The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  FAKE BUS STOP KEEPS ALZHEIMER’S PATIENTS IN CHECK

  Bogus bus stops have been erected outside German nursing homes to prevent Alzheimer’s patients wandering off. “Our members are 84 years old on average,” explained one clinic director. “Their short-term memory hardly works, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home. We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later and invite them back in for a coffee. Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.”

  COSMETIC SURGERY ADDICT INJECTS COOKING OIL INTO FACE

  Korean woman addicted to plastic surgery ended up with a disfigured, bloated face after injecting cooking oil into it. Over a period of 20 years, Hang Mioku underwent so many plastic surgery procedures that her own parents didn’t recognize her. To fuel her obsession, a doctor supplied her with a syringe and silicone so that she could self-inject, and when her supply of silicone ran out, she resorted to cooking oil.

  SURGEON ACCIDENTALLY SEVERS PATIENT’S PENIS

  A Romanian surgeon accidentally sliced off a patient’s penis during an operation in 2004. Professor of anatomy Naum Ciomu was carrying out an operation for a testicular malformation at a Bucharest hospital when he cut off the man’s penis with a scalpel in front of amazed nursing staff, then chopped it into three pieces before storming out of the operating theatre. He was ordered to pay the unfortunate patient, 36-year-old builder Nelu Radonescu, $795,000 compensation. Dr Ciomu claimed he lost his temper after accidentally cutting the patient’s urinary channel. He said it was a loss of judgement due to personal problems.

  HOMEMADE REMEDY TURNS PATIENT BLUE

  When Paul Karason of Madera, California, suffered from stress-related dermatitis following the death of his father in 1994, he decided to treat it himself with homemade colloidal silver, an old medicine widely used before the discovery of penicillin. But the silver caused argyria, a condition that turned his skin permanently blue. As a result Karason has had to endure constant taunts of “Papa Smurf ” for the past 15 years. What’s more, the homemade medicine didn’t even cure his dermatitis.

  BUMBLEBEE HAS SURPRISE BIRTH ON HEN HIGHT

  A 30-year-old woman who didn’t even know she was pregnant went into labour on a friend’s hen night in 2008 while dressed in a bumblebee costume. Ally Ashwell was in Blackpool, Lancashire, to celebrate her friend’s forthcoming wedding when she began to feel unwell. She returned to her hotel room, where, within minutes, she started to give birth.

  IMPATIENT PATIENT LEAVES FINGER AT HOSPITAL

  Fed up with waiting for more than an hour to be treated at a hospital in Lecco, Italy, a 47-year-old man left his detached finger with staff and shouted: “Take care of the finger when you have some time. I’m going home.” The man had lost the finger in an accident at work and had carried it to the hospital in the hope that it could be reattached.

  WOMAN PUZZLED BY NOISY BREASTS

  After noticing for some time that her breasts made strange noises whenever she was in an airplane, a woman finally decided to seek medical answers. An X-ray at a clinic in Frisco, Colorado, revealed that her saline breast implants contained air bubbles and this caused her breasts to make a “swishing sound” when they were at high altitudes, where the outside air pressure was lower.

  MAN WORE HEARING AID IN WRONG EAR FOR 20 YEARS

  An elderly Leeds man was mystified why even a hearing aid failed to improve his hearing – until he discovered that for the past 20 years he had been wearing the appliance in the wrong ear.

  PATIENT LEAVES HOSPITAL WITH HEART MONITOR

  A 68-year-old patient hooked up to a heart monitor got up and walked out of a Los Angeles hospital in 1999 – with the six-foot-high machine in tow. “He didn’t want to stay any longer,” explained a hospital spokesperson.

  WOMAN EXTRACTS 18 OF HER OWN TEETH WHILE HIGH ON DRUG

  A 25-year-old woman pulled out 18 of her own teeth to stop a “luminous green and pink fly” choking her while she and her boyfriend were both high on the hallucinatory drug GHB. Samantha Court was found at her home in Horwich, Greater Manchester, in 2002 with her body covered in blood and 18 of her teeth either in a bowl or on the bed. She and Jason Morris had both consumed enormous amounts of the liquid drug, as a result of which they started seeing witches, clowns and floating furniture. Court said: “I turned to face my bedroom wall and a luminous green and pink fly flew out and down my throat. That’s when it started choking me.” She added that, after struggling to pull out the first tooth, “the rest seemed to just fall out” and she had felt no pain. The couple announced afterwards that they had decided to stop taking GHB.

