-- A November feature in Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper recounted the exhibits in Philadelphia's Mutter Museum of medical oddities, including the preserved corpse of a woman with a condition that turned her fatty tissue, upon her death, into a soap-like mass that halted decomposition; the "Muniz collection" of circular-sawed Peruvian human skulls; the extensive, 70-year-old Chevalier Jackson Collection of Objects Swallowed and Inhaled; and the huge colon (described as "about the size of a large basset hound") that caused fatal constipation.

Parishioners at Saint Andrew's Church in south London, England, overpowered a naked, sword-wielding man after he had attacked nine people during a children's service (November). Two former Rutgers male basketball players filed a lawsuit against the school and its coach for making them run laps naked during a practice two years ago (November). A naked University of California at Santa Cruz student was hit by a car, commandeered it, drove off, and promptly crashed into a tree (October). A judge released often-nude gardener Robert Norton, 76, of Pekin, Ill., after his 19th arrest, but said he will go to jail if he is seen naked again (August). ("I can't (promise) anything," Norton said.)

-- Douglas Alan Feldman, 41, was sentenced to death in Dallas in August for two road-rage murders, based in part on letters he had sent to a former girlfriend after his arrest. Wrote Feldman: "I found it quite pleasurable to kill those two men. If you are an angry person and someone provokes you to violence, (it) feels wonderful to cause their death and to watch their pain."

-- When Lawrence Russell Brewer Jr., the second defendant to go to trial in the 1998 Jasper, Texas, racial dragging death, showed up in a Bryan, Texas, courtroom in September 1999, the arresting sheriff had trouble recognizing him because Brewer was so much heavier (having gone from a 30-inch waist to a 40). Brewer's explanation was that he so feared that a Y2K computer crash would wipe out his prison commissary account that he had decided to spend down all his money right away on junk food.

-- In August, an 87-year-old woman, pursued for 30 miles along southern California's Pacific Coast Highway by siren-blaring sheriff's deputies who wanted to stop her for a traffic violation, said when she finally pulled over that she had kept driving because the deputies never did what cops do in the movies: overtake her and force her over. And one month later a jury in Frederick, Md., acquitted motorist Ester Maria Pena, 59, who said she failed to stop for a pursuing officer's siren-wailing car because he didn't do what cops do "in the movies": overtake her and block the road.

-- In August, The Sunday Oklahoman newspaper revealed that the charity Feed the Children, through poignant TV appeals, took in an extra $6 million in the 45 days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but gave only half of that to bombing victims, putting most of the rest into its investments because, according to president Larry Jones, there was no proof that the donors intended the money for bombing victims. The newspaper also reported that "almost none" of the $47 million raised last year by Feed the Children actually went toward feeding children.

-- In August, a Portland, Ore., jury acquitted drunk-driving defendant Robert Lee Buskirk after a judge accepted his argument that incriminating statements he made at the scene not be used against him because he was so drunk he didn't know what he was doing when he waived his "Miranda" right.

-- In 1994, psychologist Kenneth Olson of Phoenix, already on probation with the state's licensing board for a 1988 exorcism, filed a lawsuit against the board, asserting that he had a constitutional right to perform a 1993 exorcism on an 8-year-old foster child (and to be paid $180 for it by the state's Child Protective Services). (In July 1999, a federal appeals court ruled against him.)

-- Milwaukee's Thomas Rollo, 53, chopped off his arm at the elbow with a homemade guillotine in October, but authorities found the arm in his refrigerator and made plans for reattachment surgery. However, Rollo refused the surgery, threatened to sue, and promised to chop the arm right back off if it were reattached. However, a week earlier, a judge in Norwalk, Conn., acting on an emergency request from Norwalk Hospital, ordered a 42-year-old man who had severed his penis to submit to reattachment surgery.

Canadian military officials told reporters in September that 23 of their 32 Hercules transport aircraft require expensive structural repairs to replace a main aluminum beam; the beams were corroded by urea acid from urinators who splash (or miss the mark altogether) in the planes' crude cargo hold toilets. And later that month, an official of the upscale University of Toronto Athletic Centre health club told the National Post newspaper that the reason its automatic-flush toilets weren't working is that men were too fast on the draw; because the members were often naked when using the urinals and thus did not take time to unzip and zip, some spent less than the minimum nine seconds needed to reset the flushing trigger.

In September, authorities in Lincoln, Ill., said the "Sock Man" (reported in News of the Weird earlier this year) from nearby Springfield had finally slipped up and committed a crime when he tried to abduct three kids. In Springfield, he had offered female strangers $100 for their socks, and in nearby Auburn in August, he allegedly offered young girls $5 to chew some gum and give it to him. Springfield and Auburn police said neither of those incidents was illegal (or, as a Springfield officer said, "It's no crime to be weird").

One month before the Texas A&M bonfire tragedy, a 17-year-old University of Oklahoma football fan in Kingfisher, Okla., accidentally shot himself to death while celebrating the team's victory over Texas A&M. And in September, a 21-year-old Bryant College (Smithfield, R.I.) student, trying to slide down a banister in a residence hall, was killed when he fell three stories onto his head.

A man and his son, ages 54 and 17, were arrested in Columbus, Miss., for burglarizing a home, both dressed in ninja costumes, armed with swords and star-shaped throwing blades. An armed-robbery suspect, hiding from police in a tree at 4 a.m., was arrested when his wristwatch alarm sounded (Reno, Nev.). Officials at a landmine museum adjacent to two schools finally acceded to demands to defuse its 463 live mines (Zendajan, Afghanistan). A 37-year-old woman was cited for driving on a major freeway while reading a book (Ottawa, Ontario). An ultra-Orthodox religious court in Jerusalem banned women from using cell phones in public, ruling that it makes them look like prostitutes.

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

-- According to a November Boston Globe story, upper-crust restaurants in New York and Boston have taken to adding genuine gold flakes to some dishes, not merely as garnish but with the expectation that they be eaten. Boston's Riba restaurant recently offered "risotto of summer's golden squashes with leaf of 24-carat gold." Said the owner, "It's so thin and weightless that by the time you eat it, it's gonzo." She added, "There's a feeling of plenty around. People are feeling rich."

In July, London art student Kursty Groves told reporters she had developed a prototype "Techno Bra," which houses in its lining a Global Positioning Satellite locator, heart-rate monitor and cell phone transmitter, to be activated if the wearer is attacked (which supposedly produces a heartbeat distinct from that produced by exercising or passion). Also in July, a report of an American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery study indicated success with the battery-operated vacuum bra that removes air from its two domes so that breasts are sucked forward; 15 women testers grew by an average of one cup size after 10 weeks.

-- Tensions grow daily in rural Eatonton, Ga. (60 miles southeast of Atlanta), between the Putnam County sheriff intent on enforcing agricultural zoning laws and the 80 African-American disciples of Chief Black Eagle Malachi York, who has built a religious retreat, with shops and 40-foot-high pyramids, called Tama-Re: Egypt of the West. York, a convicted felon who says he was born in the galaxy Illyuwn and who invented the group's Arabic-English-blend language, Nuwabic, teaches that a spaceship will land in 2003 and take away only 144,000 chosen people.

-- According to an October report in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, a national Christian "lighthouse movement" seeks to pray for every single person in the United States by the end of next year. Among the techniques suggested: praying for the 10 households to your left and right and to the five in front; praying for people listed in telephone directories; and, in rough neighborhoods, "drive-by praying." In late August, a convention of related groups met near Dallas to assess how they could best spend the remaining months on their particular goal of exposing every single person on Earth to Christianity by the end of next year.

-- The Wall Street Journal reported in September on efforts by the United Society of Believers (better known as the Shakers, named for the way they tremble while worshipping) to recruit new members. By the mid-1800s, there were 6,000 members, but since part of their philosophy is celibacy, there are now only seven, living near New Gloucester, Maine. Though their original philosophy was built on "separation from the world," the Shakers now have a Web site, give musical concerts and sell CDs.

-- Police in Stockton, Calif., arrested Tina Watts, 28, in June and charged her with cruelty to an animal after she shot a neighbor's dog. She claimed the dog had just bitten her 4-year-old son, but she later admitted that wasn't true after police discovered that the bloody dog-bite wound was just a bandage she had saturated with ketchup.

