-- Earlier this year, Mayor Dan Gibson of Crystal Springs, Miss., decided to run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination and, with the support of his wife and son, resigned and liquidated his assets to finance the campaign, including the couple's five-bedroom antebellum home, antique furniture and two Cadillacs. He finished fourth, and the Gibsons now live in a cramped one-bedroom apartment with one used car for transportation. Gibson told the Associated Press in August that he has no regrets and agrees with the voters: "I need more maturity (before holding office)."

During the Aug. 11 eclipse: A baby born during the blackout was killed by its 31-year-old mother, who feared it was thus cursed (Strahotin, Romania). Abdel-Nasser Nuredeen was charged with killing his wife because she was too fascinated by the eclipse to make him a cup of tea (Cairo, Egypt). Bulgarian TV apologized for missing eclipse coverage because its camera crew was delayed at an erotic film shooting. A police superintendent released three prisoners under the assumption that the eclipse meant the world was ending (Picui, Brazil).

-- Latest Highway Truck Spills: 20 tons of dog and cat food on I-70 near Denver (March); 1,800 liters of caramel (which required a hazardous materials cleanup crew) in Calgary, Alberta (April); thousands of cases of Anheuser-Busch beer on I-55 in St. Louis (August); a tractor-trailer full of vodka, tequila and Scotch on Candora Avenue in Knoxville, Tenn. (June); 60 toilets being hauled on I-25 in Albuquerque (June).

-- Two Canadian astronomers admitted in June that they made a serious error the month before in their 23-page message beamed into outer space designed to inform extraterrestrials that there is intelligent life on Earth. One section was to show, via symbols, that Earthlings have mastered mathematics, but two different "equals to" symbols were used. The Dutch researcher who found the error was chagrined that aliens will now believe Earthlings "a sloppy species."

-- In June, during a British Airways flight from London to Los Angeles, a pre-recorded emergency-warning message was accidentally transmitted to the cabin, horrifying the 400 passengers, but it was quickly turned off by the captain. He knew to act quickly because it was the third straight month that such an emergency tape had come on during a British Airways flight. In the first glitch, in April, a voice on the tape actually told passengers that the plane was about to ditch into the Atlantic Ocean.

-- In April, a 34-year-old Filipino seaman had to be air-evac'd to a Port Lincoln, Australia, hospital after he accidentally swallowed his four-tooth dental plate. And in June, during an operation for bowel obstruction, surgeons recovered a set of false teeth David Flanders of Mopeth, England, had accidentally swallowed as a teen-ager. And in July, a bronchoscopy revealed that the asthma-like condition of Mike Russell, 60, of Bath, England, was caused by his four-tooth dental plate, missing since a highway collision eight years ago but which was lodged just above his right lung.

-- In Warminster, Pa., in September, inmate David Marshall Brown, 54, was freed after serving 34 years for felony murder. He was to have been released in 1980 on a plea bargain, but no one could find the paperwork, and Brown remained long after his co-pleader (who had his paperwork) was released. Brown's paperwork had been misfiled by his then-lawyer in his co-pleader's records.

-- In August, Independence County (Ark.) Sheriff Ron Webb, freshly convicted on a federal charge of sexually assaulting a female prisoner, billed the county about $140 for car mileage and meal costs during his two-day trial in Little Rock, claiming the trial was official business. (A few days later, he withdrew some of the claims.)

-- In June in North Knoxville, Tenn., just as Sharon Gilbert was delivering an order from Glenwood Sandwich Shop to Pardon's Jewelers, a well-dressed man snatched her money bag and knocked her down. The 5-foot-3 Gilbert jumped on the man, pried the money bag loose, and chased him for a ways until he got in a car and drove away. Minutes later, according to a manager of Pardon's, the still-unidentified man called, angry, to complain about how Gilbert had roughed him up.

According to a July San Jose Mercury News report from Zimbabwe, claims of demons and tiny "tokoloshi" gremlins have proliferated as the country reels into its third year of economic downturn. While ordinary criminals and mentally ill people are arrested or beaten up as witches, other parts of Zimbabwe society are thriving: The black-market demand for human body parts (for making evil potions) is up, and "traditional medicine" practitioners say business is good, as the country's down-and-outs purchase evil spirits to humble their enemies.

