xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
For 23 years, Dennis Hope, 55, of Gardnerville, Nev., has operated a business selling people “official” title to land on the moon, Mars and Venus for about $20 an acre. Although others are in the same business, Hope told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in September that he has earned $6.5 million during that period (an average of $270,000 a year). He says his idea was based on something he actually learned in school: that the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibited nations from owning celestial bodies but was silent about individual ownership. Hope says he wrote to the United Nations, explained his plan, and asked if they had a problem with it (and no one wrote back).
While recent drastic budget cuts (and the governor’s failure to get a tax increase from the legislature) have limited Alabama’s Department of Public Safety to placing only five or six troopers on nighttime highway patrol for the entire state, as many as 17 troopers spend all day each Saturday during football season providing security for the state’s 10 college teams. The schools agreed in principle to reimburse the troopers’ expenses, according to an October Associated Press report, but their policies vary, and the Department has been lax in collecting.
Carl Hanson of St. Paul, Minn., actually obtained a U.S. patent (No. 6,457,474) in 2002 for what he described as a new method for treating heart-related chest pain (as reported in August 2003 by Scientific American). Hanson’s unique invention: He drinks limeade from concentrate. His patent application said that it worked for him, and he wrote out the required details about the structure of the invention, specifically, to purchase cans of concentrate, add water, stir and introduce the juice into the body through the mouth (although Hanson wrote that his patent would also cover intravenous administration).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD