The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  LONELY MAN MARRIES GOAT

  A Sudanese man was ordered to take a goat as his wife after he was caught having sex with the animal. Roused by a noise one night in 2006, the owner, Mr Alifi, rushed outside and found Charles Tombe with the goat named Rose. Mr Alifi said: “When I asked him, ‘What are you doing here?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured him and tied him up.” Mr Alifi then took him to a council of elders who ordered Tombe to pay him a $50 dowry for the animal because he had used it as his wife. An official explained: “In South Sudan if a man is caught sleeping with a girl, he is ordered to marry her immediately in order to save her honour and that of her family. That was why Tombe had to marry the goat.” Tombe said he was drunk at the time.

  GROOM CRASHES $400,000 CAR ON WAY TO CHURCH

  A bridegroom crashed a $400,000 Lamborghini that his bride had hired as a treat for him to drive to the church. Abi Pattison-Hart paid $12,000 to hire David Gallucci a yellow Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 for their big day but he lost control of the 220 miles per hour supercar on his way to the ceremony near Bradford, West Yorkshire, ending up in a ditch and causing $250,000 of damage to the bodywork, suspension and wheels. He wisely waited until after the wedding before breaking the news to his bride.

  MAN MARRIES WRONG TWIN

  A Romanian dentist inadvertently married the twin sister of the woman he had fallen in love with. Vladut met Elena, whom he called the “love of his life”, during a trip to France and they agreed to meet up again back in Romania. However Elena suffered an accident and decided not to stay in touch. Meanwhile Vladut bumped into her twin sister, Monica, at the seaside and thought it was Elena. She did not correct him and the pair married in 2001, remaining together for three years before Vladut realized he was living with the wrong twin.

  WEDDING TOAST – FORTY TIMES OVER

  When Paul and Lynne Davies of Stoke-on-Trent got married in 2008, they told friends and relatives that they didn’t want any presents. So their 40 guests decided to play a prank on the couple – and each bought them a toaster.

  BRIDE CAUGHT IN THE ACT WITH BEST MAN

  Doctors had to separate a bride and best man after they were caught having sex in the toilets during a wedding reception in Varazdin, Croatia, in 2005. When a friend of the groom walked in on them unexpectedly, the shock caused a muscle spasm that meant they were unable to be pulled apart. A procession of wedding guests came to gawp at the hapless pair before doctors arrived with the intention of separating them. Unable to do so, they had to take the pair on a stretcher to hospital, where the bride was given an injection to relax her muscles, thereby enabling the best man to break free. Meanwhile the party continued after the groom announced that the celebrations were now to mark his divorce rather than his wedding.

  TREES GET MARRIED IN INDIA

  Two trees that had grown around each other were married by Indian villagers in 2006. It was hoped that the ceremony, conducted before 250 guests, would keep evil spirits at bay.

  BRIDE GETS STUCK IN CHURCH DOOR

  When 16-year-old Carly O’Brien from Gloucester, England, said she wanted a big wedding, she found a dress to match. Unfortunately the eight-foot-wide dress, which weighed 25 stone and had a 60-foot-long train, was so big that she became wedged in the church door for an hour and a half. It eventually required the combined efforts of 20 people to push her through the door and up the aisle and another 14 plus the groom to carry her out again at the end of the ceremony.

  GROOM CHOKES TO DEATH ON BRIDE’S FALSE FINGERNAIL

  A bridegroom died during his wedding ceremony in 2001 while licking honey from his bride’s finger, an Iranian custom designed to guarantee that newlyweds’ life together starts sweetly. Instead there were only tears as the hapless groom fatally choked on his beloved’s false fingernail.

  DEAD GRANDFATHER ATTENDS WEDDING

  Upset that her grandfather would miss her 2003 wedding, having died two days earlier, a New Zealand bride and her family decided that he should be present anyway. So they took his corpse along to the wedding, leaving it in an open coffin inside the church during the ceremony.

  GRIEVING BRIDE MARRIES CORPSE

  After her lover drowned in a well, an Indian woman married his corpse. Members of the bride’s family dressed the deceased like a groom and conducted the marriage ceremony on a decorated stage. Tulsi Devipujak, 20, had been prevented from marrying 25-year-old Sanjay Dantania while he was alive because they belonged to different castes.

