-- Clive Winter, 45, third-highest-ranking official at the Lothian, Scotland, provincial health board, was convicted in February of several assaults as part of a secret gang he had formed in order to violently attack people at random. Winter, said his boss, was "extremely intelligent, quiet and a placid man in the office," but according to testimony at his trial, he roamed streets at night purely, said a police detective, "to gratify his own lust for violence."

-- An April Associated Press story from Decatur, Ala., reported on the severely reclusive mother and daughter, Evelyn and Marilyn Arnold, who died of natural causes within a week of each other in December. According to neighbors and relatives, Evelyn, 85, controlled every aspect of Marilyn's life, which may have deprived the daughter of the ability to survive after Evelyn's death. Among the pair's idiosyncrasies: Marilyn's abject fear of the telephone; Evelyn's need to record in a notebook every wrong-number telephone call she ever got; their disregarding the bathtub because they feared the previous owner's germs; and their use of a bucket instead of the toilet, even though the plumbing worked fine.

The London Daily Telegraph reported in January that Syrian Gen. Mustafa Tlass told his men not to attack Italian peacekeeping soldiers during the 1983 chaos in Beirut only because he had a lifelong obsession with the Italian actress Gina Lollabrigida. Gen. Tlass said his men could "do whatever you want with the U.S., British and other forces, but ... I do not want a single tear falling from the eyes of Gina Lollabrigida."

Shirley Jean Shay, 41, was arrested near Salt Lake City in April after commandeering a 25-ton fire truck and leading police on a 50-mile chase at speeds up to 70 mph, including the last 20 miles after all six tires had been punctured by road spikes. No motive was given. And a man led police on a brief vehicle chase on Interstate 215 in Perris, Calif., in March before being subdued. The chase had ended several blocks earlier when the man's car ran out of gas, but then he got out and pushed it in a futile attempt to stay ahead of the police.

In March, after four hours of questioning and waiting, police in Springfield, Ill., gave up and got a search warrant for the mouth of Mr. Eunice Husband, 27. Husband had stuffed three marble-sized bags of crack cocaine in his mouth and refused to open up, though he continued to talk to officers through his clenched teeth. After getting the warrant, police took Husband to a hospital, where he was sedated and the bags removed.

In April, Malaysian skydivers guided the national car, a Proton Wira, on a parachute to a landing at the North Pole, where the engine started right away. Prime Minister Mahathir Mahamad said the drop "bolsters our spirits," but critics said it was a stunt by the government to get people's minds off the dismal economy.

-- As the U.S.-Iraqi conflict heated up in February, two members of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors attempted to revive the pacifist sect's tradition of protest in Burnaby, British Columbia. They went on a 25-day hunger strike in jail, where they are serving two-year sentences for setting fires to their own homes, which they said Doukhobors frequently do to demonstrate sacrifice against long-standing evils, including taxation and public education. The other hallmark of Doukhobor protests is frequent public nudity, which it says shows a rejection of wealth and status.

-- Charles Collins III was indicted in Albany, N.Y., in April for his January protest at the state Court of Appeals building over a child custody case. Shortly before dawn, according to the indictment, he hooked a spray gun to a 55-gallon drum of chicken manure and covered the front of the building. And in April in nearby Guilderland, N.Y., a critic of newly elected Town Supervisor Jerry Yerbury broke into his office and left a stack of color photographs of excrement.

-- In April, Jose Albeiro Forero and two other municipal employees in the town of Cartago, Colombia, nailed themselves to wooden crosses with 5-inch nails to fortify their demands for a salary increase and other benefits.

-- Last year, the six-member city council of Glendale, Colo., passed tough restrictions on strip clubs that so angered many citizens that they joined strip-club owner Debbie Matthews in forming the Glendale Tea Party, whose candidates in the April 1998 council election won all three contested seats, giving the party a chance now to repeal or weaken the ordinance. Said Matthews, "I don't think (the old council) realized (how many) people like the club."

-- According to a Chronicle of Higher Education roundup in May, students in at least six colleges in recent months have engaged in violent protests "not seen since the Vietnam war," involving attacks on local police over their "right" to drink in violation of local laws, including drinking even though underage. In all, more than 3,000 students participated at Michigan State, Washington State, University of Connecticut, University of Tennessee at Martin, Ohio University and Plymouth State (N.H.).

