Author Archives: Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story In January 39-year-old Ronald Dotson of Detroit was sentenced to 18 months in prison for an October incident in which police reportedly found him trying to break into a storefront displaying a mannequin in a French maid’s outfit. The Detroit Free Press reported that this was Dotson’s seventh mannequin-related offense since 1993, when […]

Special Edition: All Recurring Themes In April, after nine-year-old Jesse Courtney of Albany, Oregon, had complained for a few days of discomfort and a faint popping noise in his left ear, his mother took him to the doctor. Irrigating the ear revealed the problem to be one first discussed in News of the Weird back […]

Lead Story Frank Martinez, a 40-year-old exterminator and apparently a big New York Mets fan, was thrown out of Shea Stadium and charged with reckless endangerment after he allegedly shone a high-powered flashlight into the eyes of two Atlanta Braves players and the second-base umpire during an April game. A former neighbor told the New […]

Lead Story In February the Associated Press reported on 54-year-old Mexico City cabdriver Manuel Quiroz and his dream of being recognized as the world’s greatest eater of raw chili peppers. Besides being able to consume dozens of ultrapotent habanero peppers at a sitting, Quiroz can also squeeze their juice into his eyes and rub them […]

Lead Story In March, following what was said to be the largest investigation of prostitution ever conducted in Orange County, authorities arrested five men and one woman who they say may have operated as many as 31 brothels in southern California. According to the district attorney’s office, the suspects kept costs down in part by […]

Lead Story In March a German animal-rights group called attention to a Spanish gun sport in which weeks-old quail are fired from a cannon into the air as targets. Noting that the group had previously singled Spain out as the cruelest to animals of any European country, Der Spiegel cited the northwestern village of Manganeses […]

Lead Story Mozart, an iguana at an aquarium in Antwerp, Belgium, developed a persistent erection following a January mating session, and after a week of unsuccessful remedy attempts (cold water, additional mating opportunities), Reuters reported, veterinarians decided to amputate in order to reduce the risk of infection. Fortunately for Mozart, male iguanas have two penises–or, […]

Lead Story The latest from where the sun don’t shine: Fadhel al-Maliki, a 35-year-old Iraqi national living in New Jersey, was detained at LAX in March after security personnel found a small magnet (wrapped together with some gum in a napkin, then in coils of wire) and a smooth round stone in his rectum. According […]

Lead Story In January Rebecca O’Flaherty, a doctoral candidate in entomology at the University of California at Davis, mounted an exhibition of “maggot art” at the Capital Athletic Club in Sacramento; she and two colleagues created the work by dunking maggots in nontoxic paint and letting them writhe around on sheets of paper. Government in […]

Lead Story Karl Szmolinsky, a 67-year-old retired farmer from Eberswalde, Germany, made international news in January for his role in a plan by North Korea to combat its food shortages by breeding immense rabbits for its citizens to eat. Korean officials contacted Szmolinsky last year after Robert, a 23-pounder he’d bred, won a prize as […]

Lead Story In February in Hamilton, Ontario, a 15-year-old boy was rescued after spending two hours in subzero cold dangling upside down eight feet off the ground in his underwear. According to the Hamilton Spectator the boy, who was unharmed, had been tobogganing alone at night when he found spray paint and rope at a […]

Lead Story Each February highland Indians in Bolivia converge on the town of Sacaca for the centuries-old ritual of Tinku, a day of drinking, dancing, and largely unrestrained fistfights. There were no deaths but plenty of blood at Sacaca’s most recent Tinku, the New York Times reported, as one-on-one punching and kicking periodically escalated into […]

Lead Story A National Geographic documentary on British TV in January shed light on a little-known arena of the cold war: the head-transplant race. Soviet transplant pioneer Vladimir Demikhov stunned the West in 1954 when he unveiled a two-headed dog he’d created by grafting the upper body of a small puppy onto the neck of […]

Lead Story Notorious for a 2000 installation that gave people the opportunity to switch on a blender containing a live goldfish, Chilean-Danish artist Marco Evaristti celebrated the January opening of his show at a Santiago gallery by serving meatballs made with fat removed from his body via liposuction. The meatballs were also available for sale […]

Lead Story Beef from Wagyu cattle, originally bred in Japan, has long been considered by chefs and gourmets to be the finest in the world. Now, according to a January dispatch in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, an exporter in southwest Australia has created a new tier of high-end meat by having a local Wagyu herd consume […]