  CANADIAN MAN WINS $100,000 BET BY WEARING BREAST IMPLANTS

  Professional gambler Brian Zembic won a $100,000 bet by getting breast implants and keeping them for a year. Under the terms of the 1996 wager, made with a backgammon friend, the Canadian agreed to wear breasts that were at least 38C in size and to pay for the surgery himself. Sixteen months later – even though he had long since won the bet – he was still wearing them, claiming that they really turned on women he met. One woman who was none too happy, however, was his wife. She only found out about his implants shortly before the wedding. Zembic said: “She broke down and started crying, ‘They’re bigger than mine!’”

  EYEBALL DELIVERED BY MISTAKE

  A guest at a hotel in Hobart, Tasmania, was startled to receive a foam box containing a single human eyeball. The box marked “Live human organs for transplant” was wrongly delivered to the hotel in 2008 by a taxi driver. An employee at the hotel said: “The guest brought the box with the eyeball to reception. I thought ‘this is just too weird’. I went and put it in the fridge because I didn’t know what else to do with it. It was more than a little disconcerting.” An Australian Air Express spokeswoman blamed the error on “failure in an internal handover process”.

  DENTIST SUED OVER FAKE TUSKS

  A Washington State dentist was sued by his assistant after temporarily implanting fake boar tusks in her mouth as a joke. Dr Robert Woo of Auburn put the tusks in while pig-lover Tina Alberts was under anaesthetic. He removed them before she woke up but first took photos of her which eventually circulated around the office. She felt so humiliated when she saw the pictures that she quit her job and took legal action. Dr Woo agreed to pay her $250,000 in an out-of-court settlement but he in turn successfully sued his insurers for $1,000,000.

  RUSSIAN BURGLAR LOSES TESTICLE

  A Russian burglar thinking a handicapped man’s home would be an easy target received a nasty surprise when the homeowner whacked him between the legs with his crutch, forcing the intruder to leap out of the window – minus one of his testicles. The homeowner said: “I didn’t understand at first what had fallen out of his pants. When I looked closer, I realized it was a testicle and put it in cold water.” The burglar was later found unconscious and taken to hospital, where doctors had to amputate his entire scrotum to prevent gangrene.

  DEPRESSED BANKER DROVE DOCTORS NUTS

  An Australian banker had his testicles examined more than 300 times – mostly by female doctors – to help him deal with severe depression brought on by restructuring in the banking industry. Craig Bell invented stories about being hit in the groin with a bat or a ball in order to get himself examined at clinics in the Brisbane area.

  SHEPHERD HAS HOLE DRILLED IN NEW TEETH SO HE CAN WHISTLE TO DOGS

  Fitted with a new set of false teeth, shepherd Ronnie Collins was dismayed to find that he could no longer whistle commands to his dogs. Despite using his fingers and even taking his teeth out, he was unable to make a sound that was recognizable to his border collies. So the retired milkman from Bingley, Yorkshire, asked his dentist to drill a small hole through the two front teeth, which he could then whistle through. The unusual request paid off when Ronnie and his dog Bob won the International Sheepdog Society Supreme Championship in 2000. “I’ve always whistled
through my teeth,” he said, “but I found it impossible when I got the false ones. The dentist burst out laughing when I told him what I wanted him to do, but it’s been a great success.”

  WOMAN NAMED WINK CHARGED WITH GLASS EYE THEFT

  A woman with the surname Wink was charged with stealing 50 glass eyes from a hospital in Owensboro, Kentucky. CCTV footage allegedly showed Melissa Jane Wink leaving the hospital with the eyes, which were valued at between $20 and $50 each. They were later recovered from a house at which she was staying. Police were baffled as to the motive since apparently there isn’t a great demand for glass eyes on the black market.

