xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Some of the well-intentioned donations for victims of the December tsunami are bewilderingly inappropriate (such as ski jackets and Viagra), according to a February Wall Street Journal dispatch from Sri Lanka. Relief workers are being distracted by shipments of, for example, moisturizing gel, sweaters, women’s dress shoes, Arctic-weather tents and thong underwear. Crucial medicines were in short supply, but not Valium, anti-depressants, or drugs with labels in languages that local doctors could not read. As the Journal wrote, some doctors “appear (just) to have unloaded their sample bins.”
A New York City jury in January awarded $450,000 in damages to a professional dancer whose career was ended in 2001 after surgery by Dr. Andrew Feldman at St. Vincent’s Hospital. In a pre-op meeting, the dancer described the discomfort in his right knee, and Dr. Feldman wrote a large “X” on the spot of the pain, but 20 minutes later, he mistakenly cut into the man’s until-then-healthy left knee.
In December, Jean Eaton, mayor of the town of Albert Lea, Minn. (population 18,000), was arrested in what police charged was a spree in which she bought apparel from Marshall Field’s department stores and then affixed their price tags to some older, used garments and “returned” them for refund. Police said a search of her home yielded evidence of tag switches totaling more than $800 in store credit.
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