-- Thieves Living Large: In July, thieves stole more than a mile of natural-gas pipeline, weighing 250 tons, near Kotovskoye, Russia. And in August, thieves stole an entire neighborhood garden in London's West End. And in March, thieves stole an 11-prefabricated-building high school, along with its security fence, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. And in July, thieves stole every single thing (except a few clothes) out of a townhouse in Montreal, including toilet paper on the holder.

-- Two thieves abandoned their rental car in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in May and escaped, leaving a sheep and three goats in the car, allegedly rustled from a farmer. The sheep was wearing a dress, and the goats wore shirts, pants and hats. Police guessed the thieves had dressed the animals to avert suspicion, but with nightfall approaching, the driver actually created suspicion when he failed to turn on his headlights.

-- Problems of Postmodern Policework: Flamboyant cross-dresser Donald Ray Johnson was arrested in Baton Rouge, La., in September on theft charges after police found him hiding in a closet. According to an Associated Press report, Johnson did not resist arrest, but he did ask police if they could wait a couple of minutes for him to fix his hair.

Paul Faglin, 87, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for strangling his wife (age 83) out of jealousy (Rouen, France, in June). Brose Gearheart, 90, was sentenced to four years in prison for trafficking in crack cocaine (Saugerties, N.Y., April). J.L. Hunter Roundtree, 88, was arrested and charged with bank robbery (Pensacola, Fla., October). Driver Warren Collins, 83, critically injured his wife and himself by plunging over an embankment into the Pacific Ocean after doing "doughnuts" with his car showing it off to a prospective buyer (Long Beach, Calif., October).

News of the Weird reported in 1996 on a hospital in Kinshasa, Zaire, that was detaining newborn babies and their mothers until they paid their bills. In September 1999, Reuters reported that the government's Sina hospital in Tehran, Iran, earlier in the year created a detention cell in the building, staffed by three guards, that has housed about two dozen patients a month who had not paid their bills. Said the hospital's director, "We had no other choice."

In September, Roland Tough, 22, and five colleagues, convicted of theft in Greater Manchester, England, were given prison sentences of from three to six years. The men had burglarized a Tesco's department store in Walkden, with Tough commemorating the heist as the gang's official photographer. However, Tough later dropped off the roll of film for processing at the very same Tesco's, and employees recognized some of the stolen items.

A jail warden accidentally fell to his death from the ceiling on top of a conjugal-visit couple he was spying on (Tapachula, Mexico). The year-old investigation of a used-car salesman's murder was stalled when police discovered that the man was hated by so many people (Edmonton, Alberta). A 40-year-old suicide, rigging a gun to shoot himself in the head, missed, sending a round into his groin (Glendale, Ariz.). A woman serving a life sentence for stomping another woman to death broke down in tears as she told prison authorities how a fellow inmate had killed her two pet fish (Kingston, Ontario). A 270-pound University of Kansas football player got stuck in a Taco Bell drive-thru window when he climbed in after a clerk who had screwed up his chalupa order.

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

-- In September, Pinellas County, Fla., officials unveiled what they hope will be a cutting-edge traffic safety program as a model for reducing pedestrian deaths and calming drivers' road rage. The program asks pedestrians to extend their right hands (as if shaking hands) continuously through an intersection, while smiling, to get the attention of drivers. Said a worker in Clearwater, Fla., when the program was explained by a St. Petersburg Times reporter: "Nobody is going to walk across the street with their arm out. I'm not going to do it. Are you?"

In separate incidents in the same week in September, Debra Rodriguez, 41, of Ames, Iowa, and Kristin R. Smebak, 34, of Superior, Wis., both of whom had been drinking, forced their young kids to drive their cars home so the mothers would avoid DUI tickets if they were stopped. Rodriguez's inexperienced 11-year-old daughter caused a rollover, injuring both occupants, but Smebak's inexperienced 8-year-old son made it safely over the bridge connecting Duluth, Minn., to Superior before being spotted by a patrolman, who arrested Smebak.

-- According to police who arrested Fairfax (Va.) High School math teacher Fred Benevento, 47, in April during a drug sting, Benevento said the 13 plastic bags of crack cocaine in his car "came flying through his open window" and that he "was just looking at them when the police officers arrived."

-- Failed Murder Defenses: In May, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-to-4 to reject Brad Stone's "automaton" defense, that he was able to stab his wife 47 times only because he was in a robotic state brought on by the trauma of being called a bedroom failure. And in June, an Atlanta jury rejected Christopher Stobbart's claim of self-defense for shooting his boss in the head 14 times, then walking to another room, reloading and shooting him 10 more times.

