A South Korean movie theater owner decided that the movie The Sound of Music was too long. His solution? He shortened the movie by cutting out all of the musical scenes!
The Malaysian government decided to solve their disease-carrying mosquito problem by spraying the infested areas with DDT. This worked, but the cockroaches then devoured the dead mosquitoes. This was followed by the region's gecko lizards consuming the roaches. The geckos did not die from the residual poison (surprisingly), but their central nervous systems were greatly affected, causing the lizards to slow down. Moving up the food chain, the cats ate the slow-moving lizards and started to die off in large quantities. Of course, fewer cats means more rats, and the country's rat population soared. As a result, the World Health Organization was forced to step in and ban the DDT. In an effort to restore the ecological balance, they flew in planeloads of cats to kill the rats.
Two hundred and twenty six soldiers lost their lives way back in 1850 when they crossed a suspension bridge that spanned the Maine at Angers, France. It turns out that they were all marching in step and had caused an increased resonance (vibration) to the bridge. Ever since, troops are ordered to rout step (march out of step) when crossing a bridge.
Did you ever wonder what the WD in WD-40 stands for? WD is an abbreviation for Water Displacer.
Before the invention of anesthesia, speed was a highly regarded trait in a surgeon. Dr. Robert Liston of London was among the fastest. But, speed comes with some cost. In one particular operation, Liston killed three people. The patient actually survived, but later died of gangrene. During the operation, Liston accidentally cut of the fingers of his surgical assistant, who soon died from an infection. Liston even managed to slash through the coattails of a colleague who was observing the operation - he was so sure that his vital organs had been punctured that he died of fright!
Frenchman Michel Lotito has a very unusual diet. Born on June 15, 1950, he has been consuming large quantities of metal and glass since he was nine years old. To date, he has eaten supermarket carts, television sets, bicycles, chandeliers, razor blades, bullets, nuts and bolts, lengths of chain, phonograph records, computers, and an entire Cessna 150 light aircraft (which took him nearly two years to consume). It seems that his body has adjusted to this unusual diet, as he eats nearly two pounds of metal every day. His technique includes lubricating his digestive tract with mineral oil, cutting the parts into bite-size pieces, and then consuming a large quantity of water while eating this junk. Most people would prefer a nice glass of wine with their dinner.
Everyone knows that spinach is loaded in iron and makes you stronger - Just look what it has done for Popeye's career. Well, Popeye was wrong. So were all of those parents that stuffed it down their kids' throats. In reality, spinach has no more iron in it than any other vegetable. This spinach misconception dates back to the 1950's when a food analyst made an error while calculating the iron in spinach. His decimal place was off by one place, suggesting that spinach had ten times as much iron content than it really did.
Punishment was swift for American shoplifter Barry Quemby when he tried to hide a pair of lobsters he had stolen from a Boston fishmonger down his trousers. Before he could make it out of the shop, the lobsters attacked, sending Quemby crashing into a display of tinned pilchards, screaming and clawing at his trousers. One of the lobsters had managed to sever Quemby’s penis, which was reattached by surgeons. "The strange thing was," said the doctor, "the lobsters were making this funny clucking sound, like they were laughing."
An Essex woman returned to her flat late at night to find the door forced open and a group of strange men in wooly hats holding a party inside. After being asked if she wanted to dance, she left to call the police and returned to find that the men had gone – as had her sofa.
Egyptian plastic surgeon Amin El Bolok is charging patients £1,000 to give them a double chin, as many people consider chins a sign of wealth.
Kennet Albourg lost his job as a keeper at Reykjavik Zoo after colleagues caught him dressing his favorite penguin in stockings and suspenders. Bachelor Kennet was fired on the spot, in spite claims that he was trying to keep the penguin, called Brunella, warm.
German police have arrested a man who swindled an 85-year-old widow out of £6,000, claiming she had to pay gambling debts her dead hubbie had contracted in heaven.
Nelson Sacope, a taxi driver from Mombasa, was kidnapped by a French tourist who held a pistol to his head and ordered him to take her to see the elephants. And when the elephants refused to show, Marie Colombe, 76, shouted, "Have you eaten them, you greedy boy?"
When Michel E Marcum, 21 was arrested with six stolen 350-pound power transformers in Stanberry, Montana, he claimed they were vital parts for a time machine he was building. He said he needed them to travel into the future in search of winning lottery combinations, which he would then come back with and become a multi-millionaire.
Anthony Colella, 49, was making his getaway from a Brooklyn savings bank he had just robbed when a mugger jumped out of a car and relieved him of his $2,100 haul. Colella was arrested when he went to the police to report the mugging and made the mistake of telling them where he got the money from.
A 30-year-old inmate walked out of a jail in Huntsville, Texas after coloring in his normally white prison uniform with a green felt pen. This was apparently sufficient to convince the guards he was an employee of the prison hospital. The guards then let him stroll out the front gate. He had previously escaped from Harris County Jail by calling the district clerk’s office, claiming to be a judge and ordering the clerk to lower his bail conditions.
Habitual sniffer Sergio De Sa went glue ga-ga in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, after breaking into the Gola Gola glue factory in February 1994. He’d broken in on a Saturday and inhaled deeply from one of the glue vats – then passed out, overturning the vat and sticking himself to the floor. He was arrested on the following Monday after workers found him still lying there helpless. It took eight firemen and four police using powersaws to finally free him.
In 1992, a Watford man bought a car stereo which came from a car that’d been in a fatal crash. When he got the stereo, it had a piece of paper with Latin writing and symbols stuck on, which he tore off. Soon after, the stereo was nicked. Police returned it after it was recovered from an accident which killed the driver. It was then stolen again – but resurfaced from another car in which the driver had died. Now it’s been stolen a third time…and our man from Watford is praying it doesn’t come back again.