RADIO STATION CHALLENGE PUTS FOUR IN HOSPITAL
When Birmingham-based radio station BRMB challenged contestants to sit on blocks of dry ice to win tickets and back-stage passes for a music festival, four of them had to be treated in hospital for severe frostbite. Three spent ten weeks in hospital recovering from extensive skin grafts following the Coolest Seats in Town event outside the station’s headquarters in 2001.
PERFORMANCE ARTIST IS BITTEN BY DOG
For a 1999 display, San Francisco performance artist Zhang Huan took off all his clothes, lay on the floor, had an assistant smear his body with puréed hot dogs, and then invited eight dogs to lick him. However he got more than he bargained for when one dog – an Akita – sank its teeth into Zhang’s bare butt, drawing blood. Afterwards the artist put a brave face on it, insisting: “If he hadn’t bitten me, I would have been disappointed.”
FOUR TOPS TRIBUTE BAND FAILED TO BE THERE
A Four Tops tribute band missed a sell-out gig in 2006 because their satellite navigation system had been set for Chelmsford instead of Cheltenham. As a result Viscount Oliver’s Legendary Four Tops – based on the Motown band whose biggest hit was “I’ll Be There” – ended up 140 miles from the venue. Their tour manager said: “Whoever tapped the place into the GPS got it wrong. Because they’re American they don’t know British geography very well.”
NOVELIST MISTAKEN FOR VANDAL
When American horror author Stephen King walked unannounced into a bookshop in Alice Springs, Australia, for an impromptu book-signing session in 2007, customers in the store thought he was a vandal who was defacing the books and reported him to staff.
INSULTING ARTWORK SPARKS DIPLOMATIC ROW
To mark their 2009 presidency of the European Union, the Czech government spent $700,000 commissioning a sculpture that was supposed to celebrate European diversity. Instead artist David Cerny created an installation that insulted virtually every nation in the EU. His map of Europe depicted Sweden as an Ikea flat pack, Slovakia as a wrapped-up corpse, and Lithuania urinating on Russia, while France was represented simply by a banner that read: “Strike!” Bulgaria was particularly offended, having been portrayed as a Turkish toilet. Demanding that the sculpture be taken down, a leading Bulgarian politician protested: “I cannot accept to see a toilet on the map of my country. This is not the face of Bulgaria.”
THIEVES STEAL HITLER FROM CANADIAN MUSEUM
Thieves stole a life-sized wax figure of Adolf Hitler – in full Nazi uniform – from the Criminals Hall of Fame Museum at Niagara Falls. The Führer, who was housed in a display case between Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and 1930s US gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, was noticed to have gone AWOL when the cashier walked through the museum at closing time one evening in 1999. She suspected the culprits simply walked out with the figure. “Hitler is a small man,” she said, “so they wouldn’t have much problem getting him out.”
ISRAELIS LEFT SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS OVER LICE ART
When seven young artists from Berlin tried to turn head lice into a work of art in 2008, visitors to an Israeli museum were left scratching their heads. The Bat Yam Museum near Tel Aviv allowed the septet to live there for three weeks with lice in their hair in a bid to stretch the boundaries of art. They wore shower caps to prevent the lice from spreading but although acknowledging that it was an uncomfortable experience, they insisted that it was not a gimmick. “We are serious,” said one. “The lice are part of the art.”
LISTENER COLLECTS GRASSHOPPERS TO SEE ELTON JOHN
Canadian Brandy Elliott won two tickets to see Elton John’s 2002 concert in Regina, Saskatchewan, by collecting 38,000 grasshoppers. Local radio station Z99 had offered the tickets to the sold-out concert to the listener who could collect the most grasshoppers over a two-day period. Ms Elliott was among 100 listeners to rise to the challenge and she beat her nearest rival by 6,000 grasshoppers after driving a truck rigged with five-foot-high netting through the pests’ favourite haunts. Making her victory speech she revealed: “Every night when I went to bed, all I could dream about was grasshoppers – just bags and bags of grasshoppers. All I kept thinking was, ‘Is this enough?’”
CYCLE RACK WAS PRICELESS RELIC
A statue that had been kept in the basement of a Southampton museum was eventually identified as being a valuable Egyptian piece dating back 2,700 years. Staff had been using it as a cycle rack.
TEXT BOOK ERROR DRIVES AUTHOR TO KILL WIFE
In 1996, New Jersey police charged 67-year-old Ukrainian–American mathematics professor Walter Petryshyn with clubbing his wife to death with a claw hammer. A friend said that Petryshyn had descended into paranoia and depression because he was afraid that he would become a laughing stock in the mathematical community as a result of a small error in his latest textbook, Generalized Topological Degree and Semilinear Equations. He was found not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity.
STALKER’S CLAIM WAS ONLY MAKE BELIEVE
In 1993 a court ordered Thomas Fry of Jensen Beach, Florida, to stop harassing singer Conway Twitty. Apparently 24-year-old Fry was convinced that Twitty, 58, was his son.
ARTIST POSES 1,250 NAZI GARDEN GNOMES
A German artist posed 1,250 black plastic garden gnomes in a town square in 2009 with their arms outstretched in the stiff-armed Hitler salute. Ottmar Hoerl created the exhibit in Straubing as a satirical protest at lingering fascist tendencies in German society.
DOG SACKED FOR STEALING THE SHOW
A canine actor was sacked from an Essex stage production of Oliver because he kept distracting the cast and audience. Bull terrier Bronx had been playing Bill Sikes’s dog in the Southend Operatic and Dramatic Society’s production until being ruthlessly relieved of his duties. His owner Edward James attributed Bronx’s dismissal to his habit of flapping his leg and stamping. He explained: “Bronx got on stage when Bill was having a romantic moment with Nancy and did his dance, with his leg going up and down. Everyone started laughing.”
ARTIST PRICES BANANA AT $15,000
Artist Michael Fernandes wanted to price his latest artwork at $15,000, even though it was merely a banana on the gallery’s window sill. He did, however, change the banana on a daily basis, eating the old ones and putting progressively greener ones on display to illustrate the banana’s transitory nature. Fernandes eventually lowered his price to $2,500, which was enough to attract interest from at least two collectors. Nevertheless Victoria Page, co-owner of the Halifax, Nova Scotia, gallery, thought it best to seek assurances from the prospective buyers. “It’s a banana; you understand it’s a banana?”
WOMAN CHARGED WITH KISSING PAINTING
A woman appeared in a French court in 2007 on charges of kissing a painting worth over $2 million. The art-lover was apparently so overcome with passion in front of the Cy Twombly work in Avignon that she felt she had to kiss it, leaving a red lipstick stain on the canvas.
MISTAKE HONOURS KING’S MURDERER
A typographical error led to a notorious murderer being honoured on a plaque instead of a distinguished actor. The plaque was meant to honour black actor James Earl Jones at a Florida event marking Martin Luther King Day in 2002 but instead it paid tribute to James Earl Ray – the man who killed the civil rights leader. The erroneous plaque read: “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.”
EXPLODING POTATO HALTS BALLET
Some 2,000 ballet fans had to be evacuated from London’s Royal Opera House in 2001 after a baked potato exploded in a backstage microwave oven and triggered the fire alarm.
THE BEAVER MAGAZINE RENAMED TO END PORN MIX-UP
Canada’s second oldest magazine, The Beaver, changed its name in 2010 because the title was frequently censored by Internet porn filters, thus preventing it from reaching new online readers. The Winnipeg-based magazine was launched in 1920 to celebrate the history of the fur trade but its publisher, Deborah Morrison, said the title had become something of an impediment online. Announcing a ch
ange to Canada’s History, she said: “Several readers asked us to change the title because their spam filters were blocking it. Ninety years ago, it probably seemed the perfect name for a magazine about the fur trade. There was only one interpretation for the word then, but you’re likely to find a lot of strange sites now if you search for the title of our magazine online.”
MADONNA LOOKALIKE IS A MAN
Chile’s most successful Madonna impersonator was revealed to be a man. Elias Figueroa has been obsessed with the singer since he was a schoolboy and now earns $12,000 a year – three times the national salary – as a Madonna lookalike. He says modestly: “I’m so good at playing Madonna, some people can’t tell the difference between me and the real thing. They don’t even realize I’m a man.” Unsurprisingly he had yet to be granted a meeting with the real Madonna.
DUCK MORE EXPENSIVE TO HIRE THAN ACTOR
A London theatre dropped plans to hire a duck for a production because it cost four times more than an actor. English comedian Arthur Smith had wanted to hire the duck for a waddle-on part in his 2000 show Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen but was quoted $375 to hire a Muscovy duck for a day – just $60 less than the union minimum wage for a West End human actor for a whole week. Smith said: “It is ridiculous to pay a duck so much. So we have decided to hire an unemployed actor, dress him in a duck suit and give him a bigger part.”
TV PRESENTER THROWS TANTRUM OVER LACK OF CALLS
A Romanian TV presenter on a live phone-in quiz show threw a tantrum when no viewers called in. Adela Lupse started screaming at the camera, smashed the phone on the ground and then jumped up and down on it, yelling repeatedly: “I want the phone to ring now. Now! Call me now!” After the National TV station was fined $2,000 in 2009 for “unjustified violence”, Lupse, who had been presenting the show for three years, admitted: “Maybe I was a bit over the top but I wanted to get people to call. There is a lot of pressure to get people to call in with the correct answer. It was a bad day.”
MUSEUM DISCOVERS EARHART’S HAIR IS PIECE OF THREAD
An Ohio museum discovered in 2009 that an exhibit believed to be a lock of Amelia Earhart’s hair was actually nothing more than a piece of thread. The Cleveland International Women’s Air and Space Museum acquired the “lock” in 1986. It was said to have been recovered by a maid at the White House after pioneering aviator Earhart stayed there prior to her final flight in 1937. Eager to shed more light on the mystery of Earhart’s disappearance over the Pacific, the museum lent a small sample of the artefact to a historian’s organization seeking to match her DNA to other items found on the central Pacific island of Nikumororo. However the DNA analysis revealed the supposed cherished hair to be simple thread of no historical significance whatsoever. The museum described it as “a disappointing turn of events”.
ARTIST CREATES BUSH PORTRAIT FROM PORN
British artist Jonathan Yeo has created portraits of George W. Bush and Paris Hilton in the form of collages using pieces of pornographic magazines. Yeo apparently came up with the idea after the White House cancelled his commission to paint Bush in 2004.
RECIPE TYPO CALLS FOR “FRESHLY GROUND BLACK PEOPLE”
An Australian publisher was forced to reprint 7,000 cookery books in 2010 after a typographical error in a pasta recipe called for “salt and freshly ground black people” instead of “salt and freshly ground black pepper”. The mistake in the Pasta Bible recipe for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto had apparently prompted a number of complaints from readers. Penguin Group Australia’s head of publishing said: “It was just a silly mistake. We’re mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don’t know.”
WOMAN WINS DAMAGES OVER HYPNOTIC TRANCE
In 1994, Ann Hazard, a 25-year-old woman from Edinburgh, Scotland, won a $32,500 settlement from a theatre that had employed a hypnotist in a stage show. The performer had brought Hazard on stage, hypnotized her and told her to leave “by the quickest exit”, at which she stepped off the stage, tumbled four feet and broke her leg.
ACTOR INJURED DURING SUICIDE SCENE
A German actor’s suicide scene during a stage play in Vienna in 2008 was a little more realistic than he had intended when he accidentally stabbed himself in the neck. Daniel Hoevels was meant to be using a prop knife that had been deliberately blunted for use onstage, but unbeknown to him the knife had been switched with a sharp one for the Saturday night performance of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart. While Hoevels received stitches for his injury at a city hospital, Vienna police were investigating “bodily injury caused by negligence”.
OVER-ENTHUSIASTIC CONDUCTOR RAMS BATON THROUGH HAND
While conducting the first act of the opera Il Pirata in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2001, 70-year-old Giovanni Impellizzeri became so animated that he inadvertently rammed his baton straight through his left hand. “I did not feel a thing,” he said afterwards. “I just saw the baton sticking out of the hand and thought it looked funny. There was almost no blood at all. I quickly pulled it out, licked the wound, and the orchestra did not notice a thing.”
GALLERY VISITORS FALL INTO EXHIBIT
In October 2007, three visitors to London’s Tate Modern Gallery accidentally fell into a 167-metre-long crack in the entrance hall floor that formed an exhibit by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo. The fissure, which was a metre down at its deepest point, was designed to symbolize racial and social division in the world.
INFLATABLE DOG POOP LANDS ON CHILDREN’S HOME
A giant inflatable dog poop – an artwork by American Paul McCarthy – broke free from its moorings outside a museum in Berne, Switzerland, and left a trail of destruction in its wake. The installation, entitled “Complex Sh*t”, came loose in strong winds and as it floated away it brought down a powerline before eventually landing on a nearby children’s home, where it smashed a window.
PRIZE REVEALS WORLD’S WEIRDEST BOOK TITLES
Since 1978, Britain’s Bookseller magazine has run an annual contest to find the strangest book title of the previous 12 months. Winners of the coveted Diagram Prize have included How To Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art (1989), How To Avoid Huge Ships (1992), Highlights in the History of Concrete (1994), Reusing Old Graves: A Report on Popular British Attitudes (1995), Greek Rural Postmen And Their Cancellation Numbers (1996), Bombproof Your Horse (2004), People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting Bystanders And What To Do About It (2005), If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs (2007), and The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais (2008).
THIEVES STEAL STATUE’S PENIS
Security cameras at a public library in Whangarei, New Zealand, captured a nighttime raid in which three masked men used a chisel to remove the penis of a wooden Maori figurine. Police said they were at a loss to explain the theft, particularly as a nearby statue of Tangaroa, the Maori god of the sea, was better endowed.
KIDNAPPERS SNATCH ARTIST TO PAINT PORTRAIT
Artist Niceforo Urbieta understandably feared the worst when he was seized at gunpoint in the street at Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1997, a cloth was thrown over him and he was driven to a mystery location. Imprisoned in the 1970s for his links to militant leftist groups, he thought this might be a political act, but instead his kidnappers told him: “There is a very rich lady who likes your painting a lot. She wants you to paint her.” Provided with brushes by the kidnappers, Urbieta was held captive for the next four days while he painted a nude portrait of the young woman, who never spoke but, according to the artist, had long black hair and “a very well-formed body”. She would pose for an hour at a time, Urbieta viewing her through a hole in the wall of an adjoining room. He was eventually released when the painting was finished. “It was totally absurd,” he complained afterwards. “Looking at her through that hole, I felt like a voyeur.”
$100,000 CHINESE VASE MADE INTO LAMP
A rar
e Chinese vase worth $100,000 in mint condition was listed in a 2008 sale for just $12,000 after a hole had been drilled in its base so that it could be used as a table lamp. The Dorset auctioneer said of the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty porcelain vase: “I don’t think the owners knew how much it was worth before they drilled the hole.”
SLEEP DISORDER SPOKESMAN OVERSLEEPS, MISSES TV SPOT
Actor Tony Randall, who had been appointed spokesperson for US National Sleep Disorder Month, overslept on 9 May 1995 and missed a guest spot on the TV show Wake Up America.
EXHIBITION OF STOLEN ITEMS IS ROBBED
Organizers of a 2010 exhibition displaying stolen artefacts from history should not have been totally surprised when it was robbed. Burglars broke into the Jerusalem museum where the exhibition “Antiquities Theft in Israel” was showing hundreds of items that had been recovered from thieves, and made off with several valuable pieces, including a silver ring belonging to Alexander the Great.
NEWS CHANNEL INTERVIEWS WRONG MAN
The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Page 9