-- Of Course! In July, just after the end of the war, Yugoslavia's ecology minister said the uncomfortably warm and rainy spring and summer weather was caused by NATO aggression. And in May, a mother in St. Cloud, Fla., told police that the reason she let her teen-age daughters smoke marijuana was so they wouldn't become alcoholics like their father. And Yuji Nishizawa, who hijacked the All Nippon Airways Boeing 747 in July and killed the pilot before being captured, told police his main motivation was to see how a real plane flew, after all the flight-simulation video games he had played.

-- West German criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, writing in the weekly Die Zeit in July, blamed East Germans' proclivities for post-war Nazism and thuggery (they are four times more likely to engage in those activities than West Germans) on too-rigorous potty training. After World War II, the East German government issued manuals on toilet-training for kindergartners, requiring virtually synchronized movements that stripped the kids of their individuality and reinforced government control.

-- Muriel Milne's trial began in Aberdeen, Scotland, in September against the Westhill Golf Club for maintaining a badly designed course, an opinion she came to in 1994 after a ball she hit struck a 2-inch-high rock and bounced back, hitting her in the eye and causing severe damage. (The trial is recessed until November.)

-- Escapee Jimmy Haakansson, in court in Stockholm, Sweden, on a theft charge and who broke a foot leaping through a courthouse window before being recaptured, filed a lawsuit against the police in September for failure to prevent his foolishness. One week earlier, in Roseville, Mich., Cassidy L. VanHorn filed a lawsuit against homeowner Diana Folbigg, whose house he had broken into in July 1997; according to the lawsuit, Folbigg lured VanHorn back to the house the next day, saying all was forgiven, but when he arrived, several of Folbigg's friends beat him up.

According to a Cox News Service report in August, citing official state records, 21 people were fatally run over last year in North Carolina while lying in the middle of the road. (Most incidents occurred around midnight, in the summer, to very intoxicated men.) A few days later, the British Health Education Authority announced that 43 people had been killed in 1998 frying up chips late at night. (The vast majority of victims were intoxicated.)

Police in Fall River, Mass., have been unable to find, since May, the dog owner who trained his pit bull to sharpen his teeth on trees and consequently killed more than 30 in a city park. And in July, an Irish wolfhound freed itself during a United Airlines flight into San Francisco and gnawed through landing-gear wires, but pilots landed the plane safely. And in July, after a Spanish Fort, Ala., police officer pepper-sprayed an alligator that was creating a public menace, the gator bit a $500 chunk out of the officer's cruiser.

Last year, News of the Weird named "Dr." John Ronald Brown "Chief Surgeon to the Weird" upon disclosure that after having had his license revoked for incompetence in 1977, he became the underground surgeon of choice for apotemnophiliacs (who get sexual gratification from having an arm or leg removed). However, one of his patients had died, and in October 1999, a San Diego jury found Brown guilty of second-degree murder. (That same week, Miami Beach's "Dr." Reinaldo Silvestre, who unlike Dr. Brown was never licensed, was arrested after botching several plastic surgeries, including one in which he used a spatula to cram breast implants into a former Mr. Universe runner-up who was expecting only pectoral implants.)

Insufficient Reasons to Kill Yourself: Husband changed the TV channel (woman in Colombo, Sir Lanka, took poison, May); minor car accident (19-year-old man immediately hanged himself from the tree he hit, Flint, Mich., April); police showed a court order to clean up a man's junky yard (man shot himself to death, Brickerville, Pa., March).

-- Quebec bureaucrats ordered an agricultural center to stop giving its cows "human female names" so as not to offend women. A lake-restoration project near Florida's Disney World caused several neighborhoods to be overrun by a half-million mice. Colin Linge, 54, retired after 29 years and 50,000 hours as a firefighter, having never fought a single fire (London, Ontario). Fourteen worshipers seeking eternal salvation were crushed to death when a crowd surged to touch a visiting evangelist (Abuja, Nigeria). A Washington Mutual bank informed a customer that, because of several mergers and relocations, it had lost his safe-deposit box containing $250,000 in family heirlooms. (Fountain Valley, Calif.).

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