The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  MAN SUES OVER INFLATABLE DOLL

  A Romanian man sued a sex shop on the grounds that his inflatable doll had lost her moan. He also complained that she went down too quickly. The shop in Brasov was fined $1,200 and ordered to provide the man with a new doll. The head of the local Consumer Protection Office confirmed: “The doll was losing air very quickly and due to a faulty electrical circuit it didn’t make the expected specific sounds.”

  ROBBERS’ ESCAPE DELAYED WHILE ACCOMPLICES HAD SEX IN GETAWAY CAR

  Four teenagers – three boys and a girl – were cruising around Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1997 looking for a place to rob before eventually setting their sights on a store. While two of the males then went into the store to carry out the robbery, the girl and the other boy hid the car in a dark spot, out of the view of prying eyes. However when the two robbers ran back to the getaway car after the raid, they found the doors locked, the windows steamed up and their two accomplices “in the act”. Told to wait until the lovers had finished, the pair on the outside created such a commotion that witnesses were able to give police a good description of the car, leading to the eventual arrest of all four.

  LAWYER SPANKED CLIENT TO PREPARE HER FOR COURT

  A lawyer removed a 22-year-old client’s panties and stockings, put her across his knee and repeatedly slapped her buttocks – actions which, he claimed, were designed to help prepare her to testify in court. Milo J. Altschuler, from Ansonia, Connecticut, told the woman that he needed to spank her to stop her fidgeting in the witness box so the judge wouldn’t think she was lying. In his defence, Altschuler said he often threatened to spank clients if they gave wrong answers to his questions, but when another female client also complained about his tactics, he held his hands up and pleaded no contest to two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault.

  WOMEN CLAIM TO HAVE BEEN RAPED BY GHOST

  Two women went into a police station in Federal Way, Washington State, in 2008 to report that a ghost had been having sex with them against their will for the past two years.

  DIAL M FOR MOTHER

  A frantic mother called the police after mistaking the sound of passionate lovemaking as a cry for help from her daughter. The woman, from Devizes, Wiltshire, was woken by two phone calls in the early hours of the morning. Hearing moaning, groaning and shouting, she dismissed the first as an obscene call, but in the second she recognized her daughter crying “Oh my God” and also heard a man’s voice. Convinced that her daughter was being attacked in her bedroom 100 miles away, the mother dialled the emergency services and a police car sped to the house to investigate. There, the embarrassed daughter explained that at the height of passion either she or her partner had accidentally pushed an auto-dial button on their phone with a toe. Unfortunately on both occasions it was her mother’s phone number.

  COUPLE HAVE SEX IN CHURCH CONFESSIONAL BOX

  An Italian couple in their early thirties were caught having sex in a church confessional box in Cesena, Italy, in 2008 while morning Mass was being said. The couple’s lawyer said they had been drinking all night and realized they had gone too far.

  HITCHHIKER BARES ALL TO GET LIFT

  Struggling to get a lift in North Carolina while hitchhiking from Georgia to Virginia in 2000, a 43-year-old German woman decided that the best way to catch motorists’ attention was to strip naked. Sadly for her the only driver who stopped was a police officer who immediately gave her a lift to the nearest sheriff ’s office on a charge of indecent exposure.

  PRIVATE HAS PROBLEMS WITH HIS PRIVATES

  A Romanian soldier collapsed and began convulsing uncontrollably at a barracks in Valcea in 2003 – because he was missing his girlfriend. After carrying out exhaustive tests on 21-year-old Adrian Busureanu, doctors at a military hospital diagnosed that he was suffering from “an acute case of sexual frustration”. An army spokesman said: “He became feverish, delusional and finally hysterical after being apart from his girlfriend for two months.” Busureanu admitted that life without her for so long had been “impossible”.

  DRIVER PLEASURES HIMSELF WITH PASTA JAR

  A 46-year-old man was fined $500 after police caught him in his car with his penis in a pasta jar – near a location in Queensland, Australia, known as Nobby’s Beach. Spotting him acting suspiciously, officers approached him but he drove off and led them on a low-speed car chase. When he finally stopped the vehicle, they discovered he had a 750-millilitre pasta jar around his manhood, and as they tried to restrain him, he continued to “pleasure himself in between bouts of wrestling.” Police found a number of items in the car, including pornography, a homemade sex aid, women’s stockings and a Jack Russell terrier.

