xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Louis Paul Kadlecek, 21, who had never even been in an airplane before, broke into a hangar at an airport near Lake Jackson, Texas, on Feb. 29, and, using trial-and-error, got a Cessna 172 airborne for about a mile, intending to fly to Mexico, before slamming into power lines. Although the crash left the plane a total loss, Kadlecek climbed out and walked home, but sheriff’s deputies, based on witnesses’ descriptions, arrested him the next day. One Brazoria County aviation official estimated that stunt pilots might survive an incident like that one time in 1,000. Said another, “This guy used up all the luck he’s ever going to have.”
From a March Boston Globe interview with Morgan Lee, newly crowned Miss Gothic Massachusetts: (asked how she would describe Goth) “It’s really a style and a way of thinking. Basically, you’re miserable all the time. (W)e just see the darker side that other people tend to ignore. The most interesting people are always the saddest.” (Asked what her boyfriend thinks of her): “He’s very proud of me. (H)e’s not a very descript person, kind of like an amoeba, but very cultured.”
In a 2003 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, two Seattle radiologists described a 35-year-old man with severe abdominal pain but normal vital signs, who was found to have “multiple” heads from Barbie dolls lodged in his small bowel, which he attributed to his pursuit of the pleasurable anal sensation he gets from excreting them. After a straight-laced description of how doll heads show up differently from other objects on X-rays, the authors advised radiologists to “keep in mind that human imagination may not follow clinical algorithms.”
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
