xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

Hunter Raybon E. Upton was tracked down and rescued by his worried wife near Mount Holly, Ark., in December, after he spent almost nine hours hanging upside down from branches following his entanglement in his tree stand. He was hospitalized with hypothermia and required surgery.

A fire rescue officer had to pull Australian Robin Toom, 38, out of a commercial washing machine in Townsville, Queensland, in January after he got stuck while playing hide-and-seek with his kids.

In a Washington, D.C., pedestrian tragedy in December, prominent urban designer Charles Atherton, 73, was fatally struck down by a driver, but then when paramedics arrived, they discovered that D.C. police had already been there and had issued Atherton a $5 jaywalking ticket.

In Belmont, N.H., in January, a suicidal man was successful with his elaborate, homemade guillotine, although the blade merely left a gash in his neck, causing him to slowly bleed to death. (He also had wired fire bombs to burn down the house as he died, but he apparently forgot to flip the electrical trigger before the guillotine came down.)

In December, a special committee of the D.C. Council, seeking to move the annual Martin Luther King Day parade from January to a warmer date, chose “April 1.” (Committee members later said they never realized that that was April Fool’s Day.)
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD