xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

James Perry, with four DUI arrests in Florida, feared rejection if he tried to get a driver’s license in his new home state of Connecticut and so pretended to be Robert Kowalski (the name of his neighbor in Florida), but a routine computer check revealed “Robert Kowalski” to be a Michigan sex offender, unregistered in Connecticut (Clinton, Conn., September).

Mr. Chance Copp, 15, who was on probation for arson and who feared testing positive for marijuana, submitted the urine of a relative, instead, only to find out later that that urine tested positive for cocaine (Chillicothe, Ohio, November).

The city of Bartow, Fla., amid complaints about stray chickens, repealed a 1922 ordinance that made it illegal to kill, capture or “annoy” birds (August).

The10th annual cockroach races (and “tractor”-pull) were held at the Indiana State Fair in August, with separate events for American roaches (on an oval track) and the stronger Madagascar hissing cockroaches (on a straightaway).

And among the less-publicized charges against the Russian oil giant Yukos (whose chairman, Russia’s richest man, was arrested in October) was that a farm it owns in Siberia was illegally allowing rabbits to mate “unsystematically.”
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