  WIFE PANICS AFTER HUSBAND TAKES VIAGRA

  An 82-year-old Italian man became so excited after taking a Viagra pill that his wife called the police, fearing that he might have a heart attack. Carla di Stefano, from Palermo, said that although the police didn’t actually do anything, their mere presence quickly cooled husband Giovanni’s ardour.

  SNEEZING FETISHIST ARRESTED FOR PEPPER ATTACK

  An elderly man was arrested in Commerce, Texas, for blowing pepper into a female store clerk’s face – because he apparently has a fetish for women sneezing. Police officers said the man twice blew the powdery substance into the face of the clerk at a hardware store checkout. After apprehending a suspect, Police Chief Kerry Crews revealed: “We found out he’s got a problem. He becomes aroused by females sneezing. For me, this is a first.”

  ERECTION SAVES BURGLAR FROM JAIL

  A German burglar escaped a prison sentence in 2006 because he was suffering from a permanent erection. Hardened criminal Maurice Baumann was sentenced to a year in prison for burgling homes in the town of Bielefeld but instead he entered hospital to undergo treatment for the unrelenting priapism from which he had suffered for several months. After a week’s intensive course of injections and medication, doctors admitted they had only managed to get his manhood down to “half-mast”.

  CHAT LINE WORKER ATTACKED BY DISILLUSIONED CLIENT

  A telephone sex line worker in Romania was attacked by one of her regular callers after he discovered what she really looked like. The woman from Ploiesti was recognized by her voice while buying parsley at the local market. She told police: “He said he was shocked and felt betrayed because he imagined I was a unique woman with ideal measurements.” The woman, who used the work name Ella, described herself as “not looking so nice and one of my legs is a lot shorter than the other.”

  COUPLE CAUGHT HAVING SEX ON SUPERMARKET DAIRY DISPLAY

  A London couple were caught enjoying sex in an all-night supermarket in 1999 “on a bed of margarine tubs, yoghurt, clotted cream and trifles”. Michael Pallant and Danielle Minns were already giggling when they entered the Kensington branch of Sainsbury’s at 3 a.m. He then put her in a shopping cart and pushed her down the aisle towards the dairy produce. Shortly afterwards, customers and staff heard muffled screams and a security guard was sent to investigate. Finding Pallant lying on Minns on the refrigerator, he asked them what they were doing, to which Pallant replied: “Chilling out.” The lovers were fined $400. They told the court they had been very drunk.

  ELECTRICIAN HAD SEX WITH PAVEMENTS

  After being spotted on several occasions lying face down on paving stones in Redditch with his underpants around his ankles, electrician Karl Watkins appeared at Hereford Crown Court in 1993 charged with having sex with pavements. He was also alleged to have attempted to mount an underpass. He was jailed for 18 months but was back in court two years later on charges of simulating sex with black plastic bin bags. Watkins admitted that he had a fetish for “the feel and touch of the bin liners” and the court heard how he went out at night to lie in piles of garbage and had been found in wheelie bins and in the backs of garbage trucks. Apparently his ultimate sexual fantasy was to be in a garbage truck when the bin bags were crushed. He was put on three years’ probation and ordered to seek psychiatric help.

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nbsp; ONE-NIGHT STAND ENDS IN EMBARRASSMENT

  After meeting a stranger in a nightclub, a Berkshire woman enjoyed a night of wild passion at his luxurious home on a new development. But when she woke in the king-size bed the following morning, she found her lover gone and three people staring at her. They were the estate agent and two prospective buyers for the show house.

  ARMPIT SNIFFER SENT TO JAIL

  A Singaporean man with an armpit-sniffing fetish was sentenced to 14 years in jail and 18 strokes of the cane in 2008. Mohammed Ismail Ariffin, 36, was convicted of sniffing the armpits of 23 females, ranging in age from a nine-year-old girl to a 53-year-old cleaner. The court heard that he stalked his victims, following them into lifts, staircase landings or their homes. Following a report from a housewife that a man had smelled her armpit, police took a semen swab at the scene, which led them to Ismail.

  MYSTERY ATTACKER MUTILATES BARBIE DOLLS

  Over a six-month period between 1992 and 1993, 25 Barbie dolls in three department stores in Sandusky, Ohio, were sexually assaulted. The dolls were slashed in their private parts, leaving their breasts cut and their crotches mutilated. Police confirmed that Ken was not a suspect because he didn’t have the balls.

  IMPOTENT TURK SOUGHT PENIS TRANSPLANT FROM DONKEY

  An impotent Turkish man tried to find a remedy for his problem by securing a penis implant from a donkey – but his desperate quest angered his family so much that one of his sons eventually shot him. According to newspaper reports, Mehmet Esirgen had twice bought donkeys, amputated their sexual organs and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade doctors to carry out a transplant. His family bitterly opposed the idea, so when the 52-year-old returned home from a trip to Ankara in 1997 with a third donkey, his son vented his frustration by shooting him in the leg. Esirgen remained unrepentant, vowing to acquire a fourth donkey as soon as he recovered from the bullet wound. “For a long time now,” he was quoted as saying, “I have had sexual problems and I have spent all my pension funds to overcome them.”

  ACTORS FALL IN LOVE WHILE PLAYING PANTOMIME COW

  A couple fell in love while playing a pantomime cow in a Lincolnshire drama group production of Babes in the Wood. Kevin Blackburn met Sharon Colley when they played the front and rear ends respectively of Daisy the cow for the North Hykeham Dramatic Society’s 2002 show. Announcing their plans to marry, Mr Blackburn said: “It was love at first sight. It doesn’t matter that I met Sharon when she was the rear end of a cow. You really need to get on together in those roles. I hope she’ll always be my other half.”

  PERFORMING DWARF GETS PENIS STUCK TO VACUUM CLEANER

  A dwarf performer at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival was rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went hideously wrong. Daniel Blackner, or “Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf ”, was due to perform at the oddball Circus of Horrors with a vacuum cleaner attached to his penis by means of a special apparatus. However the attachment broke shortly before the performance and although Blackner managed to fix it using extra strong glue, he only allowed the glue to dry for 20 seconds instead of the recommended 20 minutes. So when he joined it directly to his organ, it formed a solid attachment. The audience thought it was hilarious – even when Blackner was taken to hospital. He admitted afterwards: “It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed Accident & Emergency with a vacuum attached to me.”

  WRONG PLASTER LANDS ARTIST’S MODEL IN HOSPITAL

  When art student Kate Freeland asked budding actor Paul Fifield to model for him in 1995, he jumped at the chance. She explained that she was going to cover his body in plaster to create a lifelike male nude. So wearing only Y-fronts and a pair of socks, Fifield, from Girton, Cambridgeshire, struck a pose, but unfortunately Freeland made the mistake of using wall plaster instead of plaster of Paris for the full-body mould, leaving him in agony when she tried to break the solid cast. Firemen had to take him to hospital, where he was given an anaesthetic while the plaster was hammered off. “Kate had a book on how to do it,” he said ruefully, “but I don’t think she got further than the preface.”

  POP STAR ROBBED WHILE DRESSED AS PINEAPPLE

  Japanese pop star Hideki Kaji was robbed of camera equipment worth over $3,000 in 2009 after three young men beat him up while he was dressed as a pineapple. Kaji was wearing the tropical fruit costume for a music video in Malmo, Sweden, but, having been left alone with the equipment while the camera crew went for a break, he was viciously attacked, sustaining a cut lip and a broken tooth. A police spokesman speculated that the pineapple outfit might have hindered Kaji’s attempts at resistance.

  FIRE EATER SEES PARTNER’S BREASTS GO UP IN FLAMES

  An erotic dancer who was tied to a pole wearing just her g-string was rushed to hospital in 2005 after her fire-eating partner set her naked boobs alight. Maria Leeb and flamethrower Marc Miszler were performing at a lap-dancing club in Augsburg, Germany, but their hot routine came to a painful end when Leeb suffered burns across her chest. “I shouted at him that he was getting too close but he didn’t stop,” she said. “The oil and glitter that I rubbed on my body must have caught on fire.” Miszler was given a ten-month suspended jail sentence for causing grievous bodily harm. Meanwhile Ms Leeb was planning to look for a new partner.

  DRUNK DRIVER SUSPECT NAMES AND BLAMES SHANIA TWAIN

  A suspected Canadian drunk driver escaped conviction in 2006 because he believed singer Shania Twain was helping him to drive. Matt Brownlee had been arrested for speeding along a street in Ottawa but the judge ruled that Brownlee was not criminally responsible because he suffers from delusions that female celebrities communicate with him telepathically.

  CLEANER BINS ART EXHIBIT

  A bag of garbage that was part of a Tate Britain work of art was accidentally thrown away by a cleaner in 2004. The bag, stuffed with old paper and cardboard, was a key ingredient in an exhibit by German artist Gustav Metzger that was said to demonstrate the “finite existence” of art. The message was clearly lost on the cleaner who binned it as rubbish, forcing Metzger to replace it with a new bag of garbage that enjoyed round-the-clock protection.

  FIRE TURNED OUT TO BE TV IMAGE

  Firefighters in Zurich, Switzerland, responding to an elderly woman’s call to say her TV was burning, discovered it was tuned to a German channel that broadcasts the constant image of a fireplace in the early hours of the morning. A fire service spokesman said: “The fire was extinguished with the press of a button.”

  NUNS ACCUSED OF PORNOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION

  An order of Catholic nuns was forced to close an art exhibition in 1994 after the sculptures and paintings on display were labelled “pornographic”. The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word had staged “Spiritual, Sensual, Sexual”, by Houston artist Donell Hill, at their own gallery in San Antonio, Texas, but a deluge of complaints led to it being shut down after just one day. Callers to the church principally objected to the graphic pictures of genitalia in a religious setting, including one painting of an angel having sex on an altar. Even the archbishop declared himself “highly offended”. Sister Alice Holden, the gallery director, said she had prayed before putting on the event but had decided to proceed because “sexuality is a tremendous gift from God”.

  POLICE SEIZE MUSICAL PROPS

  The Stromness Drama Club in Orkney had to perform The Sound of Music without props in 2001 after their dummy guns and Nazi uniforms were handed over to the police by suspicious bosses at a Royal Mail sorting office.

  TROUBLE IN THE WIND SECTION

  Ken Lawrence, an oboist with the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, was suspended in 1994 after one of the horn players complained that he had farted loudly during a rehearsal for The Nutcracker, “creating an overpowering smell”.

  AUDIENCE MEMBER INJURED BY FLYING SHEEP’S HEAD

  A concert-goer in Oslo, Norway, was rushed to hospital after his skull was fractured by a flying sheep’s head. The band Mayhem was ca
rving up a dead sheep on stage when the animal’s head flew into the audience.

  ACADEMY CHOOSES BASE OVER SCULPTURE

  When English sculptor David Hensel submitted a laughing head on a wooden plinth for exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in 2006, he was surprised to see that only the plinth was put on show. It transpired that the Academy had thought they were two separate works and much preferred the simple support to the elaborately sculpted head.

  LIBRARIANS NEED GRIEF COUNSELLING OVER DAMAGED BOOKS

  After flooding from a burst water main damaged thousands of precious books in 1998, Boston, Massachusetts, Public Library staff were so overcome with grief that many had to undergo counselling. Some reported waking up in a panic while others complained of stomach upsets, headaches and uncontrollable weeping. A few were even so upset that they could not bear going into work to face the sight of muddy, damaged books. So the library arranged for anxious staff to attend a programme of grief counselling and encouraged them to express their emotions in departmental meetings. “It’s a process just like when someone dies,” explained the library’s human resources director. “It’s not just a job to any one of us.”