In April, indictments were returned against New York City inmates Hector Muniz, Carlos Martinez and Troy Jennings for their alleged get-rich scheme at Rikers Island prison. Authorities said Muniz, who had a day job on the outside, smuggled a gun inside so that, at Jennings' direction, Martinez could shoot Jennings in the leg, which he did. The plan was that Jennings would sue the city for "millions" for negligence in allowing the gun inside and insist on the release of all three men as a condition of settlement.

The latest British company to hire a poet-in-residence is the London Zoo. According to director-general Richard Burge, the poet's jobs will include writing guides in rhyme for visitors and "helping to interpret the lives of the animals." News of the Weird reported earlier this year that the large department store Marks & Spencer had hired a poet two days a week, and since then, the British Broadcasting Corp. and a professional soccer team have hired poets (although the soccer team is still in last place in the Premier League).

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (23) An older female schoolteacher's creating a sexual relationship with a much-younger male student, for which Mary Kay LeTourneau of Seattle received massive press coverage last year and for which Julie A. Feil, 31, of Hastings, Minn., received very little in February 1998 when she was arrested for seducing a 16-year-old boy (after allegedly failing with a 13-year-old). And (24) the firefighter who sets fires to create work for himself, as allegedly was the case with at least two members of the Centreville, Ill., fire department in April and with prominent firefighter-arson expert John Orr, who at press time is on trial in Los Angeles in a death caused by one of the estimated 30 fires he has set since 1984.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- The New York Times reported in March on the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to set pollution-discharge limits on livestock farms within seven years. U.S. farm animals produce 130 times the manure that U.S. humans do, and one farm now under construction in Utah will produce more than all of Los Angeles. Also, unlike cities, farms do not have treatment plants. "Sometimes in the night, in the summer, when they start pumping effluent, it wakes you up," said one Missouri farm neighbor. "You are gagging."

-- In March, the Oregon Lottery Commission awarded a $124,000 contract to a company to advise it on how best to restore its gambling games to operating status in case of a catastrophic earthquake or asteroid collision, with a goal of having video poker back up within two hours of a disaster. Several critics suggested there might be more pressing problems after an earthquake, but the commission pointed out that gambling generates $1 million a day for the state.

According to authorities at the Hampton, Va., jail in March, a civilian attendant from the jail's canteen was pushing a cart full of snacks past the locked cell of Anthony Tyrone Darden, 21, when Darden reached through the bars, hit the man on the head with a broom handle, and took two packs of peanut butter crackers. Darden was apprehended pretty quickly, and the Nabs were confiscated.

In February, according to Kenya's largest newspaper, The Nation, a Nairobi physician who had just removed a bean from a young girl's ear jammed it back in when her parents came up short on cash for the $6 procedure. And in March, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin announced they had found physical differences in the inner ears of lesbians and straight women (perhaps the first evidence of a pre-birth determination of female homosexuality). And in February, burglar Calvin Sewell became the first person in Britain to be convicted with the help of his earprint. He had claimed an extraordinary ability to detect whether a house was empty just by pressing his ear to a door for a few minutes.

In March, near Canyon, Texas, Justice of the Peace E. Jay Hall said he found what "did appear to be a (human) fetus," five to six months post-conception, with a severed umbilical cord, floating in a pool of standing water. He ordered it put into a plastic bag, placed in a Styrofoam container, and taken to Lubbock for an autopsy. Lubbock pathologists called Hall about an hour later and reported it was a doll.

-- At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, mathematicians assembled as usual on March 14 to celebrate pi (3.14159 etc.), one of probably dozens or maybe hundreds of such assemblies worldwide at which people sing songs and recite poetry about pi, have pi trivia quizzes, and eat pie. (Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is a mathematically irrational number, and is thus considered to be a symbol for the mystery of the universe.)

-- According to a March report in The New Republic, some Wall Street investment houses celebrate the incredible bull market by engaging in ritual worship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. One firm holds a cake party and songfest on Greenspan's March 6 birthday, and another has outfitted a special office with Greenspan memorabilia and a red leather chair in which bond traders can sit and meditate on the great man.

In March in Chicago, Bears' 290-pound defensive lineman Alonzo Spellman barricaded himself in the home of his publicist for eight hours until he told police he would agree to hospitalization. Police said Spellman was distraught at having to take an NFL-mandated steroid test. And in October, an Indonesian runner named Ruwiyati won the women's marathon in the Southeast Asia Games and promptly told reporters in Jakarta that the secret to her success is that she drinks blood from her coach's finger before each race. Said coach Alwi Mugiyanto, "I don't know why, but she just insists on doing it."

-- In March, Don Graham asked a technician-friend to have a look at the stereo cassette recorder he said he paid $60 for at a Bountiful, Utah, store but whose buttons wouldn't stay down when Graham pressed them. Problem: Four pounds of cocaine (value $200,000) had been wrapped in a 2-year-old Miami area newspaper and duct-taped to the inside, jamming the buttons. Police are investigating.

-- Lucy Ricardo Lives: In November, it took rescuers an hour to cut through the fangs in the statue of the Jaguar at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla., to free Andy Wilkinson, 9, who had stuck his head in the statue's mouth and couldn't get it out.

-- Latest Wrong Addresses With Severe Consequences: Drug-raiding police used a battering ram on the wrong Bronx, N.Y., apartment in March, horribly frightening a grandmother and grandchild. The real target was the "furthest (apartment) on the left," not the "first on the left." And a March roof replacement job scheduled for 948 Pons Court, Newbury Park, Calif., was commenced on 949 Pons Court. The drug-raid error will probably result in a $30 million lawsuit, and the family at 949 Pons Court is still mulling its options.

-- When Virginia Broache got home from the Bon Secours St. Mary's Hospital in Richmond, Va., in January, just after having had her cancerous bladder removed, her nurse was unpacking for her and discovered that among the "personal effects" the hospital had sent home with her was the actual bag-encased, just-removed bladder. Said a hospital staffer, "We apologize."

In 1993, News of the Weird reported that the Pasadena, Calif., Humane Society had built a $4.3 million dog-and-cat shelter, with towel-lined cages, skylights, an aviary, sculptured shrubbery, "adoption counseling pavilions" for pet-client meetings, and, according to the architect, "a very subdued classical painting scheme" (all this amid criticism that it was better to be a homeless pet in Pasadena than a homeless person). In March 1998, a similar, $7 million SPCA shelter opened in San Francisco but deflected criticism by almost immediately proposing to allow some sleepovers by homeless people as companions for dogs.

Among the variety of substances used in recent spousal poisonings (all successful): cyanamide (an alcoholism-treatment drug), Madrid, Spain, February; antifreeze, Perry, Okla., October; thallium (heart-test chemical), Wilkes-Barre, Pa., July; liquid flea killer, Bangkok, Thailand, July; and pond water in the wife's IV tube, Darlington, Wis., September.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)

-- In March, Rogers, Ark., software developer Rick Bray introduced his TVGuardian sound monitor, which silences offensive words in television dialogue and prints tamer substitutes as captions on the screen. Bray expanded George Carlin's "seven words you can't say" to about 100, and says his device can analyze surrounding dialogue so that, for example, "God" will be muted only when used irreverently. (An earlier version of the software captioned "Dick Van Dyke" as "jerk Van gay.")

-- Serious Grudges: In Sissonville, W.Va., in March, Darrell Carpenter drove a front-end loader through his two-story house, flattening it, rather than honor a court order to sell the house and split the profits with his estranged wife. The next day, in Sayville, N.Y., Richard Hellenschmidt, 45, who owed the title to his 35-foot boat to a bail bond company, blew the boat up by igniting propane fumes, rather than surrender it.

-- In March, three men in Ogden, Utah, were arrested for rape, and according to police, two admitted their roles in the crime. However, the police said, Alberto Salgado, 18, gave a different story: While his buddies held the woman down, an unknown person pushed Salgado on top of her, and he "accidentally" penetrated her because his fly was open since he had just returned from using the restroom. As he kept trying to get up, according to the police account reported in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, the unknown person pushed him back down, again and again, until he had a sexual climax.

-- Two more houses were revealed in March to be public-health problems because owners had allowed cat-breeding to get out of hand. Fifty-four cats were found in a house in a neighborhood of semi-luxury homes in Tarpon Springs, Fla., and 34 were found in an Edmonton, Alberta, house whose owner insisted, "There is no smell. The neighbors are simply neurotic." Meanwhile, authorities in Vietnam said they are being overrun with rats (despite having exterminated 55 million last year) and blame the problem on the number of cats being taken out of circulation as food delicacies bound for China.

