Top Gun: Todd Whitehurst may be the "father" of from 42 to 60 children, based on statistical probability that recognizes his virtuosity as a sperm donor, according to a June New York Post profile (though one website, Donor Sibling Registry, claims to have documented 129 children sired by an unnamed seed demon, who is one of 92 highly productive men with 10 or more). Whitehurst, who like the others, was selected based on his sperm's profile and speed, donated weekly for about three years in the late 1980s (for $50 a session), and has been contacted so far by nine teenagers who sent him their photos after piecing together evidence identifying him (despite sperm banks' promises of confidentiality). Whitehurst, acknowledging the resemblances to his "offspring," seems to find the relationships fulfilling, however limited they are. Said he, "I love Father's Day."

-- New York scent artist Christopher Brosius had made his name with fragrances recalling childhood (such as Clean Baby Butt, Green Bean and Baseball Glove), but felt it was time, according to an April report in New York magazine, to approach the next frontier -- to make a perfume so exclusive that no one could smell it. By Brosius' reasoning, the scent's chemicals would provoke whatever reactions scents provoke in those exposed to it, but the actual scent would be undetectable to the nose; hence, no one would know why they were reacting as they were. By trial and error, he combined jasmine, sandalwood and natural amber, and scaled them down in power, yielding what he calls Where We Are There Is No Here. Said Brosius, "The question, 'What perfume are you wearing?' should never arise."

-- Blow Against the Empire: Bank of America (BA) had the tables turned on it in June after the company wrongfully harassed an alleged mortgage scofflaw in Naples, Fla. BA had attempted to foreclose on homeowners Warren and Maureen Nyerges last year even though the couple had bought their house with cash -- paid directly to BA. It took BA a year and a half to understand its mistake -- that is, until the Nyergeses sued and won a judgment for expenses of $2,534, which BA promptly ignored. The Nyergeses' attorney obtained a seizure order, and two sheriff's deputies, with a moving truck, arrived at the local BA branch on June 3 to load $2,534 worth of furniture and computer equipment from the bank's offices. After about an hour on the phone with higher-ups, the local BA manager issue a check for $2,534.

-- Police in Doncaster, England, were on the lookout in June for an organized group of four female and two male shoplifters who hit a liquor store on Bentley Road in May but left an interesting crime-scene story on the surveillance video. While five of the crew distracted employees, one woman, wearing pants, walked to the back but emerged minutes later wearing a large wraparound skirt and waddling slowly toward the front door. After the unsuspecting employees bid farewell to the six, they discovered that the office safe was missing and concluded that the waddling woman was holding it between her legs.

China's sleepy Zisiqiao Village in Zhejiang province is actually headquarters for the country's revered snake industry, with 160 families raising about 3 million serpents a year, mostly to harvest livers and gall bladders for soup, wine, and other products consumed for their immunity-building properties. In a June Reuters dispatch, one farmer described the 25-year evolution of "Snake Town" from a place where farmers simply threw males and females together for breeding to today's sophisticated production facilities that supply proper snake diets, research measures to enrich female fertility, and provide enhanced incubation conditions.

-- Perhaps a kindergartner needs to have his dad wait with him and wave bye-bye as he steps onto the school bus in the morning, but Rain Price is a 10th-grader (in American Fork, Utah), and his dad, Dale Price, nevertheless waves from the bus stop every morning, right in front of Rain's friends. Furthermore, according to a June report by KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Dale makes it a point to be wearing a different, "crazy" costume every morning (170 in all for the school year, including, once, a wedding dress).

-- Alleged gang members Barbara Lee, 45, and Marco Ibanez, 19, were arrested in Hallandale Beach, Fla., in April and charged in the assault and stabbing of four deaf people. Lee was at the Ocean's Eleven Lounge one evening when she saw several people in a group make hand signs that she interpreted as disrespecting her own gang's signs, and, according to police, left to recruit Ibanez to come administer retribution. Unknown to Lee or Ibanez, the group were deaf people using sign language and had no idea they were making "gang" signs.

