-- The Louisville Courier-Journal reported in February that the Louisville Free Public Library is tied up in probate with the family of the late Audrey Jean Knauer over a $290,000 bequest and that the outcome might depend on whether the actor Charles Bronson wants the money. Ms. Knauer died in 1997 and inexplicably willed her money to Bronson, whom she labeled a "talented character actor" but whom in all likelihood she had never met. Ms. Knauer's mother wants the money; the library says it could buy 20,000 books; and Bronson has not yet responded.

-- Rev. Henry Lyons, head of the nation's largest organization of black Baptists, went to trial in St. Petersburg, Fla., in January, accused of defrauding two firms that thought they were purchasing an 8.5-million-member mailing list from Lyons' National Baptist Convention. Prosecutors insist the number was wildly inflated, and Lyons' former administrative assistant testified that after one such deal was made, Lyons instructed her to use a telephone-book software program to create a membership list by selecting names that sounded black. The assistant said she eliminated last names that began with "z" and also names that ended in "ski." Among the names that wound up on the list was an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

-- In December, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, president Carol Harter moved the offices of most of the school's English composition teachers out of the campus's historic Houssels House and into a group of double-wide trailers in order to make room for a new Consciousness Studies Program, which investigates near-death experiences and other new-age topics. That program was recently created with a large donation from a prominent real estate developer.

-- In January, Fort Worth, Texas, murder defendant Robert William Greer Jr. agreed to plead guilty to a 1988 killing if the judge would keep him in the local jail for two more weeks before sending him to the penitentiary so that he could be assured of seeing the Super Bowl on TV. (Greer thought TV privileges in prison were less certain.) Greer said much of his enthusiasm for the game would be to see his favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings, win it all. Two days later, the Atlanta Falcons beat the Vikings to deny them a Super Bowl appearance, but Greer's guilty plea stands.

-- The New York Times reported in November on the recent but growing competitive sport of "musical canine freestyle" (dancing with dogs) in which costumed owners and their matching-collared pooches exhibit choreography to such tunes as "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Get Happy." (Holding dogs' paws, as in at-home dog-dancing, is forbidden.) The World Canine Freestyle Organization has a mailing list of 8,000 aficionados.

-- The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in October that LuLu, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, saved the life of her owner, Jo Ann Altsman of Beaver Falls, Pa., by alerting a passing driver that Altsman was in trouble. Altsman was groaning with a heart attack and said later that LuLu first whimpered in sympathy, then squeezed through a very small doggy door, pushed open a gate that she had never opened before, walked to the road, and according to a witness, lay down in the middle only when a car approached. The driver stopped and then heard Altsman's cries.

-- In November, the Westchester County (N.Y.) Feline Club voted its Cat of the Year award, from among 300 entrants, to Ginny, a dog. Ginny was honored for befriending numerous stray cats, bringing them home and sharing her food with them.

-- Recent Surgeries: A Caesarian section delivery of six eggs by a turtle in Thunder Bay, Ontario (June), after veterinarians used a dentist's drill on her shell, later patching it with epoxy. And root canals performed on several Kodiak bears appearing in the movie "Grizzly Falls," shot in Toronto (November), after anesthesia delivered by a blow gun.

-- In August, the family of the late Russell U. Shell filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against The Other Side nightclub in Fitchburg, Mass., charging that Mr. Shell choked to death on a miniature plastic penis that allegedly had been placed into his drink glass as a prank by an employee. (The club owner said Mr. Shell merely suffered a seizure and that the charm was found on the floor beside Mr. Shell's body.)

-- In January, Minnesota computer component manufacturer Innovex Inc. agreed to pay former executive Mary E. Curtin $750,000 to settle her sex discrimination lawsuit. During the time Curtin faced the alleged bias and sexist epithets, her husband, Thomas W. Haley, was Innovex's chairman and CEO and presumably had the power to put an end to the practices of which Curtin complained, but he did not.

-- The Chicago Sun-Times reported in November that local businessman David Israel, 51, filed a defamation lawsuit against his mother, Miriam, 77, who had allegedly told his brother and sister-in-law that David "is a thief and stole us blind." Said David, "It's not fun suing your mother."

In January in Modesto, Calif., Bernardo Arroyo, 26, was convicted of distributing methamphetamine and faces a minimum 10 years in prison at his sentencing in April. Before the trial, Arroyo rejected a plea bargain that would have given him two years in prison because a psychic he consulted had assured him that he would be acquitted. (In fairness to the psychic, however, Arroyo had an opportunity to purchase an additional curse upon the prosecutor, for $8,000, but declined.)

Bennie Casson made News of the Weird in 1997 when he filed a $100,000 lawsuit against PT's Show Club in Sauget, Ill., for its negligence in allowing stripper Susan Sykes (a.k.a. Busty Heart) to repeatedly "slam" her allegedly 88-inch bust into his neck and head during her performance, thus aggravating an old neck injury. In January 1999, a judge dismissed the lawsuit because Mr. Casson still couldn't find a lawyer to take the case, and a few days later, Mr. Casson died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- Only the Falcons Were More Disappointed: On Super Bowl Sunday, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times profiled local resident Joffre Leggett, 80, as he prepared for the Publishers Clearing House prize patrol that would later that day, he was certain, be arriving at his house with $31 million. He proudly displayed the roomfuls of magazines he had bought over the last two years ($5,000 worth, though he complained to the reporter about his lack of food and heat and his broken-down car) and pointed to the latest PCH mailings, which Leggett says "(read) like I'm gonna win. They've sent me plenty of (literature) that says I will (win)." He didn't.

-- Edward L. Bodkin, 56, was arrested in February in Huntington, Ind., and charged with performing surgery without a license. Police said Bodkin removed the testicles of at least five consenting men and was ready to perform again when a patient got cold feet and handed over to police a videotape Bodkin had loaned him, of some of the surgeries. Allegedly, some of the testicles were in jars in Bodkin's apartment. As to the patients' motives, prosecutor John Branham said, "I can't sit here as a reasonable human being and give you an intelligent answer to that."

In January, the Toronto Sun published office photos of surgeon William G. Middleton's nurse, inexplicably straddling an unconscious female patient, who subsequently filed a complaint against the doctor. On the same day, in Tulsa, Okla., dentist Donald C. Johnson pleaded guilty to sexual molestation of young girls, behavior that came to light when lewd Polaroid photos of apparently anesthetized girls were discovered in Johnson's office. And in December, a Waynesboro, Va., woman filed a $350,000 lawsuit against physician Dale A. Stinespring for allegedly tricking her into posing topless for photographs under the guise of producing evidence in her car-crash lawsuit.

-- German retiree Jost-Burkhard Anderhub, 59, who spent several days in the Newport, Ky., jail last year before pleading guilty to a federal gun charge, was so impressed with the service that in October, he sent the jailer (elected official Greg Buckler) $200 as a tip. Wrote Anderhub, "The treatment by the officers was absolutely flawless."

-- An October Chicago Sun-Times story revealed that local attorney David G. Harding, executor of the estate of his office co-tenant D. Rex McBride, discovered that McBride for 18 years right up to his death had been leasing his two rotary-dial telephones from AT&T for $110 a year (vs. about $15 each to buy the phones).

-- Sports News: In November, Japanese billiards player Junuske Inoue, 58, was suspended from competition for two years for testing positive for a muscle-building hormone. And in September, Torquay, England, lawn bowler Griff Sanders, 25, was banned from outdoor competition for 10 years for excessive obscene language. (Sanders reportedly considers himself "the John McEnroe of lawn bowling.")

-- According to a September San Francisco Chronicle report, New Orleans T-shirt printer Ricky Lewis, 42, says 95 percent of his business comes from relatives and friends of men who have been slain in gang violence and who want the victims' faces commemorated on T-shirts. The city has such a high homicide rate, Lewis says, that several of his customers have later been murdered and memorialized with their own T-shirts.

