‘Strange But True’
Weird news, odd news, sex stories, strange news, funny stories, funny news, offbeat news, bizarre news and strange but true.
Sands In Time: The Hiccupping Metronome
CHRISTOPHER Sands has hiccupped for 15 months.
He hiccups once ever two seconds, for up to 12 hours a day, at which point, one assumes, he goes to sleep.
The Mirror says Sands calculates that he has hiccupped 9,828,000 times since February 2007.
Sands has tried everything to stop, and now hopes an operation to repair a damaged stomach valve can stop his talent.
Indeed, Sands may not see it as such, but he is billed as a singer, and we have plenty of those already. But we have only one hiccupping singer.
Can Sands do for the hiccuppers what Gareth Gates did for stammerers?
Woman Raped Over The Phone
A TUNISIAN family alleges their daughter was raped during a telephone conversation with a man.
The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were âtotally intoâ an erotic telephone conversation â and that she reported bleeding, Al Arabiya reported.
Maha al-Metebaa, a lawyer representing the family, told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabs the case needs careful investigation because of its unprecedented allegations. He said a medical examination had determined that the woman, 20, was no longer a virgin.
How To Fingerprint A Soweto Woman With No Arms
HOW do you fingerprint a woman with no arms?
Spokesman Vincent Moaga said the commission was concerned the department had requested that a woman with no arms could not get an ID unless she was fingerprinted.
Victoria Modise, 37, of Diepkloof Zone, Soweto, who lost her ID last year, applied for a replacement but was told she needed to be fingerprinted.
Nuclear Holocaust: Russians Would Not Bomb Wales
THE Mail is making preparations for Armageddon, as ever it should.
It has seen a report from the Defence Plans Division, released by the National Archives, and what the Government of 1955 “assumed” would happen in the first two weeks of a nuclear war.
“The tea position would be very serious,” notes one civil servant. “With a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with a system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week (enough for about 12 cups) could be ensured.”
To the Mail the tea shortage is headline news. But surely the bigger story is what the Russians deem worthy of annihilation, and if the plan takes into account a post-apocalyptic Britain, and which places the invading Russians would feel most at home in.
The top five targets of the Soviets were London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside.
In addition, 14 less powerful atom bombs, âsimilar to the one dropped on Nagasaki at the end of the Second World Warâ, were to fall on Tyneside, Teeside, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Derby, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Cardiff, Coventry, Belfast and Purfleet in Essex.
Indeed, dear reader, Red Russians hell bent on destroying all that is good/bad in Britain deemed Wales worthy of saving.
Or else, not worth a bomb?
EBay: P-Nut For Trader Joe’s Cashew No.4 Art Work
FOR sale on EBay: Steven’s “Trader Joe’s Cashew #4″ sculpture & print 1/1 - once in a lifetime piece up for auction:
I don’t know why I stopped at this particular cashew as I was eating my Trader Joe’s sweet, savory & tart trail mix, but as an artist the unexplainable happens often. My body is a vessel of creation and expression in tune with everything around me, including what you would see as “just another cashew”
No, something about the shape of this particular cashew reflects the shape of our society. As the artist, I have split and re-glued the cashew as an expression of the âcracksâ that have been âgluedâ in modern life. It is a complete work of art in every way. Famed art critic Richard Barokavov had this to say about the piece:
Seal Attempts Sex With A King Penguin
BROWSING the Journal of Ethology, the Anorak happens upon the case of the Antarctic fur seal attempting coitus with a king penguin.
This might have been going on for years, but that it should come to light now is not without scientific interest.
“At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin,” says Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
“But then we realised that the seal’s intentions were rather more amorous.”
The effect of the 100kg seal subduing the 15kg penguin by lying on it brings to mind the uncomfortable image of a be-jumpered John Prescott wresting with a packet of chocolate covered biscuits, penguins, naturally.
The Convicts’ Poker Rodeo
ITâS hard to look at the cards when thereâs an aroused bull approaching from the rear.

Is that tell on the otherâs players face, a bead of sweat, or is it a line of snot flicked from the bullâs flared nostrils?
This is entertainment in the USA. This is rodeo day at Angola Prison, Louisiana, where Convicts’ Poker is the go.
The gameâs winner is the last man sitting as the bull stampedes the table. He gets $50.
The showâs finale is called Guts and Glory. The clue is in the title.
Mr Speivak Grows A Finger With Magic Dust
MR Speivak grew a finger.
Mr Speivak’s brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.
For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.
“The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.
Maybe he only thinks it’s a finger?
Man Arrested For $360 Billion Cheque Fraud
CHARLES Ray Fuller, 21, of Crowley, Texas, walks into the Chase bank in the 8600 block of South Hulen Street, Fort Worth.
It is about 4pm.