News of the Weird first reported on "crush videos" in February 1999, alarming readers that scantily clad women in stiletto heels were being photographed stomping insects and tiny animals to death for the viewing pleasure of foot fetishists. Two producers were arrested for animal cruelty in May in Los Angeles; another company is under investigation; and federal legislation has been introduced. Jeff Vilencia, whose Squish Productions is out of business, told USA Today in August that while he agrees on the immorality of squishing pets, "mice and rats might be a gray area."

Lovers Jose Agustin Noh and Ana Maria Camara Suarez succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning as they slept after a bout of sex in a hearse whose engine was running to keep the air-conditioning on (Campeche, Mexico, in May). And in April, truck driver Ling Yiu-hung's 1997 death was officially ruled carbon monoxide poisoning by a Hong Kong coroner; Ling had passed out and died while stuck for hours in a traffic jam.

Jealous boyfriend Rafus Garrett Jr. was charged with assaulting rival John Garrett (no relation) in a fight on Willie Garrett Road (Folsom, La.). The U.S. Forest Service apologized for charging two New Hampshire men with the crime of "maintaining (White Mountain National Forest) without a permit" because they had spent two days cleaning up a lake. Cocaine smuggler Nicole Bos, 18, won a gala, televised beauty pageant inside a Lima, Peru, women's prison. The National Postal Museum opened an exhibit honoring the five clerks who died trying to lug the mail to higher ground on the Titanic (Washington, D.C.). A bank robber was arrested later at a bar down the street when he attracted attention by buying a round with $100 bills (Sioux Falls, S.D.).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- In September, just after fighting broke out in East Timor, Indonesia's strongman defense minister, General Wiranto, dropped by a large party in Jakarta hosting retired military people, gave a moving speech defending the government's stand against East Timorese independence, and, to dramatize his patriotic emotions, sang the song "Feelings." According to an Associated Press reporter in attendance, Wiranto nailed the high notes.

Among those charged recently with possession of child pornography, and now awaiting trial: Gerald Ackerman, former mayor of Port Huron, Mich. (April); Warren Ernest Campbell, a chief of the Cannington, Ontario, fire department (August); Jeremy Lacey, president of the University of Vermont's only alcohol-free fraternity (August); George Edward Davis, former Lonoke, Ark., high school principal (August); Joe Dan Dwyer, mayor of Reeds Spring, Mo. (January); Jonathan I. Weinstein, Herndon, Va., pediatrician (May).

-- Berlin artist Anton Henning, 35, unveiled his brown-splotched work, whose title translates to "Meatballs, Gherkins, Beetroot, Potatoes, Watermelon, Lemon Juice and a Large Brownie," which will run through January 2000 at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt. The title signifies what Henning ate to produce the splotches, which are sealed with resin so as not to smell.

-- At a motorcycle exhibit in Stockholm in May, orchestra conductor Petter Sundkvist waved racetrack flags instead of a baton to guide 100 bikers revving their engines at different intensities to perform a five-minute piece called "Wrooom" by Swedish composer Staffan Mossenmark. (One critic said the piece had a range from "ominous-and-loud to ominous-and-deafening.")

-- According to a June Agence France Presse report, the second annual Fair of Edible Contemporary Art in Seville, Spain, was a success. The report was accompanied by a photo of a model in a traditional Andalusian dress made entirely of raw ham.

-- Artistic human skin-branding has picked up devotees recently, according to reports in Time magazine and the Tampa Tribune, but only, said one technician, for people "intensely into their spirituality who are wishing to release some power." Branding guru Fakir Musafar teaches two techniques at his San Francisco school: the strike method (a design plate is heated and applied to the skin), and sketching by a 2,200-degree cauterized scalpel. Branding produces a third-degree burn, takes at least three weeks to heal, and, in addition to the pain, increases the risk of the most aggressive form of skin cancer.

-- In June German film director Christoph Schlingensief disclosed his plan to pay tribute to capitalism by tossing 100,000 marks (about $53,000) off the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin as part of a cultural show sponsored by Deutsche Bank. (Two days later, when Deutsche Bank got wind of the plan, it canceled the contract.)