-- New Product Delivery Systems: In December in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Wendy Cashaback opened what she believed was Canada's first drive-thru shop selling only sex toys and lingerie. Also in December, the New York company Joe Boxer placed 10 vending machines in the city to sell men's underwear in pop-top cans and said it hoped to roll out 100 more in 1999.

-- New Products: In December in Overijse, Belgium, horticulturalist Luc Mertes introduced a line of skirts and dresses made of live grass, still growing as long as the material stays damp. And in January, Heather Joy of Glenpool, Okla., showed an Associated Press reporter her handcrafted bags made from bull scrotums, priced at $110 and up. And in January, a Melbourne, Australia, company called Liquor Pops drew criticism when it announced its intention to market Popsicle-type products with 6 percent alcohol, in melon, pineapple and orange flavors.

-- Kenneth Adams, 37, was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in November and charged with soliciting an undercover police officer posing as a prostitute. The officer said Adams offered her a stolen shower head and a stolen water purifier if she would have sex with him.

In January, three young men broke into a house in St. Paul, Minn., with a shotgun and beat a man who they say owed them money. They left after firing a shot over the man's head to scare him, but on the way out, the shotgun accidentally discharged again, hitting one of the three in the buttocks, and all were arrested when a police officer saw the distinctly wounded man later on the street. Three days later, in Newark, N.J., Andre Gordon, 27, was arrested when, after pistol-whipping a 25-year-old man, his gun accidentally discharged, firing a bullet through his own arm and into his leg.

News of the Weird has reported several times on the phenomenon of houses that are inexplicably, almost pathologically, cluttered, but tragedy struck twice around Columbus, Ohio, recently. A 70-year-old man in the Clintonville neighborhood shot himself to death in February rather than face the consequences of a health department order to clean up his house and yard. Said the man's wife, "I'm not a good housekeeper, I grant you that." Six weeks earlier, a 60-year-old man in nearby Whitehall, Ohio, had died of a heart problem after his wife declined to call 911 for him because she was afraid authorities would discover the couple's too-cluttered house and arrest her.

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (31) The discovery of gobs of undelivered mail at the home of a postal worker (usually after he got behind on his deliveries and needed to hide it), such as the 10-year-old, unopened mail found at retired postal worker Ralph Horvath's home after he was killed in a fire in Chicago in January. And (32) the bank robber who wants a worry-free getaway (no parking problem, no driving while jittery, no forgetting the keys or to have the car gassed up, etc.) and decides to hail a taxicab (much higher profile than a getaway car) outside the bank, as police say Mary Barrera did after robbing a NationsBank branch in Kansas City, Mo., in November.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- After a two-week hearing in January in Washington, D.C., outraged federal judge Royce Lamberth threatened to hold two Cabinet secretaries, Interior's Bruce Babbitt and Treasury's Robert Rubin, in contempt of court for failing to turn over records of federal trust funds held for Native Americans -- records that Lamberth originally ordered released in November 1996. Among the excuses offered by the two departments is that a federal records depository in the Southwest is contaminated with rat droppings, and researchers will not enter it because of the fear of the deadly hantavirus.

-- In December, workers for an AIDS awareness campaign constructed and inflated a condom as long as 10 football fields and large enough inside to allow dance celebrations. The condom was part of a parade in Cali, Colombia.

-- In December in St. Paul, Minn., John O. Sexton, 43, was sentenced to 45 days in jail for cutting off 50 strands of a woman's ponytail on a busy street in August (after being rebuffed in his offer to purchase the locks). He apologized for his "urges about hair" and vowed to get counseling.

-- In Medina, Ohio, in December, David Donathon was sentenced to a year in jail for telephone harassment, specifically, calling people up and asking them if their feet stink. According to his lawyer, Donathon "realizes what he does is wrong, but he is unable to stop himself." And two weeks earlier in Belleville, Ill., James Dowdy, 27, was sentenced to six years in prison for his second offense of entering women's homes and stealing their socks. And in Boulder, Colo., in May, a 28-year-old man was charged with harassment and assault of four women with whom he struck up conversations on the street and whose feet he eventually forcibly fondled. According to one victim, "(The man's) eyes rolled back in his head like he was really excited."

-- In July in Telford, England, in the first court case of what prosecutors called "crush videos," Keith Twogood, 44, was fined about $3,000 for importing two tapes from the United States featuring nearly nude women in stiletto heels, stepping on mice and frogs. A British animal-protection advocate said he "just can't imagine the market for this," but a New York animal-rights spokesperson said he thought the motive was a "foot-fetish type of thing" rather than deliberate cruelty to animals.

-- Worm Rage: Rawle Trotman, 21, Simcoe, Ontario, August, charged with stabbing a fellow angler in an argument over a worm. Sissy Rage: Brian Hertzog, 18, Reading, Pa., December, charged with shooting his sister (leaving her paralyzed below the waist) because she beat him in a wrestling match. Teacher's Rage: Deena Murdoch, 52, Carrollton, Texas, December, was charged with choking a fourth-grade boy because he sneaked a peak at her grade book.

-- Price-Check Rage: An unidentified "big blond" female customer was sought by Oakland, Mich., police in December for allegedly punching out a 55-year-old female clerk at a Hudson's department store when the clerk rolled her eyes at the customer's request for a price check on a dress. "Don't you ever roll your eyes at me," were the last words the clerk recalled before being decked. Yuletide Rage: William Fagyas, 82, was charged with stabbing his wife, Eleanor, 84, in the chest in Crown Point, Ind., in December because, according to police, she "was not in the Christmas spirit."

-- Only-in-California Rage: In December, Ms. Cathomas Starbird, a member of the school board of Sausalito, Calif., pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for allegedly punching, jumping on and biting another woman in April 1998. According to police, Ms. Starbird, her husband, and the other woman had gone out for dinner to celebrate the husband's birthday, and upon returning to the couple's houseboat, Ms. Starbird suggested sex and became furious when the other woman refused to perform oral sex on Ms. Starbird's husband.

-- In November, Pope John Paul II announced that the year 2000 would be a special holy year in which Catholics can obtain special "indulgences" for their sins that act, in a sense, as wild cards to speed up their ascension to heaven. According to policy dating back to the 16th century, Catholics who visit the sick or the jailed, or who contribute to charities, or who fast from smoking or drinking for as little as one day, may get special dispensation, as long as the act is accompanied by penitence.

Globe and Mail- Reuters, 11-28-98]

-- Roman Catholic Monsignor Ignatius McDermott, 88, blessed a Dell laptop computer in December at his headquarters in Chicago, which he believed to be a first (though priests have blessed animals, houses, Harley Davidsons and other things). "Maybe this will get (the younger generation's) attention," he said.

-- A November Chicago Sun-Times dispatch described the problems encountered by Anita and Jacob Martin, who moved from Daviess County, Ind., five years ago in an attempt to build an Amish community in Poreby, Poland, about 20 miles east of Warsaw. Jacob told a reporter that the couple had made zero converts and faced imminent local pressure from less-strict Mennonite missionaries from Pennsylvania. The couple's lack of success has made Jacob believe that the Amish rules about dress and socializing might be a little too strict.

-- Number Two in the News: In January, police in New Waterford, Nova Scotia (population 8,000), were investigating a suspected serial defecator who had soiled three nontoilet locations during the holiday season, including the floor of a recreation center. Also in January, Donald S. Spaeth, 36, of Ballwin, Mo., pleaded guilty to breaking into six cars on the lots of dealerships and leaving feces on the leather seats. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to continue his medication.

-- Continuing an occasional reader-advisory series of recent stories that were reported elsewhere as real news but which were probably just made up: A November New York Times report on the difficult job of retitling American movies for the Asian market came with a list of wacky examples. (One of the tamer ones: "Leaving Las Vegas" became, in Chinese in Hong Kong, "I'm Drunk and You're a Prostitute.") However, as was revealed in December by The Washington Post, the list of examples was composed by an Internet humor Web site and had been mistakenly commingled with serious material on the topic and never investigated by America's "newspaper of record."

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com.)