He has in his possession a personal check. The check is not made out to Mr. Fuller. The bank clerk is unsure.
She contacts the check owner, the mother of Fuller’s girlfriend mother.
She says she did not write a check for⌠$360 billion.
Thatâs $360,000,000,000.00.
Police are called.
Mr. Fuller is accused of unlawful carrying of a weapon and possession of marijuana.
Mr Fuller tells the police his girlfriend’s mother gave him the money to start a record label.
Mr Fuller has a recordâŚ
Big In China: World’s Longest Sea Bridge And Biggest Building
BANISH any arcane and stereotypical ideas you have of the Chinese being less tall, less big then Westerners.
Everything in China is big, massive, even.
The country has just opened the “world’s longest sea bridge”, the 36-kilometre (22-mile) Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge connects Jiaxing city near Shanghai to the port city of Ningbo in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
China is home to the world’s largest shopping mall (the seven-million-square-foot South China Mall); the largest hydroelectric dam (the Three Gorges project); and the highest railroad (5,000 meters above sea level).
In Beijing thereâs the world’s biggest concert hall, the National Center for the Performing Arts, aka The Egg, a venue twice as big as the Kennedy Center in Washington.
And the new Terminal 3 at the airport in Beijing is twice the size of the Pentagon.
Crocodile Hwyl: There Be Monsters In Wales
âStartledâ Steven Jenkins tells the Sun how convinced he is that he spotted a crocodile in a lake by a branch of Morrisonâs in Swansea.
Police were called. They dived down â âseveral timesâ - but they found nothing. Although the Sunâs picture clearly identifies a shopping trolley and a canister of gas.
Of course the crocodile could be hiding, an idea given added weight by Mr Jenkinsâ admission thatâs since giving throat to his discovery he is rubbed mercilessly and when people see him they whistle the tune Crocodile Shoes.
And deep in the reeds and the cans and the old boxes, a pair of boots lives in fear…
Lebsians Sue Over Use Of Term Lesbian
A COURT in Greece court has been approached by three islanders from Lesbos â home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised romance between women.
The trio are protesting at the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece daring to use the word lesbian in its name.
One of the plaintiffs says the name “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, also known as Lesbians.
“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” says Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos.”
She goes on: “This is not an aggressive act against gay women. Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title.” (more…)
Iran Warns Of Dangers Of Barbie Dolls And Harry Potter
IRANIANS have been alerted to the “destructive” cultural and social consequences of importing Barbie dolls.
Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi has written an official letter to Vice President Parviz Davoudi. In it, hhe say Barbie is a “danger” that need to be stopped.
Had only the French been so resolute when the plastic effigies of Klaus Barbie, the notorious head of Lyonâs Gestapo unit, infiltrated that land.
Says Najafabadi: “The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger.â
The letter goes on: “The displays of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter … as well as the irregular importation of unsanctioned computer games and movies are all warning bells to the officials in the cultural arena.â
He makes no mention of GI Joe, Gonks and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but this is surely only an oversight. Better the Iranian kids stick with their Ahmadinejad dolls, a hairier version of the every popular Troll.
When Chair Sniffers Confess: Troy Buswell Inhales
A WOMAN, who does not wish to be named, says Mr Troy Buswell, West Australian Opposition Leader, began to sniff the chair she had been sitting on at his Parliament House office in December 2005.
“I was shocked and outraged and I told him,” says the woman in the West Australian newspaper
âOutrage over chair-sniffing incident,â says The Age.
The Australian says that âJust 24 hours after 13 times labelling the chair sniffing an âunsubstantiated, anonymous rumourâ which he would not comment on, Mr Buswell finally admitted he sniffed the woman’s chair seat after she got up so he could get a laugh from other staff.â
Had Mr Buswell only whipped the chair away at the opportune moment or made a farting sound as soon as the women sat down things would have been left there.
But he elected to sniff, an action one imagines intended to imply the woman has made a smell, or else Mr Buswell is searching for her scent, marking him out as a pervert or a chair fetishist.
No CCTV footage of the sniffing has been unearthed, which is itself a shock. But the matter has nonetheless reached a head.
âYes, I did inhale,â says the Sydney Morning Herald.
Chilean Town Hands Out Free Viagra
TO Lo Prado south of Santiago, Chile, where Viagra is handed out for free.
Older men have been complaining â as is their wont â about not getting enough sex.
Says the townâs mayor Gonzalo Navarrete: “This has to do with quality of life and it’s done responsibly. It’s not just like handing out candy at the corner.”
Navarrete, a trained doctor, goes on: “We’ll give out four, 50 milligram pills, in other words, for four sexual relationships per month.â
He issues the caveat: “Sildenafil doesn’t get you going without direct stimulation.”
Look out for a class action from the townâs female residentsâŚ