-- A man was arrested at the airport in Seville, Spain, in August after snatching a tourist's bag and attempting to flee; standing nearby were members of a U.S. track and field delegation, including Maurice Green (current world record-holder in the 100-meter run), who ran down the perp without much effort. And a month earlier in Huddersfield, West Yorks, England, two men tried to steal a car from a driveway, but the car owner's father, Derek Ibbotson, who is 67 but a former world record-holder in the mile run, caught one of the men and grabbed the keys.

-- In March in Knoxville, Tenn., hobo Lester Hurley, 51, was arrested when he happened to emerge from a night's sleep in a boxcar at just the time that a police press conference was breaking up a few yards away on how police plan to crack down on boxcar trespassing. And in August, Ricky Lynn Caudill, 43, was arrested when he happened to attempt a robbery of a Bank One in Columbus, Ohio, at just the time that police officer Duane Ward was in the lobby briefing employees on what to do in case of a bank robbery.

In August, Richard James McClean, 21, and David Delasantos, 22, were arrested in Petaluma, Calif., and charged with breaking into a home at gunpoint and uprooting and stealing about a dozen marijuana plants. And two weeks earlier, in Kelowna, British Columbia, a gang of thieves broke into a police compound and stole about 250 freshly seized marijuana plants.

A year ago, News of the Weird reported that a jury in Westminster, Calif., had convicted Cal State-Long Beach engineering professor Elena Zagustin, 61, of massive health violations at her exceptionally odoriferous and messy home, which included many buckets substituting for broken toilets. By September 1999, Zagustin had sold the house (at a discount for its condition, but still, because of the California real estate market, $301,500), and when the buyers pried the door open, according to the Los Angeles Times, they found trash two feet high in every room, rotting vegetables, maggots, beds topped with garbage, flies everywhere, and still-broken toilets.

People Who Should Have Kept a Lower Profile: In July in Gifford, Fla., Brizella Mortimer, 29, was charged with burglary after a neighbor, who had been missing several items from her home, looked out her window and saw her favorite motorcycle-themed towel hanging from Mortimer's clothesline; a search of Mortimer's home turned up more of the woman's stuff. And in July, a thief in Salta, northern Argentina, gave himself away by showing up at a Catholic mass wearing the clothes he had recently stolen from the Franciscan priest officiating at the mass.

A 38-year-old transsexual woman climbed a downtown electrical tower during rush hour, danced topless, and spit fire in a protest of female-shirtlessness laws (Seattle). A biologist told an academic conference that it was an accident of nature that there are only two human genders, probably due to a bacterial infection 2 billion years ago (Sheffield, England). To beat the statute of limitations, police filed an arrest warrant for an unknown rapist, ID'd only by five DNA markings (Milwaukee). A bank robber was caught as he raced his getaway truck back into the car lot where he had taken it from, supposedly for a test drive (Round Rock, Texas). A graduate sued his high school for suspending him last year after he photographed his principal's car at the home of a teacher who was suspected of having an affair with the principal (Midland, Texas).

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)

-- An August London Observer story alerted Britons that this summer's New York City fashion fad of live snakes as women's accessories would soon hit England. Londoners just back from Manhattan reported they had seen "several" or "quite a few" snakes on the street, from dance-club exhibitionists to the upscale patrons of trendy bars like Max Fish, with serpents usually carried in handbags and chosen for their color, e.g., albinos or green garters or bright-banded corn snakes.

-- In May, William Pittman, an official at the Hazelden Foundation near Minneapolis and an authority on alcoholism and anger management, pled guilty to harassing his ex-wife, including sending anonymous notes suggesting she kill herself. And in September, anesthesiologist Thomas J. Valente, 41, pled guilty in Apple Valley, Minn., to punching a 69-year-old woman in the face in a road-rage incident. And in August, Debra A. Doherty, 38, was charged in Minneapolis with administering a nearly fatal beating with a broomstick and a crutch to a 39-year-old roommate with muscular dystrophy.

-- In May, Miami-Dade police arrested John Troy Davey, 37, and accused him of being one of a gang of serial flashers working Miami neighborhoods. Gang members' outfits included bandannas, g-strings and women's panties with the crotch cut out. According to police, the men discussed techniques and target neighborhoods on the Internet.

-- At an academic conference on sexuality in Madison, Wis., in May, Robert Bahr, the founder of a newsletter on masturbation, told attendees that some of his readers have adopted the "solo" sexual orientation, being neither hetero- nor homo- nor bi-sexual. According to Bahr, in remarks reported by Canada's National Post, these men "have fallen in love with their own reflections." Some engage in "marathons of masturbation, honeymoons in which they lock themselves away in their own homes, parading naked from mirror to mirror."