  WEDDING VIDEO MARRED BY BESTIALITY SCENES

  Guests at a wedding in East Sussex in 1994 received an unwelcome surprise when they sat down to watch the video of the ceremony. The man filming the wedding had borrowed the camera from 59-year-old Derek Jeffrey, who had forgotten to erase the previous footage on the tape. Consequently the final shots of the smiling bride and groom joyfully embarking on their new life together were followed by a ten-minute movie of Jeffrey lying on a bed, wearing only his socks, and performing indecent acts with a neighbour’s Staffordshire bull terrier called Ronnie. In court, Jeffrey admitted to having been drunk at the time but claimed that he had only been simulating sex with the dog. He was given a six-month suspended sentence.

  MAN DROPS ENGAGEMENT RING FROM HOT AIR BALLOON

  A vicar’s romantic proposal to his girlfriend in a hot air balloon fell flat when he dropped the engagement ring and saw it fall 500 feet into woodland below. James Ng had hidden the ring in his camera case but as he and Sonya Bostic took to the skies above Ohio in 2009, the case slipped from his hand. The resourceful Mr Ng went through with the proposal, using a plastic tie twist in place of the ring, and after a week of scouring the three-square-mile area of woods he finally located the camera bag with the ring still inside.

  BRIDE RUNS OFF WITH WEDDING PRESENTS

  While the groom waited patiently at the altar, a bride in Portugal did a vanishing act. She was later spotted in Lisbon – and charged with the theft of almost $200,000 worth of wedding presents.

  GROOM DIVORCES BRIDE OVER COLOUR OF MOTORBIKE

  For a bride in Jharkhand, India, it was a tale of two marriages and a divorce in one night – all over the colour of a motorbike. Directly after his marriage to Farhana in 2007, Riyaz Ansari asked to see the motorbike that was gifted to him as a dowry but became so angry on discovering that it was black instead of red that, in spite of the bride’s family’s attempts to pacify him, he promptly divorced her. While the groom and his father were being beaten up by disappointed villagers, Yasin Ansari, a member of the groom’s party, offered to marry Farhana, a gesture which the girl’s family readily accepted.

  INFLATABLE DOLL STANDS IN FOR HUSBAND

  With Sheila Smith’s husband Bob away on business and therefore unable to attend the couple’s recommitment service in Ohio, friends brought along a life-size inflatable doll as a stand-in. They dressed the blow-up Bob in shirt, tie and trousers and taped on a head-shot photo of the real Bob.

  JILTED BRIDE DRESSES DOG AS GROOM

  Despite being cruelly dumped by Paul Fox two weeks before their wedding day, Emma Knight of Portland, Dorset, was determined that the reception should go ahead as planned. So she dressed her dog Dennis up as the groom, wore the $3,000 wedding dress and partied with her 100 guests. She had sold her house to pay for the wedding.

  WOMAN WEDS EIFFEL TOWER

  In a touching ceremony before a few invited friends in Paris, an ex-US Army soldier from San Francisco married the Eiffel Tower in 2007. Erika La Tour Eiffel (she legally changed her surname to reflect her union with the 1,000-foot iron monument) promised eternal love even though she also claims to be romantically attached to the Golden Gate Bridge. “I am a woman and this is a bridge, and despite our vast differences we are very much in love,” she declared. A former archery champion with a passion for inanimate objects rather than people, Erika’s first beau was her bow, Lance.

  WOMAN SAT ON TOILET FOR A MONTH

  A woman spent at least a month sitting on her boyfriend’s
toilet – so that by the time he finally contacted police she was stuck to the seat. Although Kory McFarren told investigators that he regularly took her food and water and had begged her every day to come out of the bathroom, 35-year-old Pam Babcock from Ness County, Kansas, apparently refused to move. Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared that the woman’s skin had grown around the seat. “We prised the toilet seat off with a bar and the seat went with her to hospital. The hospital removed it. She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body. It is hard to imagine.”

