The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books)

by Geoff Tibballs

  HELPLINE PRIEST FALLS ASLEEP DURING SUICIDE CALL

  A suicidal man who phoned a Swedish Samaritans-style helpline in 2010 was left in limbo when the priest at the other end fell asleep and started snoring down the line. Luckily the priest’s response to his woes left the troubled man feeling angry rather than depressed, and he abandoned all thoughts of suicide.

  FLAME-GRILLED BURGER BOSSES

  A dozen Burger King bosses suffered first- or second-degree burns in Key Largo, Florida, in 2001 after walking over an 8-foot strip of white-hot coals as part of a team-building exercise. Surveying the line of wheelchair-bound employees at the airport the next day, one of the organizers remained unrepentant. “It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything.”

  BANK CUSTOMER RECEIVES 287 IDENTICAL LETTERS

  John Tiemens, from Runcorn, Cheshire, received a staggering 287 letters confirming that he had cancelled his credit card – in the same post. “I hadn’t a clue what was going on,” he said after nearly falling over the mountain of mail on his doormat. “Then I picked up some of the letters and realized they were all identical.” A spokesman for the company, Capital One, blamed a computer malfunction.

  GUARD SAYS HE WENT NAKED TO TRAP STREAKER

  Gary Aicard was arrested in 1997 after being seen running naked through the building at Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where he was employed as a security guard. Over the previous few days, there had been several reports of sightings of a streaker in the building. When questioned by police, Aicard explained that he had stripped naked in an effort to befriend the real streaker so that he could catch him.

  WOMAN, 33, POSES AS 13-YEAR-OLD BOY PUPIL

  Staff at a school in Norway were alarmed to discover that the 13-year-old boy they had been teaching for the past three months was really a 33-year-old woman. “Adam” had enrolled at the Marienlyst School near Oslo in September 2007 but when he disappeared from a children’s home in December of that year, police launched a nationwide search, which led them to reveal that he was, in fact, 5-foot 2-inch Czech national Barbora Skrlova, who had posed as a schoolboy by shaving her head and binding her breasts with tape. After Skrlova was deported back to the Czech Republic for psychiatric evaluation, the school principal commented: “We did react to Adam’s behaviour, but children at that age can be so different.”

  PROFESSOR STUDIES WHY WOMEN FLASH BREASTS AT HOCKEY GAMES

  In 2005, Professor Mary Valentich, of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Social Work, announced that she was going to conduct a study as to why women fans of the Calgary Flames had a tendency to flash their breasts at hockey games. She said she thought her study would shed light on current Canadian attitudes towards female nudity, adding: “There are gender role issues here. These women are doing something unconventional and yet they’re using the traditional sexual route to express whatever they’re expressing.”

  FRENCHMAN TAKES FIVE YEARS OFF WORK

  In 2000, France’s social services department finally realized that one of their civil servants in Cannes had not been into work for five years. Every morning the employee would ring in to head office and claim that he was on his way to one of the many other offices on his patch. But he never showed up. His deception was eventually uncovered when his bosses decided to post someone at the door of every office to see whether he put in an appearance.

  CAMERAMAN’S BADGE SETS DOMINOES TOPPLING

  In 1978, Bob Specas was preparing to break a world record by knocking down 100,000 dominoes at New York’s Manhattan Centre. Specas had painstakingly positioned 97,499 over the course of several hours when a TV cameraman, on hand to capture the big moment, dropped his press badge and accidentally set off the whole wave of dominoes.

  JOB INTERVIEW COMES 34 YEARS TOO LATE

  After applying for a job with the Indian government in 1968, Navindra Nath Halder was called for an interview . . . in 2002. However by then he was 52 years old and the maximum age for a government job was 37. The country’s labour minister admitted that it often took a long time for a person to be called for an interview.

  SHOP ASSISTANT LOSES $2,700 BY MISREADING PRICE TAG

  A set of Victorian military medals worth over $2,700 was sold for a fraction of the price in 2009 after a part-time shop assistant in Norwich, England, misread the £1,850 price tag as £18.50 ($30). The 13 medals, which date back to the 1890s, belonged to an antiques dealer who was on his lunch break at the time. When the error was pointed out to the assistant, she “went very white and got very upset”.