-- Rescues: (1) A 93-year-old woman was rescued by medics in Philadelphia in April after spending several days stuck in her own toilet. (According to KYW-TV, she had to be carried out with a portion of the toilet still stuck tightly to her body.) (2) In Tooting, England, in May, an unnamed senior was rescued by firefighters after he got his testicles caught in a shower seat in which he was sitting while bathing.

-- Parkridge Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn., apologized and paid the bill in June for exhuming the body of the recently deceased Kenneth Manis. The man who had shared Mr. Manis' hospital room during his final days had reported that his dentures were missing, and the hospital determined that they had been mistakenly buried with Mr. Manis.

Toshihiko Mizuno, 55, was arrested in Tokyo in June after three girls, ages 9 and 10, reported that he had talked them into spitting for him so that he could record it on video, to assist with "research" he was doing on "saliva." Police later discovered 26 videotapes, featuring about 400 young girls spitting. According to local media sources, Mizuno has had the obsession for 17 years, successfully getting at least 500 girls to spit, among the estimated 4,000 he propositioned.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Eric Cogan, 33, was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in June after (according to police) presenting a holdup note to a teller at a TD Bank. To get to the teller, Cogan walked right by a sheriff's cruiser parked in front of the bank and a deputy in uniform seated inside the bank's entrance. (2) In April, Matthew Hudleston, 33, pleaded guilty in Mobile, Ala., to robbing a Regions Bank, using a holdup note that mentioned a gun. He got away but was arrested after he returned a few minutes later to ask for the holdup note back.

The Good Lord Willing: (1) Self-described anarchist Luciano Pitronello Schuffeneger was hospitalized and placed in a medically induced coma after a bomb he was planning for a Banco Santander bank in Santiago, Chile, exploded prematurely. He suffered third-degree burns and lost both hands and his eyesight, after accidentally tripping the bomb's trigger before entering the bank. (2) Mr. Isabel Gutierrez, 53, died of a heart attack in Refugio County, Texas, in June, after taking a break during the act of raping a 77-year-old woman. He told his victim that he didn't feel well, moved away from her, and stopped breathing.

In a report in the August (1993) Archives of Dermatology, a 39-year-old woman in Cleveland complaining of bad hair was reported to have the first adult case of "acquired uncombable hair," which produces permanently coarse, tangled hair. Her condition was attributed to a side-effect of a diuretic.

Somehow, upscale restaurateurs believe that diners will soon willingly pay more for a beef dish if it comes with disclosure of the DNA of the actual cow being eaten, according to a May Associated Press report. "People want to know where their food is coming from," said one excited chef, lauding the knowledge to be gleaned from a calf's upbringing. (A more practical beef-supply executive added that DNA can help identify the "multiple animals" whose parts were used in hunks of ground beef -- a 10-pound package of which may include contributions from "hundreds" of different cows.)

-- It was not difficult to find critics when the Orlando-area government job-service engine Workforce Central Florida said it was spending more than $70,000 of federal stimulus money to help the laid-off by handing out 6,000 satiny capes for jobless "superheroes" to "fight" "Dr. Evil Unemployment." ("Absolutely absurd" was the reaction of a laid-off customer-service representative.) Several critics interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel noted that such an awkward program further erodes the unemployed's fragile self-respect. WCF, though, remained convinced. In the words of a spokeswoman, "Everyone is a superhero in the fight against unemployment."

-- Urban Legend Come to Life: Too-good-to-be-true stories have circulated for years about men who accidentally fell, posterior first, onto compressed-air nozzles and self-inflated to resemble "dough boys," usually with fatal results. However, in May in Opotiki, New Zealand, trucker Steven McCormack found himself in similar circumstances, and had it not been for quick-thinking colleagues who pulled him away, he would have been killed -- as the air, puncturing a buttock, had already begun separating tissue from muscle. McCormack was hospitalized in severe pain, but the air gradually seeped from his body (according to a doctor, in the way air "usually" seeps from a body).

