News of the Weird

News of the Weird: I Love Ghastly?

It seemed like a good idea when the town of Celoron, New York agreed in 2009 to pay for a bronze statue honoring the village’s only celebrity. Lucille Ball had spent her childhood years there, and even today, everyone “Loves Lucy.” The result was apparently a...

News of the Weird: It’s About Family

On Feb. 9 a single traffic stop in Alderson, West Virginia, resulted in the arrest of six people from the same family, trafficking in stolen power tools (including one man who traded a leaf blower, hedge trimmer, and weed trimmer for Percocet pills). However, a month...
News of the Weird: Unarmed and Dangerous

News of the Weird: Bad Day in Court

“This will be upsetting,” cautioned Justice Robert Graesser, addressing jurors in February in the Edmonton, Alberta murder trial of Brad Barton. At issue was the cause of the victim’s having bled to death from her genitals, and the judge, ruling that jurors would...

News of the Weird: Dental Driving

A miles-long traffic jam on Interstate 20 near Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Jan. 25 and on into the next morning was caused by an 18-wheeler that jackknifed and overturned when the 57-year-old driver took his hands off the wheel to pull out a tooth with his fingers. Efforts...

News of the Weird: Vagina Exclusive

The Project Theater Board at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts decided in January to cancel its upcoming annual presentation of the feminist classic Vagina Monologues. The all-women’s college recently declared it would admit males who lived and...

News of the Weird: What’s In A Name

Fourteen employees of a Framingham, Massachusetts pharmacy were indicted in December for defrauding the federal government by filling bogus prescriptions (despite an owner’s explicit instructions to staff that the fake customers’ names “must resemble real names,” with...

News of the Weird: Dress for Spidey Sense

Among the breakthroughs demonstrated by the computer chip company Intel’s RealSense system is a cocktail dress from Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht that not only senses the wearer’s “mood,” but also acts to repel (or encourage) strangers who might approach the wearer....

News of the Weird: Annals of Injustice

Richard Rosario is in year 18 of a 25-to-life sentence for murder, even though 13 alibi witnesses have tried to tell authorities that he was with them — 1,000 miles away — at the time of the crime. (Among the 13 are a sheriff’s deputy, a pastor and a federal...