  PENSIONER BANNED FOR FARTING

  In 2007, a social club in Devon banned a 77-year-old man from breaking wind while indoors. Retired bus driver Maurice Fox received a letter from Kirkham Street Sports and Social Club in Paignton which said: “After several complaints regarding your continual breaking of wind while in the club, would you please consider that your actions are considered disgusting to fellow members and visitors. You sit close to the front door, so would you please go outside when required.” A club regular for 20 years, Fox said that the letter was a surprise because he had not been given a formal warning. “I think someone has complained about the noise,” he said. “I am a loud farter, but there is no smell.”

  AROUSED FARMER FRACTURES HIS PENIS

  A newly married Romanian farmer fractured his penis in 2005 after ogling his young wife while carrying a heavy sack of grain. Gheorghe Popa, 52, stopped work to watch his 25-year-old bride Loredana hang up some washing but he became over-excited and dropped the sack on his erect organ, snapping vital tendons and ligaments.

  ANGRY HEART SCARE PATIENT CHASES PARAMEDICS

  Experiencing chest pains which she feared could be the first symptoms of a heart attack, a Florida woman called the emergency services but asked that the ambulance refrain from using sirens or flashing lights. The message was obviously not relayed and when the paramedics arrived with their lights on and sirens wailing, she was apparently so angry that she jumped to her feet and chased them down the street, brandishing a rolling pin.

  NIGERIAN WOMAN SAYS SHE HAS GIVEN BIRTH TO TORTOISE

  A 30-year-old Nigerian woman, Tawa Ahmed, told worshippers at her church in 2000 that she had been pregnant for five years before giving birth to a one-kilogram tortoise. With the reptile sitting next to her, Ahmed told the crowd she became pregnant in Lagos but returned to her parents’ home in Ondo after failing to give birth. The pastor of the Rock of Ages Gospel Church said he had organized a 14-day religious event to ease Ahmed’s labour pains. He admitted to being “surprised” when she eventually gave birth to the tortoise.

  MAN DRIVES CAR THROUGH DOOR TO SEE PSYCHIATRIST

  Refused an appointment with a psychiatrist at a hospital in Izola, Slovenia, in 2002, 48-year-old Aleksandar Oven ran from the building and returned minutes later in his car, which he drove through a set of glass doors and down a 100-ft-long corridor to reception where he demanded to see a psychiatrist. Asked why he had done it, he replied: “I don’t know – that’s why I came here.”

  PATIENT HYPNOTIZES HIMSELF BEFORE OPERATION

  A man from West Sussex hypnotized himself so that he could undergo extensive surgery on his right hand without an anaesthetic. Alex Lenkei, a registered hypnotist, put himself in a trance and said that he felt no pain during the 83-minute operation, even when a hammer, chisel and circular saw were used.

  FLYING ELVIS SUFFERS BROKEN PELVIS

  Paul Moran, a member of the Flying Elvi, a team of skydiving Elvis impersonators, broke his pelvis while jumping at the grand opening of the Glacier Parks Casino in Browning, Montana, in 2006. Other members of the troupe said the Las Vegas man appeared to misjudge the landing and hit the ground at 50 miles per hour.

  THIEVES CUT OFF MAN’S “HOLY LEG”

  Police in southern India were hunting for two men in 2007 who attacked a Hindu holy man, sliced off his right leg and then fled with it. The pair had gone to the village near Tirupati to seek the advice of 80-year-old Yanadi Kondaiah over a medical problem but after getting him drunk they used a sharp hunting knife to cut off his leg from the knee. While the victim remained mystified by the motive, police said he had told a number of local people about the supposed magical powers of his right leg. “This,” said an officer, “might have motivated some people to take away his leg, hoping to benefit from it.”

  SURGEON CARVES INITIALS ON WOMAN’S ABDOMEN

  A Manhattan obstetrician carved his initials on a female patient’s abdomen after performing a Caesarean section because he felt he had done “a beautiful job.” Dr Allan Zarkin was dubbed “Dr Zorro” by hospital staff after he had used a scalpel to etch “AZ” in three-inch letters into the skin of new mother Liana Gedz as she lay sedated in 1999. As well as surrendering his medical licence, Zarkin had to pay $1.75 million to Ms Gedz who said the incident left her feeling “like a branded animal”. Zarkin’s lawyer revealed that his client suffered from a brain disorder which sometimes impaired his judgement.