-- Oops! Oswind David was convicted of "first-degree assault" in a 2006 trial in New York City, but unknown to him, his lawyer and the judge, the charge had already been dismissed by another judge due to prosecutorial error. Nonetheless, David has been in prison since his conviction, serving a 23-year term, and was freed only in May when the error came to light. (However, the New York City district attorney still resisted releasing David, arguing that only the "first-degree" part had been dismissed. A judge finally freed David on bail while prosecutors ponder reopening the case.)

-- Parents were puzzled in June after Dry Creek School District in Roseville, Calif., passed out questionnaires asking for biographical details of prospective students, including whether or not the child has been delivered by C-section. Parents told Sacramento station KOVR-TV that school officials were refusing to explain why they wanted to know that.

(1) Night club singer Simon Ledger was arrested following a performance at the Driftwood Beach Bar on Britain's Isle of Wight in April after a patron complained to police. Ledger was covering the 1974 hit "Kung Fu Fighting," and two customers of Chinese descent reported that they felt victims of illegal "racially aggravated harassment." (2) Leslie Clarke, 29, turned himself in to police in Darwin, Australia, in May after authorities released surveillance tape of a break-in and vandalism at the Hidden Valley Tavern. Clarke, a large man, confessed to going on a drunken prowl with friends, but said he remembered the break-in only when he saw the video and recognized his distinctive image from the back, including several inches of his butt crack.

(1) An April Associated Press story, citing federal government sources, reported that 247 people on the terrorist "watch list" were nonetheless legally permitted to purchase guns in 2010 -- about the same number who did so legally in 2009. (2) In May, Oklahoma judge Susie Pritchett, receiving guilty pleas from a $31 drug-deal raid in 2010 that netted a mother and her two grown children, sentenced the mother and son to probation, but the 31-year-old daughter to 12 years in prison (just because the daughter showed "no ... remorse").

In May, a federal appeals court reinstated the Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit filed in 2007 by Darrell Miller after he was fired as a bridge maintenance worker by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Miller had been medically diagnosed with a fear of heights, and could not work on many projects, but a lower court dismissed his lawsuit, concluding that working at heights was an unavoidable condition of bridge maintenance. (The appeals court said that a jury "might" find that bridge maintenance could be done in "teams" with one worker always on the ground.)

(1) Zachary Woody, 21, of Calhoun, Ga., was charged with aggravated assault in May after stabbing a friend. Allegedly, Woody had escalated what was initially just a fistfight over whether Fords are better than Chevrolets. (2) Joseph Hayes, 48, was arrested in South Memphis, Tenn., in June after allegedly threatening (with a gun in his waistband) the hostess of a birthday party to which his kids had been invited but which ran out of cake and ice cream. "Y'all didn't save my kids no damn ice cream and cake," he was heard to say, and "I ain't scared to go to jail."

Stanley Thornton Jr., 30, and his "nurse"-roommate, Sandra Dias, featured on a May edition of the TV show "Taboo" (National Geographic Channel), are both drawing federal Supplemental Security Income as disabled persons, even though Thornton builds his own "adult baby" furniture (cribs and high chairs large enough to accommodate his 350-pound body) and operates a website where people living as adult babies can communicate. U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn asked the Social Security Administration to investigate whether Thornton is abusing the system (and Dias, too, since if she can "nurse" Thornton, she can "nurse" for a living). Thornton subsequently told The Washington Times that if his SSI checks were discontinued, he would kill himself.

Lawrence Bottone, 52, of Stamford, Conn., served four years in prison in the late-1990s for his fondness for attracting and convincing teenage boys and young men to strip down to underwear and allow him to torture (and photograph) them -- chaining them to his garage wall, whipping them and inserting stakes under their fingernails. In May 2011, police in Westchester County, N.Y., arrested Bottone for what appears to signal a return to his specialty but with an updated, 21st-century rationale: Now, according to police, he "recruits" young men to work at a fictitious "intelligence agency" -- which requires Bottone to "train" them to withstand torture.