  SPELLING DVD HAS SPELLING ERROR ON COVER

  The makers of a 2006 spelling game DVD fronted by Northern Irish TV presenter Eamonn Holmes had to scrap 10,000 copies after spelling his name as “Eamon” on the cover. The mistake was spotted by Holmes when DDS Media sent him one of the first DVDs to be pressed. He told them: “How can you expect people to buy this game when you’ve misspelt my name on the front!”

  CIVIL SERVANT NEEDS 20 PEOPLE TO REPLACE HIM

  An Indian government worker was considered so irreplaceable that when he eventually retired, it took 20 younger men to do his job. Described by his bosses as a human dynamo with a computer-like memory, Sachidanand Maitra should have retired in 1989 but was granted 12 annual extensions while he trained 20 men to take over the job he had done for nearly 50 years. Bringing a lighter note to his retirement speech, his immediate superior said 70-year-old Mr Maitra possessed “an unmatched knowledge of the laws and by-laws of countless state government departments”.

  MOTHER CALLS POLICE TO STOP GAMER SON

  Angela Mejia, from Roxbury, Massachusetts, called the police because she could not get her 14-year-old son to stop playing Grand Theft Auto on his Sony PlayStation. After ordering him to go to sleep hours earlier, she was so angry at finding him playing the game in his room at 2.30 a.m. that she summoned the police. Officers gently persuaded him to turn off the PlayStation and go to bed.

  STUDENT WITH SMELLY FEET WINS RIGHT TO STUDY

  Following a ten-year legal battle, a philosophy student with smelly feet has won the right to attend lectures at a Dutch university. Teunis Tenbrook was banned from Rotterdam’s Erasmus University after complaints from professors and his fellow students that the stench from his feet made it impossible to study. But in 2009 a court ruled that having smelly feet is no cause for exclusion. The judge said: “Our considered opinion is that the professors and other students will just have to hold their noses and bear it.”

  TEACHERS PLAY TRUANT FOR 23 YEARS

  The entire staff at a school in eastern India was fired in 2004 after their boss discovered that they hadn’t been to work for 23 years. The 11 employees, including eight teachers, at the Rajendra Memorial High School in West Champaran only showed up for work twice a year on occasions of national importance. The scam eventually came to light when the local examination board chairman carried out a snap inspection – and also found that the names of most of the students enrolled in the school were fake.

  COMPANIES SETTLE DISPUTE WITH ARM-WRESTLING CONTEST

  Two New Zealand telecommunications companies locked in a $112,000 dispute reached an unusual out-of-court settlement in 2003 – a best-of-three arm-wrestling match between the rival chief executives. Defeated CEO David Ware said: “Sure, losing hurts, but not nearly as much as paying lawyers’ bills.”

  ROAD SIGN SPELLS JUST ONE WORD CORRECTLY

  A sign erected in 2009 on Interstate 39 near Rothschild and Schofield, Wisconsin, succeeded in spelling only one word correctly – “exit”. The flawed sign read: “Exit 185 Buisness 51 Rothschield Schofeild.”

  LATVIAN TOURIST SLOGAN SENDS OUT THE WRONG MESSAGE

  Embarrassed Latvian tourism chiefs were forced to scrap a 2009 campaign after their slogan to encourage visitors to the country, “Easy to go, hard to leave”, was mistranslated as “Easy to go, hard to live”. The $750,000 campaign had been intended to promote the cultural delights of the capital city, Riga, to English-speaking tra
vellers but, as a tourist board spokesman admitted ruefully: “Apparently nobody checked it properly before the leaflets and posters went to the printers.”

  “FIREMAN STARTED BLAZES TO EARN OVERTIME”

  A teenage Polish firefighter was accused in 2008 of deliberately starting a series of fires so that he could build up enough overtime to buy his girlfriend a birthday present. Pawol Leszek allegedly set fire to barns in the Studzianki area and then went to the local fire station where he earned $4 an hour as a voluntary firefighter.