-- Movie producer Warren Weideman announced in February that his company would make a crime-and-intrigue adventure film for the Showtime cable channel based on the work of U.S. Postal Service inspectors and said he hopes it will improve the Postal Service's reputation. Several years ago, Weideman worked for USPS scanning movie scripts, trying to find places to insert positive images of the Postal Service and admitted there were "not that many."

-- In February, police in Corpus Christi, Texas, said they planned to charge a 34-year-old man in a spree of gumball machine thefts. They were tipped by the suspect's landlord, who said the man paid his weekly rent in quarters and that when he went to collect one week, he saw a huge pile of Jawbreakers on the floor. And Charles James Harding, 31, was arrested in January in Bountiful, Utah, and charged with stealing as much as $250,000 a year from vending machines (including some in the lobbies of police departments). Police had gone to a house seeking another man on a drug charge, but Harding was there, too, along with a large box of quarters whose existence neither man could adequately explain.

The Sleepwalking Defense to homicide finally made its way to the United States in February after having achieved success in a famous case in Canada 10 years ago. Phoenix inventor Scott Louis Falater said he was sound asleep during the time he stabbed his wife 44 times and during the time neighbors watched him hold his wife's head underwater in a backyard swimming pool. Just as the Canadian defendant had supposedly driven 14 miles to his mother-in-law's home while asleep and beat her with a tire iron, Falater managed to put on gloves, kill the woman, bandage a cut, and dispose of his bloody clothes, all while asleep. Not impossible, said an expert on sleep disorders.

-- In February, Houston City Councilman Rob Todd sent the vice squad to investigate Myrtle Freeman's Condoms & More shop, but they turned up no violations. Frustrated, Todd, noting that the novelty inventory included chocolate lollipops shaped like breasts and items like "edible panties," then sent the health department in to close the store for not having a license to serve pre-packaged food. To avoid closing, the condom store chose to discontinue its grocery section.

-- In October, the town of Morris, Ala., came within a few days of having the IRS commandeer its assets to satisfy a $60,000 back-tax bill, but it came up with the money by mortgaging City Hall. To solve a similar problem, Mayor Zenon Chica of El Palme, Peru, proposed in March to auction off City Hall altogether and had lined up four bidders willing to start at about $350,000.

-- In November, Oregon State University physics professor John Gardner had a federal grant application rejected, apparently solely because it was not typed double-spaced. (Gardner, himself, is blind; he was applying to work on technology for the disabled.) And in December, the Georgia Court of Appeals turned down, irrevocably, an appeal by the state in a $2.7 million personal-injury case because the state's paperwork was submitted in New Times Roman typeface instead of the required Courier.

-- The Horror of Barking Fish: The new pet nuisance code adopted in January by the city council of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., permits a maximum of four pets, except that five is permissible if none weighs more than 10 pounds, and 10 is permissible if none weighs more than one pound, and 25 is permissible (no more) if they are all fish.

-- In Pittsburgh in September, Francis Glancy, 41, with a blood-alcohol reading more than three times the legal limit, fell off his bike, knocking himself out, and was charged with DUI under a 1993 ruling that makes a bicycle a "vehicle." However, the statute permits first offenders to avoid a conviction if they get counseling and agree to a 30-day driver's license suspension. Glancy had no driver's license so the judge told him to apply for one, then allow it to be suspended for 30 days so he could get the conviction erased.

-- The Beat Goes On in Texas: Donald Wayne Martin killed his wife, two stepchildren and himself in January. Michael Wayne Hall and another white supremacist were arrested in February in the killing of a woman. And faring better was Wesley Wayne Miller, who was finally approved for imminent parole after serving 16 years for the murder of a woman.

-- The latest man to shock mourners by walking in to his own funeral, according to a March Reuters report from Bahia Blanca, Argentina, was Robinson Gonzalez, 21. (His mother had mistakenly identified a shooting victim as her son.) Unlike in at least one of the previous instances, in which the mother of the "deceased" died of shock upon seeing that her offspring was still alive, Mrs. Gonzalez merely suffered an anxiety attack.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 8306, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33738, or Weird@compuserve.com. Chuck Shepherd's latest paperback, "The Concrete Enema and Other News of the Weird Classics," is now available at bookstores everywhere. To order it direct, call 1-800-642-6480 and mention this newspaper. The price is $6.95 plus $2 shipping.)