-- In June, a Sandpoint, Idaho, publisher released a book on numerical patterns that reveal the "musical and electromagnetic frequencies for spiritual evolution and world healing," patterns that appeared spontaneously one day on his author's car windshield, he said. The publisher is dentist and Harvard-degreed health educator Leonard Horowitz, who told the Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review in July that he used to calm his root-canal patients with holistic techniques rather than anesthesia.

-- In an August Providence Journal profile, 47-year-old substitute teacher Herb Gardner of Smithfield, R.I., described his 30-year obsession with the late actress Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Charles Manson family in Los Angeles in 1969 at the age of 26. With his wife's support and inspired by his collection of Tate posters, videos and other memorabilia, Gardner spends his time energetically pointing out to all who will listen that Tate was not a Hollywood swinger but a gentle and charitable person and that one reason he was put on Earth was to defend her honor.

-- According to a May Reuters dispatch, the city-supported Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavik is closing in on its goal of housing at least one sample penis from every mammal native to Iceland. Only "man" and one species of whale are missing, and curator Sigurdur Hjartarson has solved the first problem with a letter from an 83-year-old former Lothario promising his organ upon his death (in an erect state if doctors can act quickly enough). Some whale species, though, have only the tips displayed because the entire organs are too long (10 feet) or too heavy (more than 100 pounds).

-- In June, the Tokyo firm Epoch introduced the Plantone, an egg-shaped, battery-operated, $55 appliance that, when wired to a plant's leaves, checks its emotional state and reports that to the caretaker in a series of lights and sounds.

-- In an April feature just after the air war over Yugoslavia began, the Boston Globe profiled a group of Watertown, Mass., residents who met daily to engage in an "advanced" form of Transcendental Meditation to send brain waves of calmness halfway around the world to dissipate the stresses that caused the war. Said one participant (described as a "financial writer"), "We're undermining warlike tendencies." The meditation failed for 80 days, but on June 21, NATO ended its bombing campaign.

People recently formally diagnosed with "psychogenic fugue" -- temporarily abandoning one's current reality and falling into a substitute -- which of course informally describes most people reported in News of the Weird: Tim Carpenter, 44, former publisher of Christian books, pled guilty in Springfield, Mo., in July to causing a false police report; in December 1998, he had walked away from his home and job in Springfield and was found the next week working in Memphis, Tenn. And Dan Ristau, 50, was convicted of trespassing in Geneseo, Ill., in June for going to an acquaintance's home in the middle of the night and sitting on her bed because he said he needed to talk to her.

Latest woman to continue to propose everlasting matrimonial bliss with a man who earlier attempted to kill her: Hong Kong waiter Ms. Au Wing-sze, 18, who in August vowed to marry Tang Kwok-wai even though he had just been convicted of tossing her over an 18th-floor balcony and stomping her hands as she clung to the railing. (She hung on long enough for a downstairs neighbor to pull her to safety.) Said Au's lawyer, "If anything, (the incident) has only strengthened (their) relationship."

Virgil A. Henderson, convicted in Minneapolis in March (victim had been dogging Henderson to take a bath and change clothes); Brian N. Wright and Rantone D. Howard, charged in Independence, Mo., in April (victim crashed a party and drank beer without permission); James Gatling Jr., convicted in Newport News, Va., in February (wanted to buy victim's Porsche but felt victim humiliated him by insinuating Gatling was unworthy of a Porsche).

A nun was charged with lying to police about being robbed in order to cover for $20,000 of church money she had naively donated to a scam artist (Santa Monica, Calif.). A deli named a burger for college student Shaun Reilly in honor of his periodically scarfing down six 8-ounce cheeseburgers and five pounds of fries at one sitting (Brighton, Mass.). A 39-year-old man was arrested for burglary after being found inside a church, passed out from communion wine (San Diego). A high-ranking Canadian pro-gun lobbyist was cited by police when his gun accidentally fired a round through his wall and into a neighbor's apartment (Regina, Saskatchewan). Iran's supreme leader decreed that the punishment for politically opposing the death penalty would be the death penalty.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679, or Weird@compuserve.com.)