xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Again this year, in April, Jim Werych of the Wednesday Night Classics car club in Brookfield, Wis., ritually dragged his tongue, in a deep lick, across Lisbon Road (with traffic stopped in both directions) to verify, and proclaim, that the streets are free of winter salt and thus safe for the club’s delicate classics.
A March New York Times dispatch described recent successes in eradicating the grotesque “Nigerian worm,” which afflicted 3 million Africans in 1986 but only 12,000 last year. The string-like worm, up to 3 feet in length, produces pools of acid in legs or feet (or eye sockets) and causes excruciating pain until expelled.
In April, William Bethel Jr. confessed to police during a traffic stop that the station wagon he was driving was mainly used for transporting corpses for his friend’s mortuary service but that he was using it just then to deliver pizzas for Domino’s of Feasterville, Pa. (Bethel quickly resigned.)
On the day after a federal jury in Virginia sentenced “20th (Sept. 11) hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison without possibility of parole, a Florida jury in Orlando gave Carl Moore, 37, exactly the same sentence. The Virginia jury had concluded that Moussaoui could have prevented the deaths of nearly 3,000 people; the Florida jury found that Moore had fondled a 12-year-old girl, briefly, underneath her clothes on an elevator at a resort (his second such conviction).
(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