  BOGUS FEMALE DOCTOR PERSUADES WOMEN TO STRIP

  A woman posing as a doctor phoned a number of women in Portugal in 2002, informing them how they could have a mammogram by satellite. She told the women – aged between 19 and 45 – that the service was free provided they followed the instructions, which were to strip to the waist and stand either at their window or on their balcony facing in the direction of a supposed satellite. They all fell for the hoax, including one woman who bared her entire body. Later the women were phoned with their “results”, which merely provided the bogus lady doctor with the chance to describe graphically her own desires.

  GIRL LOSES MEMORY AFTER BEING HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING TORTOISE

  A 12-year-old girl was taken to hospital in Chongqing, China, after a three-pound pregnant tortoise plummeted from the sky and landed on her head. She suffered concussion and was unable to remember anything about the incident. The tortoise died from its injuries.

  BEAUTY QUEEN DIES IN QUEST FOR FIRMER BOTTOM

  Former Miss Argentina Solange Magnano, 38, died in 2009 after undergoing cosmetic surgery to sculpt her bottom. She underwent a gluteoplasty – a procedure which involves placing implants in the buttocks to improve their outline – but was rushed to hospital the next day suffering from a pulmonary embolism, apparently caused by complications arising from the surgery. A friend mourned: “A woman who had everything lost her life to have a slightly firmer behind.”

  SPIDERS MAKE THEIR HOME IN BOY’S EAR

  After a nine-year-old boy complained about a popping sensation in his left ear in 2007, doctors in Albany, Oregon, found the culprits – a pair of nesting spiders. The spiders were removed from Jesse Courtney’s ear by irrigation. One came out dead but the second was still alive.

  MAN FEARS HE IS TURNING INTO A WOMAN

  A father-of-five from Birmingham, England, has revealed his fears that he is slowly turning into a woman. Terry Wright, 60, started losing his hair and beard over ten years ago, and has since developed smooth skin, hot flushes and breasts. Blood tests have shown that he has abnormally high levels of the female hormone oestrogen. Terry, whose diminutive stature and slim build add to his femininity, moaned: “I get mocked by kids where I live who call me She-Man and other names. Once a child bumped into me and its mother said, ‘Say sorry to the lady.’ Doctors call me an ‘interesting case’ and ‘unique’ but I just want to go back to being a proper man.”

  MAN SLICES OFF PENIS IN PIZZA RESTAURANT

  A 35-year-old Polish man burst into a London restaurant in 2007, jumped on a table, dropped his trousers and hacked off his penis with a knife in front of horrified diners. The man was subdued with CS gas before being rushed to hospital. It was thought he had a history of mental illness.

  DEPRESSED WOMAN BRIDLES OVER “PSYCHO” LABEL

  A woman from Palm Beach, Florida, who was battling depression, sued pharmacy chain Walgreens in 2005 after reading a printout attached to her prescription for a sleep aid. Typed in a space reserved for patient information was “Crazy!” In another field, it read: “She’s really a psycho!”

  PATIENT TOLD TO WALK OFF PAIN AFTER SHOOTING

  After a Johannesburg security guard was shot in the side during a burglary in 2007, he went to hospital to have the bullet removed. One hospital turned him away because he couldn’t afford the bills, another examined him briefly before telling him to “walk the pain off ”, and a third told him they couldn’t do anything because he had started treatment elsewhere.

  RELATIVE DISLODGES TRAPPED FOOD WITH VACUUM CLEANER

  An 80-year-old Japanese man who was choking on a tasty paste called “devil’s tongue” was saved by an emergency medical worker and a relative who managed to dislodge the stuck food with a vacuum cleaner. The pensioner from Osaka was eating sukiyaki when the chewy food became lodged in his throat. As he lost consciousness, the family called the emergency services who suggested a number of measures, all of which failed. As a last resort, the dispatcher told the 25-year-old granddaughter to insert the tube of a vacuum cleaner into the choking man’s mouth. She switched it on, and out came the obstruction. Despite the success of the manoeuvre, Japanese medical services stressed that a vacuum cleaner should only be used in extreme circumstances and was no substitute for forceps where delicate removals were concerned.

  MAN WORE NECK BRACE FOR 14 YEARS TOO LONG

  After falling from a truck while at work in 1986, driver Herbert Scott was taken to Burnley General Hospital, where doctors suspected a broken neck and gave him a neck brace to wear. Due to a misunderstanding, he kept it on for the next 14 years, instead of the four weeks that the doctors had advised.

  DOCTORS FIND CRACK IN MAN’S BUTT

  When a 41-year-old man from Val des Monts, Quebec, suffered a seizure following a crack cocaine overdose in 2007, it disturbed his dog, a pit bull terrier, which promptly bit him in the neck just below the ear. Seeing this, the man’s housemates, who police said were also under the influence of drugs, tried to rescue their friend from the dog by swinging at it with a baseball bat, but in their befuddled state they missed and instead hit the man in the face. He was then taken to hospital, where a plastic bag containing ten grams of crack cocaine was found in his rectum.

  ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE: MAN ARRANGES FUNERAL SERVICE FOR AMPUTATED LIMB

  Sicilian man who had his left foot amputated in 2002 gave it a full funeral service before burying it in a coffin. Having persuaded the surgeon to give him his foot back after the operation, Antonio Magistro, 56, asked for the limb to be buried in his future grave at the cemetery in Giojosa Marea. He said he hoped to join the foot in the grave “as late as I possibly can”.

  AMBULANCE DRIVER RUNS OVER PATIENT AND DEFIBRILLATOR

  After a heart attack victim was resuscitated by another ambulance crew with the use of a defibrillator, a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, paramedic arrived on the scene and tried to get his vehicle as close to the patient as possible. In doing so, he succeeded in running over not only the victim’s ankle but also the defibrillator. Happily, the patient survived the double shock.

  DRUNK UNAWARE OF KNIFE IN BACK

  A Russian electrician who spent the night with a ten-inch knife embedded four inches deep in his back only found out when he got home and his wife saw it. Yuri Laylin, 53, received the wound from a blindfolded friend while playing a variation on Russian roulette during a vodka-fuelled night out in Vologda. Laylin said he felt no pain and had no idea what had happened until his wife saw him on the bed with the knife in his back. He said: “We had a few vodkas and I remember playing some silly games and someone had a large knife. I came home, went to sleep as usual and woke up when my wife started screaming.” Doctors suggested that the amount of alcohol he had consumed had acted as an anaesthetic, numbing the pain.

  MAN CHASED UP TREE BY INVISIBLE COPS

  A 30-year-old man rang the St Cloud, Minnesota, police force in 2007 to complain after imaginary drug squad officers had chased him up a tree. When the real police arrived on the scene, they found him up the tree, still fearfully clutching his cell phone. They quickly realized that he was hallucinating under the influence of drugs. It took them some time to convince him that it was safe to come down.

  PLASTIC SURGEON ALLOWS WAITER FRIEND TO HELP OUT

  Dr Joseph Graves, a San Diego plastic surgeon, was convicted of negligence and had his med
ical licence suspended in 1997 after allowing a waiter friend to assist him in carrying out surgeries. The court heard that the waiter helped during liposuctions and the insertion of breast implants.

  X-RAYS REVEAL JEWEL THIEF’S LOOT

  A burglar who swallowed thousands of pounds worth of jewellery after being disturbed while robbing a first-floor apartment in Perth, Scotland, was caught when doctors X-raying him for a broken hip discovered the loot in his stomach. The suspect had tried to escape from the apartment by jumping from an icy window-ledge but he landed awkwardly in the street below and broke his hip. “He really could have done without that trip to hospital,” said a police spokesman.

  MOTHER SAYS SON WAS CIRCUMCISED BY GENIE

  An Indonesian woman claimed in 2003 that a genie had circumcised her ten-month-old son while she was cooking breakfast. “When I heard Riyan crying,” she told reporters, “I went straight to his bedroom and couldn’t believe what my eyes saw. He had been circumcised.” She said a local paranormal confirmed that it was the work of a genie.