Nakedness Recently in the News: (1) Just after Clayton County, Ga., schoolteacher Harlan Porter was told his contract would not be renewed, he walked naked through the school hallways (no students were present) and spoke of a "newer level of enlightenment" now that his "third eye was open" (April). (2) After a clothing malfunction, veteran marathoner Brett Henderson, 35, decided during the Flying Pig race in Cincinnati that, since marathoners sometimes run naked in California, he could do it there. Henderson outran police and stopped only when he was Tasered (May).

In December (1993), a New York appeals court rejected Edna Hobbs' lawsuit against the company that makes the device called The Clapper. Hobbs claimed she hurt her hands because she had to clap too hard in order to turn her appliances on: "I couldn't peel potatoes (when my hands hurt). I never ate so many baked potatoes in my life. I was in pain." However, the judge said Hobbs had merely failed to adjust the sensitivity controls.

Giddyup! When a strain of equine herpes led to a temporary quarantine at horse farms in central Utah, the sponsors of the Davis County Mounted Posse Junior Queen contest in May had a dilemma, but instead of canceling the competition in which the cowgirls show their skills on horseback, they decided to conduct the show except with the girls "riding" stick "ponies" to get style points. Former queen Savanna Steed told KSL-TV the change would be good because it would better test riders' knowledge of the routines instead of their relying on their horses to make the moves.

-- Unclear on the Concept: India's Ganges River has become famously polluted, in part by reverent Hindu pilgrims who toss "offerings" (such as clothing, statues and the cremated ashes of loved ones) into it in hope of prosperous lives and holy afterlives. Hindu immigrants in New York City, without access to the Ganges, have called upon Jamaica Bay as a stand-in. The formerly quiet waters adjacent to JFK International Airport now ebb and flow with similar offerings that ultimately litter the bay's federal recreation area shoreline. Hindu community leaders in New York, with only mixed success, constantly urge greater environmental sensitivity.

-- From time to time, clever rabbis suggest ways of bypassing ancient Talmudic laws that restrict observant Jews' behavior on the Sabbath (a day of "rest"). In April, Rabbi Dror Fixler, an electro-optics expert from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said he could foresee a day when even driving a car might be permitted on the Sabbath. The driver would wear an encephalography helmet that could catch brain signals and transmit them to a car's operating and steering system, removing the need for "action" on the driver's part (thus theoretically leaving him "at rest").

-- Mattel revealed that its best-selling fashion doll in the last year, for the age-6-and-up market, has been the teen werewolf "Monster High" model, Clawdeen Wolf, who comes with heavy makeup, a short skirt and high boots, and who supposedly spends her time "waxing, plucking and shaving." (Says Clawdeen, in promotional materials, "My hair is worthy of a shampoo commercial, and that's just what grows on my legs.") Though Mattel claims the doll celebrates girls' imperfections, a counselor told Fox News she was appalled that the company tells young girls they "need to sculpt, tweeze, wax and ... change their bodies" to attract men.

-- Cyber Making-Out: Tokyo's Kajimoto Laboratory has created a tongue-kissing machine to enable lovers to suck face over the Internet, according to a May CNN report. At separate locations, the pair place special straws in their mouths and mimic a deep kiss, which is recorded and transmitted to each other's straws. Researcher Nobuhiro Takahashi sees profit in "celebrity" tongue-kissing applications, but said more work is needed to establish individual taste, breathing and tongue moistness. (Another team of Japanese researchers, using a harness-type device, reported making similar advances -- in Internet "hugging," with sensors that mimic lovers' heartbeats and even their spine's "tingling" and stomach's "butterflies.")

-- Tacky: (1) The Columbus, Ohio, school board accepted principal Kimberly Jones' resignation in May following revelations by The Columbus Dispatch that she, though earning $90,000 a year, swore on federal forms that she made just $25,000 -- so that her own two children would qualify for reduced-price school lunches. (2) Prime Healthcare Services, with a reputation for rescuing financially failing hospitals, reported that two new acquisitions, in Victorville, Calif., and Redding, Calif., somehow curiously experienced rates about 40 and 70 times the state average in patients with a rare Third World Ghanian sickness that, conveniently, qualified the hospitals for enhanced Medicare reimbursements.

