xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Prosecutors in Dresden, Germany, charged Petra Kujau, 47, with fraud recently for selling at least 500 fake paintings of such artists as Monet, Picasso and Van Gogh. However, the paintings were always clearly labeled as fakes, according to an April Times of London dispatch, and their sale was a crime only because Petra had claimed they had been painted by Konrad Kujau (her great uncle), who had a worldwide reputation as a master faker. Thus, Petra is charged with duping collectors into thinking that they were buying original Konrad Kujau classic fakes.
In April, the organization Gymnastics Australia ordered cheerleader teams to supply less-revealing uniforms (e.g., no bare midriffs), based not on alleged “indecency” but on its fear that the exhibition of too-svelte cheerleaders’ bodies would make overweight girls feel bad and lead to eating disorders.
Greater Manchester (England) police filed a criminal charge against a 10-year-old boy who, in a schoolyard spat, called a classmate a “Paki” and “bin Laden” and, allegedly, the “n” word. Judge Jonathan Finestein of Salyer youth court urged prosecutors in April to deal with the matter in some other way (and in fact, the defendant told the court that the two boys are now friends).
In Red Deer, Alberta, in April, Jesse Maggrah, 20, listening through earphones to heavy-metal music while walking on Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, was hit from behind by a train moving at about 30 mph, but survived. In his hospital bed (broken ribs, punctured lung, other injuries), Maggrah said he remembers the immediate aftermath: “I thought, ‘Holy crap, dude, you just got hit by a train.'” “Maybe the metal gods above were smiling on me, and they didn’t want one of their true warriors to die on them.”
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