  ANTI-DRUGS MESSAGE FAILS TO MAKE ITS POINT

  A company that sent a school in New York State a batch of pencils bearing an anti-drugs slogan had to recall them after one pupil spotted an elementary problem. The pencils carried the message “Too Cool To Do Drugs”, but a ten-year-old at Ticonderoga School noticed that when the pencils were sharpened, the slogan turned into “Cool To Do Drugs”, then simply “Do Drugs”. “We’re actually a little embarrassed that we didn’t notice that sooner,” said a company spokesperson, adding that the new batch of pencils would have the slogan written in the opposite direction.

  SWEDISH COMMANDOS BLOW UP WRONG HOUSE

  An elite Swedish commando force – considered to be the country’s most deadly division – blew up the wrong house during a 2009 training exercise. The K3 unit were supposed to attack an unoccupied property in Rojdafors bought for that purpose by the military but instead they launched a terrifying night attack on another home 200 yards away, blowing out both front and back doors and every window before realizing their mistake. Fortunately the property owners were not at home at the time.

  COLOURBLIND MAN DEMANDS RIGHT TO INSTALL TRAFFIC LIGHTS

  Cleveland Merritt filed a federal lawsuit in 2001 against Palm Beach County, Florida, claiming it had violated the Americans with Disability Act when it fired him. The county had dismissed the traffic light installer because he was colourblind and couldn’t distinguish between the red and the green wires.

  COMPANY’S MAIL IS POSTED IN THE CHIMNEY

  A postwoman was responsible for a fabric firm in South Normanton, Derbyshire, not receiving any mail for days on end in 2002. It transpired that she thought a hole in the office building’s chimney stack was the company’s letterbox and had been carefully depositing all the mail in the flue.

  VALUABLE CHURCH ARTEFACTS SOLD OFF AS JUMBLE

  Visitors to a church jumble sale in Wales in 2003 picked up a bargain when a gold chalice, silver goblet and ornate candlesticks – worth a combined $15,000 – were mistakenly sold for less than $15. The sacred ornaments were sold on the cheap after sale organizers mixed the items up with bric-a-brac in the church hall at Newquay, Cardiganshire.

  MAN PAID FOR FIVE YEARS BY COMPANY HE DIDN’T WORK FOR

  After accepting a job with Avaya Inc., a New Jersey-based telecommunications company, in 2002, Anthony Armatys subsequently changed his mind. However his change of heart failed to register with the firm’s computer system, which never removed his name from the payroll, and over the next five years Avaya proceeded to pay him $470,000 – even though he had never done a day’s work for them. The error was eventually spotted by Avaya’s auditors, and 35-year-old Armatys duly pleaded guilty to theft.

  LOST JOGGER STUCK IN SWAMP FOR FOUR DAYS

  A jogger who took a wrong turn during his lunchtime run ended up stuck in a swamp for four days. Eddie Meadows, 62, left his desk at the University of Central Florida’s research park every lunchtime to jog around the campus but one day in September 2006 he strayed into the bog, where he was eventually discovered by volunteer searcher Ron Eaglin “stuck like glue”. Eaglin said: “I heard someone sloshing off in the woods and then I heard cries of help. I said: ‘Are you looking for Eddie Meadows?’ And he said: ‘I AM Eddie Meadows!’”

  SAFETY LEAFLET URGES: “TO ESCAPE FIRE, JUMP ON A DONKEY”

  Scotland’s fire services scrapped hundreds of leaflets in 2006 after an error in translation advised members of the public to jump on a donkey when fleeing a house fire. The leaflet, aimed at Urdu readers, urged that anyone leaving a burning building from a window should lower themselves onto cushions. However the authors got the Urdu word for “cushion” mixed up with another very similar Urdu word for “donkey”.

  OWL IMPERSONATORS WERE HOOTING AT EACH OTHER

  Neighbours Fred Cornes and Neil Simmons, from Stokeinteignhead, Devon, spent a year hooting to owls every night from their respective gardens – unaware that they were actually hooting to each other. The truth only came to light when Kim Simmons told Wendy Cross about husband Neil’s nocturnal owl watching and described how he got the birds to hoot back. “That’s funny,” said Wendy. “That’s what Fred has been doing!” Neil said ruefully: “That’s when the penny dropped. I felt such a twit.”