In a pre-trial motion in a Chicago court case in May, the defense lawyer for Exotic Motors Inc., which is being sued over car repairs, complained about plaintiffs' lawyers' unusual decision to permit a female paralegal to sit at their courtroom table, especially since she is a "large-breasted woman." Her "sole purpose" at the table, lamented defense lawyer Thomas Gooch, was "to draw the attention of the jury," presumably in favor of the plaintiffs. Gooch later told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that he was concerned only with her "qualifications" to sit at the table.

-- The recent Memorial Day weekend was a time of reflection for the residents of Long Island (N.Y.)'s Shelter Island, who were honoring a soldier from the neighborhood who had recently been killed in Afghanistan. The local American Legion placed new, heavy-duty American flags on telephone poles along a parade route, but only afterward was informed that Long Island Power Authority, which owns the poles, is required by state law to charge an unwaivable rental fee for the poles.

-- Principal Terry Eisenbarth apologized to parents and children at Washington Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Iowa, in May and promised to stop his ritual "whammies," in which he summons kids on their birthdays to his office, sings "Happy Birthday" to them, and ceremonially spanks the child's backside with a cushioned hockey stick (with the number of whacks equaling the child's age).

In May, based on five women's complaints, Virginia Beach, Va., police arrested restaurateur Henry Fitzsimmons, 54, for abduction and sexual assault for harshly beating them as punishment for violating the terms of the "scholarship" he supposedly offered them. The women claim that Fitzsimmons is a devotee of the "Spencer Plan" of orderly discipline, in which contracting parties adhere to agreed-on roles but at a cost of being physically disciplined if they fail. Fitzsimmons acknowledged his fascination with the Spencer Plan, but denied the assaults, pointing out that he had fired one of the women and that the other four were helping her retaliate.

(1) Former Camden, N.J., police Sgt. Jeffrey Frett pleaded guilty in May in a scheme to qualify for early retirement by arranging to be shot in the leg (to be attributed to random street violence). The plan deteriorated, police said, when Frett's wife (the designated shooter) missed his leg, merely ripping a hole in his uniform pants. (2) Ryan Martin, 29, and Erica Clayburn, 20, were charged with reckless endangerment in Derry Township, Pa., in April after Martin was shot in the jaw. The couple were playing a game resembling "Marco Polo" with a loaded handgun, with an eyes-closed Clayburn firing when Martin shouted "Gun!" (Martin was supposed to duck out of the way before Clayburn pulled the trigger.)

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Anthony Wayne Smith (former Oakland Raiders football player), Los Angeles (March); Theron Wayne Johnson, Weston, Texas (May); Michael Wayne McGray, Vancouver, British Columbia (May); Darrell Wayne Morris, Price, Utah (May). Convicted of murder: Thilbert Wayne Hager, Statesville, N.C. (October). Execution for murder stayed by U.S. Supreme Court: Daniel Wayne Cook, Phoenix (on death row since 1987) (April). Sentenced for murder: Billy Wayne Haynes, Odessa, Texas (life) (May); Jeffrey Wayne Riebe, Conway, S.C. (40 years in prison) (June).

In September (2006), according to sheriff's officials in Buffalo, N.Y., Thomas Montgomery, 47, murdered a 22-year-old colleague in an online love triangle involving a West Virginia woman, except that two of the three people involved did not exist. Ostensibly, a young Marine flirted with an 18-year-old woman, but unknown to each other, the "Marine" was actually Montgomery, and the woman was actually her mother, 45, pretending to be her daughter. The workplace colleague (not pretending to be anyone else) had struck up an online conversation with the "daughter," also, making Montgomery jealous enough to kill him. Thus, in the make-believe "triangle," the only real person is now dead.