xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

A January Wall Street Journal report described “dB Drag Racing,” a “sport” in which the winning car is not the fastest but the one with the loudest stereo system, but ordinary urban street cruisers are not in these drivers’ league. In the “Extreme” category, cars are completely rebuilt and powered with enough juice to operate several private homes. Extra-thick glass and concrete poured into the floor and doors keep the sound inside, where the measurement takes place. Last year’s winner, from Germany, registered 177.7 decibels.

Allison Adams, 23, a veterinary technician for Wildlife Rescue in Austin, Texas, warms up traumatized baby animals (squirrels, kittens, rabbits, etc.) by putting them in her bra (while she’s wearing it), according to a profile in the Austin American-Statesman in January. Her report: Squirrels are the hardest; possums the easiest; she’s done it about 75 times; no, they don’t itch; her fiance is OK with it (even though he was deprived of a hug once because of “hissing possums”).

Gloria DeFrancesco, 61, filed a lawsuit in Akron, Ohio, in December against TV evangelist Ernest Angley, alleging that the muscle men who surround the stage during his healing sessions roughed her up in August 2001 while she was accompanying her 94-year-old, wheelchair-using, generously tithing mother to be cured. DeFrancesco said she was struck, grabbed and pushed by six men, resulting in a detached retina and other head, nose and body injuries that required hospitalization and surgery.

According to trial coverage in the Omaha World-Herald in October, the prosecutor of accused Omaha sexual assaulter Akhiktemelo Braimah said that DNA evidence indicated that the probability of another “African-American” besides Braimah having committed the assault was “1 in 30.3 sextillion” (“303” followed by 20 zeros). (30.3 sextillion represents 5 trillion times the number of people of all nationalities on Earth right now and 303 billion times the likely number who have ever lived.) (Braimah pleaded no contest two days later.)
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD