.

The German television network ARD reported in July that for the last 15 years, the KEG waste disposal company has been turning the remains of incinerated miscarried fetuses, along with other hospital waste, into granules for use in road construction. When informed of the practice, the regional health minister said she thought that was "morally incorrect."

Seattle, July: After a night of drinking, Donald R. Wood III, 27, fell six floors down an elevator shaft and was not discovered for five days. (He survived.) Breezewood, Pa., August: Michael Giovanetti went over an embankment in a one-car accident and was not able to crawl out of his mangled car for four days, but then finally made it up a 75-foot slope where a passing motorist stopped to help him. Tokyo, August: A 23-year-old Chinese stowaway survived a three-hour airline flight by clinging to the landing gear in sub-zero temperatures at an altitude of up to six miles. (Upon landing, he was immediately deported.)

In West Hartford, Conn., in August, renowned lawyer Johnnie Cochran, defending two Rottweilers accused of barking too much, lost the case. Cochran represented his friend Flora Allen (mother of basketball player and actor Ray Allen), whose dogs were the subject of numerous barking complaints, but he failed to persuade a judge to lift a 9 p.m. outdoor curfew on the dogs. Final disposition of the case was set for March.

-- At a London trade show in September, NCR Corp. unveiled the MicroWeb, a combination microwave oven/TV/computer with Internet access, which it hopes to consumer-test soon and offer for sale at about $700. Said a spokesman, "(A)s the pizza is happily spinning around, you can ... check your bank balance, send an e-mail, or even watch the last five minutes of 'Friends.'"

-- In May, the president of Create Corp., a Japanese "alibi" telephone answering service, said he had started acquiring as clients people who were so ashamed of having been laid off from work that they pay the answering service to create an illusory job and title for them so that callers will think they are still working. (Most of the firm's previous clients were prostitutes who needed to convince their friends and parents that they work for a fictitious but respectable company.)

-- In August, the British biotech company Kiotech began test-marketing a disposable wipe containing human sexual pheromones that would, as a company executive said, "boost the wearer's sexual-smell signature." Xcite! packets are now being sold in men's room vending machines in nightclubs in three cities in England. (The substance itself smells awful so the wipes also contain cologne.)

-- In May, Avon Silversmiths of London introduced a $280 crucifix containing a built-in screeching alarm, designed for clergy who are apprehensive about violence at work. A recent survey revealed one in three British clergy have at some point been attacked on church grounds.

William Lee Beck, 41, was arrested in August and charged with robbing Starvin' Steve's market in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. According to police, Beck entered the store with a large rock in his hand, grabbed a 12-pack of beer, and said he'd pay for it the next day. When the clerk objected, Beck raised the rock, said, "How about I crush your skull with this rock?" and left. A half-hour later, a woman went to the store and timidly handed the clerk a check to pay for the beer. Sheriff's deputies went to the woman's home, and after considerable difficulty succeeded in waking Beck up and taking him away.

Two men were convicted of murder in Seattle in September based on DNA markers in the blood of the victim's dog (which also was killed at the scene). News accounts said this was the first use of animal DNA in a U.S. criminal trial, which may be true, but News of the Weird reported that calf DNA was used in 1994 in cattle-rustling charges against two Florida men. Authorities matched the calf's DNA with that in an uncooked slab of pot roast (i.e., the mother) sold by the rustlers. A database search revealed an even earlier cattle-rustling DNA case, in Brownstown, Ill., in 1993. (A cat's DNA was used at a 1996 trial to help convict a man of murder in Canada.)

A 22-year-old man in Newark, N.J. (August), and a 58-year-old woman in Apopka, Fla. (October), were killed in disputes over what to watch on television. It was not reported in either case which programs were being contested, but according to Apopka police, the suspect (the woman's 17-year-old son) generally objected to soap operas.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- Latest Jesus Sightings: Hundreds of people began arriving in the town of Bras D'Or, Nova Scotia, in September, when residents spotted a likeness of Jesus Christ on an outside wall of the Tim Horton's donut shop. The clearest image is said to be under the floodlights of a nearby chicken restaurant, called the Lick-a-Chick. And in Rio de Janeiro, designer Patrizia D'Angello and boutique owner David Azulay made plans to introduce men's swim trunks, modestly cut by Rio's beach standards, that feature a picture of Jesus on the seat.

-- In September, Customs officials at Port Hueneme, Calif., went into a tizzy when a fully operational (except for the warhead), 20-ton, 186-mile-range Scud missile was off-loaded from a British vessel, destined for a local address. Said a Customs agent, "All you needed to do was strap on a garbage can full of C-4 (explosive), and you had a weapon." After an investigation, Customs officials said the buyer was not a terrorist but just a collector and that the British seller had merely failed to disable the missile as required by U.S. law.

