News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Vying to become the national sport of Venezuela is coleo, less bloody than bullfighting and “truly Venezuelan,” a spokesman for the national coleo organization told The New York Times in September. Four men on horses chase a bull in a large pen, competing to see who can tip it over the most times by yanking on its tail. If the bull hasn’t broken any legs when it falls, the men must get it back on its feet quickly by further twisting (or biting) the tail or by electric prod, so that the game can continue.
In a remote region of China, relatives shower graves with objects that supposedly make the deceased’s afterlife more pleasant, and some families of dead bachelors even buy corpses of unmarried females and bury them with their sons in posthumous “weddings.” Ironically, according to a September New York Times dispatch from Chenjiayuan, since men outnumber women in the region (in part due to abortions of girl fetuses), families of these dead women are able to command high “dowries.”
The grave of Pol Pot (one of the 20th century’s most prodigious mass murderers) near Anlong Veng, Cambodia, is revered by local villagers who believe his ghost protects them and also provides winning lottery numbers, according to an August International Herald Tribune report. In fact, the government is building a casino nearby to serve those who feel lucky.
(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