  PARTY BET ENDS IN PENIS PAIN

  At a party to celebrate the birth of his first child in 2001, Ioan Soaita of Sibiu, Romania, slid a wheel bearing over his penis for a bet. But when it came to removing the bearing, it wouldn’t budge, so he resorted to using a circular saw. However the saw slipped, leaving him half the man he used to be. Surgeons managed to reattach the missing penis portion in a five-hour operation.

  LEG THAT WAS TOO LONG IS NOW TOO SHORT

  A Swedish police officer with one leg longer than the other was left with a new problem after a bungled operation took too much off the leg, leaving it several centimetres shorter than the other. The officer had approached a private clinic in Gothenburg to remove two and a half centimetres from his longer leg, but after four operations he was left with a leg that is now five and a half centimetres shorter and with the imbalance firmly on the other foot. To add insult to injury, the officer also suffered from back and knee pain following the surgery. The clinic conceded that the operation had not been an unqualified success.

  PARAMEDIC IS CALLED TO HIS OWN EMERGENCY

  A paramedic received an emergency message on his pager – to attend to his own suspected heart attack. Complaining of severe chest pains, Roger Flux took to his bed in Ashurst, Hampshire, while his wife called an ambulance, but moments later his pager went off, summoning him to his own address. After being released from hospital, he said: “The message was telling me to attend to a man with chest pains. Then I looked at the address and saw it was mine! At least it shows the system works. The whole idea is to get the nearest responder available to attend to an emergency – and I was certainly the nearest.”

  WOMAN HAS SURGERY TO LOOK LIKE HUSBAND’S EX-WIFE

  A man in China persuaded his new wife to undergo plastic surgery so that she could resemble his first wife, who had been killed in a car accident three years earlier. Zhao Gang admitted: “I got married only because she looks a bit like my ex-wife and I want to have a chance to make up for my mistakes.”

  MAN GIVES BIRTH TO BABY GIRL

  Thomas Beatie, a transsexual man, left hospital in Bend, Oregon, in 2008 after giving birth to a baby girl. Thomas, who was previously known as Tracey, had his breasts surgically removed ten years earlier and started taking male hormones. He legally changed his gender, grew a wispy beard and married a woman but retained his reproductive organs so that he could one day get pregnant. Greeting the arrival of his baby, the proud father claimed: “The only thing different about me is that I can’t breastfeed.”

  PARENTS DON’T HAVE A BEAN, BUT DAUGHTER DOES

  After removing a troublesome bean from a young girl’s ear, a Nairobi physician jammed it back in when her parents were unable to pay for the $6 operation.

  “BOGUS DENTIST USED HOME IMPROVEMENT TOOLS”

  Police said Alvaro Perez from Ecuador posed as a dentist for many years and had hundreds of clients on his books despite having no qualifications and using such basic implements to extract teeth as a power drill, household plier
s and screwdriver. He was charged with deception in 2008 after one of his patients in Sampierdarena, Italy, complained about the excruciating pain he had suffered while undergoing surgery at the hands of Perez.

  MAN CONDUCTS CASTRATIONS AT HOME

  Having placed an advert for his services in specialist magazines, Edward L. Bodkin, from Huntington, Indiana, performed consensual castrations on at least five men using a variety of equipment ranging from cattle-farm implements to manicure scissors. He obtained permission from them to videotape the operations and to keep the severed testicles. After Bodkin was turned in by his roommate, police found nine jars in his apartment, each containing a testicle labelled either “L” for “left” or “R” for “right”. The reason for the odd number was that excessive bleeding had apparently forced him to abort one castration. In 1999, 56-year-old Bodkin pleaded guilty to practising medicine without a licence. As for the patients’ motives, prosecutor John Branham said: “I can’t sit here as a reasonable human being and give you an intelligent answer to that.”