-- In July, the Los Angeles Times profiled Dan Taylor, 58-year-old retired entrepreneur in Hardeeville, S.C., who is close to finishing the $1 million, 40-foot-long submarine he will take next June to Scotland in order to hunt the Loch Ness monster, which he says he first encountered 30 years ago but in a flimsier submarine that couldn't keep up with the critter. According to his wife, almost all of Taylor's waking hours in the last three years have been spent thinking about "Nessie."

-- A July profile of paralegal Michael Levin, 57, of Santa Monica, Calif., in Los Angeles's weekly Westside News focuses on his 30-year fixation with clipping and saving, and cataloging and cross-indexing, thousands of newspaper articles that for some reason drew his attention. His clippings fill three 5-foot-high file cabinets. "What strikes me," he said, "is the zany, the quirky, or a magnum opus of a piece in the newspaper, such as a solid overview of Albania."

-- Much of the homes of John Livingston of Cleburne, Texas, and Gayle Brennan and Mike Drysdale in Duarte, Calif., have been taken over as shrines to their personal icons: baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan (Livingston) and Garfield the cat (Brennan and Drysdale). Livingston's most prized possession among several hundred items is a 1991 chest X-ray of Ryan. Brennan and Drysdale have 3,000 Garfield items, including 20 pairs of Garfield bedroom slippers, and plan to move to a bigger house so they can display everything.

-- A September New York Times story described some of the hundreds of people who are so taken with the Broadway show "Jekyll and Hyde" that they have seen it dozens of times (in one case, 100), at prices of $20 to $75, and refer to themselves as Jekkies since their obsession resembles that of hard-core "Star Trek" fans. Said one Jekkie, "Instead of going to a therapist, we talk to each other about it, since others truly don't understand."

According to a July New York Times report on adventurers needing assistance, a man who had sent an SOS refused to be airlifted out by an Alaska Air National Guard rescue team because the team had too much of a federal government presence. He relented later that day when the team added two state troopers and returned. And at a recent state visit to Australia, China's premier-in-waiting, Zhu Rongji, held up a procession by lingering in the rest room. When apprehensive guards broke in, they found that Zhu, an engineer, had disassembled the fancy two-button, dual-flush toilet and was studying it. Said Zhu, "We must introduce this to China."

Morton, Ill., June: Two days after he thought he had died from the hatchet his wife had slammed into the back of his neck, Thomas Deas, 53, told reporters, "I still love her. I'd have her back in a minute." And St. Louis, April: Andrea Caldwell Murray begged a judge not to jail Bobby Murray for shooting her in the head last year, sending her into a coma and killing her fetus; said Andrea, "I don't want to lose my Bobby." (Between the shooting and the sentencing, Andrea had married Bobby and is now pregnant with their child.)

Daniel Sneed, 22, spent a week in Los Angeles County jails in June when prosecutors in the city of La Mirada erred in charging him with having ignored a $100 loitering fine from 1996. After several days, Sneed's bank produced the canceled checks, but even then he was not released until the next day. Apparently useless in overcoming these errors and red tape was Sneed's father, who is a police lieutenant in Compton, Calif.

Tweety Bird Rage: In Pleasanton, Calif., in July, after two men brawled over which one deserved the last stuffed toy bird prize at the Alameda County Fair, one of them pulled out a handgun and started firing wildly, wounding eight people. Shrinking-Genitals Rage: At July retirement ceremonies for an army general in Canberra, Australia, former soldier Darryl Hanel, 36, ran screaming at the general and tackled him before guards pulled him off. Hanel claims the general was responsible for giving him a sex-inhibiting drug years ago and that since then (documented in Hanel's charts and graphs), his penis has shrunk.

When Pigs Fly: In Corbeil, Canada, in August, Lucette St. Louis, 66, suffered a broken leg and other injuries when a 180-pound pig, owned by her son, came flying through the air and hit her broadside. It had been knocked airborne by a passing car.

Christopher Grant, 21, was arrested in Danville, Ill., in September and charged with a series of burglaries. Officers had stopped Grant's car as resembling one used by a burglar, but their optimism increased when they saw that the inside of the car was littered with gum balls. A gum ball machine had been stolen earlier that day.

In September, according to police in Trotwood, Ohio, Rev. Andrew Lofton was shot to death just as he was explaining the Book of Revelation to Bible students by a parishioner who had frequently quarreled with Lofton over Biblical interpretations. And in Jacksonville, Fla., nine days later, Rev. Melvyn Nurse, 35, accidentally killed himself by firing a defective round of blank ammunition at his head while demonstrating for parishioners that committing certain sins was the equivalent of playing Russian roulette.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)