  BANK CUSTOMER DEPOSITS $1,413 IN SMALL CHANGE

  Angry that his bank had previously refused to cash a cheque for $1,413 because it said it did not recognize his signature, a Brazilian customer marched into the same São Paulo branch of HSBC and deposited the amount in coins. Jose Luis Pereira da Silva rented a bus to transport the 34 friends he needed to accompany him on the mission because the bank imposed a limit to how much each person could deposit in change. It took staff three hours to count the coins which weighed a total of 121 pounds. Afterwards Mr da Silva celebrated by holding a barbecue for his friends.

  TAXI DRIVER HAS THREE ACCIDENTS ON FIRST DAY

  First-day nerves seemed to get the better of a New York taxi driver when he was involved in three separate accidents in quick succession. His licence was suspended only hours into the job after he rammed two parked cars, injured a pedestrian and left the scene of an accident. First he hit a parked car on Sixth Avenue and continued driving. A block away, he struck a 22-year-old pedestrian and again continued driving. Police finally caught up with him after he struck a second parked car and he was charged with leaving the scene of three accidents. The former restaurant worker had received his licence after 40 hours of training.

  SAILORS MUST SHOUT “BANG” IN COST-CUTTING EXERCISE

  In 2000, British Royal Navy recruits at a gunnery in Plymouth, Devon, were ordered not to fire expensive live shells during training exercises. Instead they were instructed to shout “Bang”. The initiative was part of a Ministry of Defence plan to cut spending but sailors said it made a mockery of their training. One recruit said: “It’s like being a kid again, playing cowboys and Indians in the school playground.”

  POLICE CANDIDATE HID WOOD IN HAIR TO PASS HEIGHT TEST

  An Indian man was arrested on suspicion of hiding a block of wood in his hair to meet the minimum height requirement for joining the police. Gajendra Kharatmal had passed all the police exams in Mumbai but his application had been rejected because at 5 foot 1 inch he was two inches too short to join the force. So he tried again, and this time he measured an acceptable 5 foot 3 inches. One of the examiners said: “We were puzzled by this, so we asked him to stand there once again. The second time, we felt something hard hidden in his hair and discovered a piece of wood.” His application was again turned down and he was arrested on charges of cheating.

  TOKYO STORE SOLD FRESHLY USED WOMEN’S UNDERWEAR

  At a store in an upmarket district of Tokyo, women would come in, undress, and sell the underwear that they had been wearing on the spot. Over a period of seven months, police said the shop owner sold 11 items from 4 women who had undressed for their customers. Officers finally put a stop to his business on the grounds that he did not possess a licence to sell second-hand goods.

  IRATE FATHER SUES OVER SPELLING CONTEST

  The father of the beaten finalist in a 1987 California spelling bee contest sued the event sponsor, the Ventura County Star-Free Press, claiming mental distress and seeking $2 million in damages. A state court judge and a court of appeals dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the principal reason the plaintiff’s son had lost the spelling bee was not because the contest was badly run but because he could not spell “iride
scent”.

  TEACHER DISPLAYS PORN DURING SCHOOL EXAM

  Seventeen students at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, were part way through a mock AS-level exam in 2002 when several looked up and noticed indecent pictures being relayed onto a large screen. The invigilator, maths teacher Richard Jowett, had apparently been looking at the material on his personal computer, forgetting that it was linked up to the monitor. The school’s head teacher confirmed that during the exam Jowett had “used the computer and entered a website for 13 minutes containing still photographs of naked adult women”.

  COMPANY TRUCK ROLLS INTO RIVER DURING SAFETY MEETING

  A concrete company’s safety meeting was interrupted in 1998 when one of its unattended trucks rolled 50 yards across a street, over an embankment and plunged 20 feet into the Hudson River. The driver had left the vehicle at the rear of a business complex in Troy, New York State, while he unloaded a scale from the truckbed, but when he returned he saw to his horror that the truck had vanished. It was hauled out of the river two hours later. A company spokesman admitted: “It was unfortunate that this should happen while we were discussing safety in the workplace.”