xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In December, more than a month before “birdshot” would be all over the news (from a misadventure at a Texas ranch), the New England Journal of Medicine reported the odd case of a 73-year-old Inuit woman hospitalized in Nome, Alaska, whose abdominal X-ray revealed an enlarged and photographically opaque appendix, which doctors concluded was an appendix filled with birdshot. The Inuits, doctors said, eat so many ducks and geese downed by birdshot that inevitably some birdshot remains in the cooked meat and is eaten and digested, with some migrating to the appendix, where it is trapped. The appendix was enlarged and opaque on the X-ray simply because it was overstuffed with birdshot.
In Japan’s Wakayama prefecture in December, Miichiro Yamashita, 70, received a suspended sentence for bringing 25 sticks of dynamite to a hospital and threatening to blow the place up unless his doctor changed his mind and gave him the treatment he wanted for his stomachache.
Two women are at large in the Kenner, La., area after one slashed a Rally’s restaurant manager in February with a razor blade because her requested substitution (mayonnaise for tartar sauce on her fish sandwich) was not honored.
In February, Kimberly Dasilva, 40, was charged in Boston with putting explosives into condoms and mailing them to people she believes are associated with her longstanding mistreatment by men, including two strip clubs where she used to work.
(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