Sure, your fancy SUV may have ventilated seats and Wi-Fi, but does it have electrified door handles? The Guardian reported on Jan. 25 that a new vehicle has hit the market targeted at the particularly fearful driver -- the Rezvani Vengeance. Costing up to $499,000, the Vengeance has bulletproof glass, strobe lights, wing mirrors that emit pepper spray and no back windshield -- instead, the driver can monitor a live video stream of what's going on behind the car. Sure to win you a popularity contest in the pickup lane at your kid's school, the Vengeance also has a loudspeaker so you can call to little Timmy without leaving the safety of your seat. Extras include bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks. The Irvine, California, company teases potential buyers on the website: "Vengeance is yours." Wow. [Guardian, 1/25/2023]

Dream Job

Five lucky participants will clear a cool $1,000 to do what they wanted to do anyway: Eat cheese before bedtime. Fox5-TV reported that Sleep Junkie, a mattress review website, hopes to test the legend that eating cheese before bed causes nightmares, so they're asking "dairy dreamers" to consume a wide variety of cheeses, log their sleep and provide feedback about sleep quality, energy levels and bad dreams. The best part? Participants will be reimbursed for the cheese! The catch: You have to sleep alone. [Fox5, 1/20/2023]

Police Report

A 31-year-old woman was charged with two counts of robbery and possession of a weapon (ahem) on Jan. 22 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after a puzzling attempt to steal a pizza, the CBC reported. Around 3 a.m., she allegedly entered a crowded restaurant and demanded a pizza, brandishing a firecracker as a threat. She was denied the pie, so she lit the firework and ran off with a pizza. Outside the restaurant, she got into a cab, but the driver asked her to get out because she was being belligerent. When the driver stepped out of the car, she jumped into his seat and took off, dragging the 54-year-old several meters down the street. Officers caught up with the stolen cab and caught the pizza thief when she became stuck in a snowbank. [CBC, 1/23/2023]

That Rule Doesn't Apply to Me

A dump truck driver in Contra Costa County, California, either couldn't read or didn't care when he barreled through a road closure barricade on Jan. 23, KTVU-TV reported, and ended up with his front left wheel in a sinkhole. The "road closed" sign was found beneath his vehicle, and the driver escaped without injury. Excessive rains have caused "flooding, mudslides, sinkholes and other issues" in the area, county officials noted. [KTVU, 1/23/2023]

Bright Idea

If you're looking for a crafty project for 2023, the online shop Savor has you covered, Slate reported. For the low, low price of $46.95, you can put together your own "In Case I Go Missing" binder, which Savor says "makes it super easy for the true-crime obsessed to record their key stats for their loved ones." Those facts include medical and financial information, fingerprints and lists of "hangout spots." One woman said she added "a hair sample just in case they need it for DNA testing." Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, soothingly says, "The majority of adults will not go missing or be kidnapped." Her colleague Patrick McLaughlin offers some ideas for the kit, though: recent photos, the unlock code for your phone, pics of tattoos, scars or birthmarks, handwriting samples -- but he warns that such binders might not be admissible as evidence. [Slate, 1/22/2023]

That Guy

Dennis Garsjo, 73, of Glasgow, Montana, may not know your name when he greets you on the street, but he'll call out to you anyway, using your birthday. "Top of the morning to ya, April 11," he might say, according to KRTV. Garsjo has memorized more than 3,000 birthdays and says he came by the talent naturally. "My mother remembered all our relatives' birthdays before she started getting dementia," he said. "I don't think my talent is all that special. I'm more impressed by musicians who can play a song from memory on the piano." Still, residents of Prairie Ridge Village, where he works, enjoy The Birthday Guy, as he's known, and he loves surprising people with their special day. [KRTV, 1/26/2023]

Clothing Optional

-- Brittney Marie Reynolds, 35, entered St. Mary's Cathedral in chilly Fargo, North Dakota, on Jan. 24 and was seen on security camera footage knocking over a potted plant, then approaching a large statue of Jesus on the wall, according to KMOV-TV. She ripped the statue from the wall and threw it to the floor, then headed back out -- all while topless and shoeless, in temps under 20 degrees. Rev. Riley Durkin called police, who caught up with Reynolds as she bolted across the street. Officers noted that she wasn't able to answer questions and appeared to be under the influence of a substance. [KMOV, 1/25/2023]

-- Meanwhile, in willful disobedience of every mother's "wear clean underwear" edict, Timothy O'Rourke of Danville, New Hampshire, crashed his car on Jan. 25 and ran from the scene, wearing nary a stitch of clothing. WHDH-TV reported that officers found O'Rourke "running behind Main Street homes wearing no clothes and coated in his own blood." He was charged with DWI and resisting arrest, and presumably given some jail garb to wear. [WHDH, 1/25/2023]

Awesome!

Vanyar, one of the equine competitors in the Tokay Stakes race on Jan. 22 in Nagoya, Japan, crossed the finish line first. However, Oddity Central reported, Vanyar was missing one thing, which led to his being disqualified: a rider. Vanyar's jockey fell off as soon as they left the gate, and the second-place horse's jockey couldn't catch up to the riderless horse (although they were the technical winners). After crossing the finish line, Vanyar coolly slowed down and sauntered off toward the exit. [Oddity Central, 1/24/2023]

News You Can Use

KFC Thailand has partnered with perfume experts during the Lunar New Year to create what every finger-lickin' good fan wants: fried chicken incense. Oddity Central reported that the incense sticks look good enough to eat and smell even better. Alas, you can't buy them: The incense will be awarded through a raffle on KFC Thailand's Facebook page. [Oddity Central, 1/20/2023]

Special Delivery

During a basketball match between Duquesne University and Loyola Chicago in Pittsburgh on Jan. 25, officials briefly stopped play at the 16:10 mark of the second half, TribLive reported. At that moment, a man in a yellow hoodie walked onto the court and approached Loyola player Philip Alston, but apparently without malice: He had a McDonald's bag in his hands, and a video recording caught him yelling, "DoorDash?" Commentators, officials and players seemed stumped about who ordered the food, but someone finally claimed the delivery. A Duquesne official said he believed the event was staged, and sure enough, a closeup of the delivery guy reveals a microphone clipped to his T-shirt. [TribLive, 1/25/2023]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

Early on Jan. 14, in Monterrey, Mexico, Carlos Alonso, 32, allegedly broke a glass door at Christ the King Parish and entered, intending to rob the church, Catholic News Agency reported. But as he tried to flee with a statue of St. Michael the Archangel in hand, he tripped and fell on the angel's sword, seriously wounding his neck. Passersby saw the injured Alonso and called for help; he is expected to be charged after he recovers from the fall. The statue was unharmed. [CNA, 1/17/2023]

Recent Alarming Headline

On Jan. 16, a drive-thru customer at a coffee shop in Auburn, Washington, wanted more than an extra shot, KCRA-TV reported. As the barista handed Matthew Darnell, 38, his change through the window, a surveillance camera caught him grabbing her arm and pulling her toward him as he fumbled with a zip tie. The barista was able to pull away from him and close the windows as his dollar bills went flying. He drove off, but a distinctive "Chevrolet" tattoo on his arm was captured on video, along with his side profile. Police later reported that Darnell had been arrested at his home in Auburn and was held on $500,000 bail. [KCRA, 1/19/2023]

Molehill, Meet Mountain

After getting into a dispute with staff at Jinling Purple Mountain Hotel in Shanghai on Jan. 10 over a misplaced laptop, a 28-year-old man named Chen decided to escalate, CBS News reported. He crashed his car through the glass lobby doors and careened around the space, knocking over fixtures and terrifying other guests, who tried to get the driver out of the car. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Are you crazy? Are you?" onlookers screamed at him. As he attempted to exit the lobby, he hit a door frame and came to a stop, and police took him into custody. It turns out the laptop had been stolen and was found outside the hotel; no one was injured. [CBS News, 1/11/2023]

Animal Antics

Carrier pigeons have been couriers of legitimate and nefarious items for centuries, but officials at the Pacific Institution in Abbotsford, British Columbia, nonetheless were stunned when a gray bird with a tiny backpack landed in a fenced inmate prison yard on Dec. 29. The CBC reported that officers "had to corner it," according to John Randle, Pacific regional president of the Union for Canadian Correctional Officers. "You can imagine how that would look, trying to catch a pigeon." After some time, they were able to grab it and remove the package, which contained about 30 grams of crystal meth. "We've been focusing so much on drone interdiction ... Now we have to look at, I guess, pigeons again," Randle said. They set the little guy free and are investigating its origin. [CBC, 1/6/2023]

Fail

When Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, was built in 2012, the district installed a high-tech lighting system that was intended to save on energy costs, NBC News reported. But the software that controls the lights failed on Aug. 24, 2021, and every light in the school has been on since then. Aaron Osbourne, the assistant superintendent for the district, says the glitch is costing taxpayers "in the thousands of dollars per month on average, but not in the tens of thousands." Teachers have removed bulbs where possible, and staff have shut off breakers to darken some of the exterior lighting. But help is on the way! Parts from China have arrived to fix the problem, which is expected to be completed in February. [NBC News, 1/19/2023]

Family Values

-- It's important to encourage your children in their scholastic endeavors. But an unnamed mother in La Grange, New York, took parental support too far when she snuck into Arlington High School on Jan. 17 before school started to watch her freshman daughter beat up another girl. The Mid Hudson News reported that Mom was caught on video using vulgar language and egging her daughter on as the girls tussled. Superintendent Dr. Dave Moyer said the woman blended in with the students coming to school by wearing a backpack. "The students and the mother involved ... will be held accountable for their actions," Moyer said. [Mid Hudson News, 1/18/2023]

-- WSMV-TV reported that a car that crashed into a mailbox in Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 14 was driven by an underage motorist -- REALLY underage, as in 5 years old. The child's father, John Edwin Harris, 53, was seen by a witness grabbing the kid and running from the scene, police said. Officers found multiple open bottles of alcohol inside and ran the tags; when they arrived at Harris' home, he was driving away in his wife's car. He failed a field sobriety test, could barely stand up and smelled of alcohol. He was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident -- where's the child endangerment charge?! -- and was released on $4,000 bond. [WSMV, 1/16/2023]

Repeat Offender

An unnamed 62-year-old man from Garfield Heights, Ohio, was arrested -- for the 70th time -- in early January after he allegedly stole a shopping cart full of packaged meat to sell to restaurants, WJW-TV reported. The Walmart in South Euclid alerted authorities to the theft; in the parking lot, the thief transferred the goods to a stolen suitcase and threw what wouldn't fit in a dumpster. He told officers he sells the meat half-price to area restaurants. He was booked, again, for theft. [WSW, 1/10/2023]

It's Come to This

Between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 108% increase in a certain smuggled item at ports of entry, Fox5-TV reported on Jan. 18. It wasn't fentanyl or heroin, though. Seized egg products and poultry were the hot catch as prices soared in the United States. "My advice is, don't bring them over," said CBP supervisory agriculture specialist Charles Payne. Or, he advised, if you do, declare them so you won't be fined. Thirty eggs in Juarez, Mexico, cost $3.40 -- a fraction of what they'd cost in the U.S. because of an outbreak of avian flu that forced producers to euthanize 43 million egg-laying hens. [Fox5, 1/18/2023]

Least Competent Criminal

Federal prosecutors charged Mohammed Chowdhury, 46, of Boston with one count of murder-for-hire on Jan. 17, ABC News reported, after he allegedly contracted with "hired killers," aka federal agents, on the internet. Chowdhury had shared his wife's and her boyfriend's work and home locations, photos and work schedules with the contractors, and wanted both of them snuffed out -- all for $8,000, with a $500 down payment. The agents met with Chowdhury for two months to plan the murders. "No evidence. No evidence from like, you know, that, uh, I did something, you know?" Chowdhury told them. He was arrested as they met to collect the down payment; he could face up to 10 years in prison. [ABC News, 1/19/2023]

Awesome!

Dominican sailor Elvis Francois, 47, was rescued by the Colombian navy on Jan. 18 after surviving 24 days drifting from the island of St. Martin in the Netherlands Antilles, NPR reported. Francois said he had been making repairs to a sailboat when currents swept it out to sea. He scrawled "help" on the boat's hull, then survived on a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder, seasoning cubes and collected rainwater while he waited for a rescue. "I called my friends, they tried to contact me, but I lost the signal," Francois said. "There was nothing else to do but sit and wait." He finally caught the attention of a passing airplane by signaling with a mirror. "I thank the coast guard. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be telling the story," he said. [NPR, 1/19/2023]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

LEAD STORY -- Cavity Sam Lives

On Jan. 9 in Kyiv, Ukraine, a surgeon removed an unexploded grenade from the chest cavity of a 28-year-old Ukrainian soldier, The Guardian reported. The weapon lay just below the man's heart, and two "sappers" (military engineering soldiers) were on hand during the delicate operation to neutralize the device after it was removed. Doctors were unable to use electrocoagulation, a method that controls bleeding, because of fear that the grenade might detonate. "I think this case will go down in medical textbooks," said Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine's internal affairs ministerial adviser. No word about how the grenade ended up in the soldier's chest cavity to begin with. He will now undergo rehabilitation. [Guardian, 1/12/2023]

Least Competent Criminals

Two arsonists were in the hot seat -- and they hadn't even been caught -- after they set fire to a Bakersfield, California, immigration services building on Jan. 2, Fox News reported. Footage from a Ring security camera captured the masked individuals as they spread gasoline around the building's base. But when one bent to light the fire, the flames spread to both people's clothes, causing them to run away screaming. The suspects are still at large. [Fox News, 1/4/2023]

Eyewitness News

Riders on the MAX light rail system in Gresham, Oregon, witnessed a brutal assault around 2 a.m. on Jan. 3, KPTV reported. A 78-year-old man on the train platform was attacked by another man, who "chewed off the victim's ear and part of his face," police said. "The injury was so severe that responders could see the victim's skull." The suspect did not provide investigators with a real name, but through fingerprints he was identified as Koryn Kraemer, 25, who had recently moved to the area from Georgia. He was charged with assault in the second degree. [KPTV, 1/3/2023]

Aero-naughty-cal News

Passengers aboard a charter flight on Jan. 8 from the Siberian city of Magan, Russia (where it was 41 degrees below zero), had to brave even more extreme temperatures when the rear door of the plane flew open in midflight, the New York Post reported. "People had their hats blown off," said Sergei Lidrik, 33, a passenger headed to Magadan on Russia's Pacific coast. One man had just unfastened his seatbelt when the door blew open, and he was nearly sucked out, along with luggage and other personal belongings. The plane, an Antonov An-26, was manufactured between 1970 and 1986. The pilot turned back to Magan and made an emergency landing, and there were no injuries. [NY Post, 1/9/2023]

It's Baaaacckkk

The atmospheric river battering California has another weird consequence, SFGate reported on Jan. 10. The storms are making the Golden Gate bridge eerily "sing." Nearby residents first noticed the phenomenon during summer storms in 2020, when they heard a "screeching that sounded like torture." A Building and Operating Committee report from 2020 said the cause was the retrofit of 12,000 slats on the west side of the bridge. The cost to add clips that would stop the noise is $450,000; officials said installation is due in the coming months. [SFGate, 1/10/2023]

Inexplicable

In Coventry, England, someone dubbed the Cat Shaver is catching cats and shaving a square into their fur, Metro News reported on Jan. 11. Not just a small patch, either: 6-year-old Tallulah had a large bald spot on her stomach that owner Bonnie Towe noticed when her daughter picked the cat up. "Did someone take her and bring her back? Or did they do it in a car?" Towe wondered. "We did notice she wasn't going out quite as much. She mostly sits at home and looks out the window." Other victims' owners have discovered one another on Facebook, speculating that the cats are being marked as targets. But no other harm has come to any of them. [Metro News, 1/11/2023]

Mistaken Identity

A walker out for a stroll in Wickham, Australia, in early January came across what they thought was a dead body clothed in a tracksuit, according to ABC News. Police cordoned off the area and began an investigation, but later concluded that the remains belonged to a cow. Roeburne Police Sgt. Dale Harmer voiced his frustration: "It has caused police to use an entire day and three police officers guarding a scene for something which was never a human in the first place." And what a waste of a perfectly fine tracksuit. [ABC News, 1/10/2023]

Check Twice, Engrave Once

The Washington, D.C., Korean War Wall of Remembrance pays tribute to more than 36,000 American service members who were killed in that conflict. But according to The New York Times, it's also rife with misspellings and omissions. Historians Hal Barker and Edward Barker Jr. of Texas, who run the Korean War Project, call the monument "a damn mess" and say it displays more than 1,000 spelling errors, and 500 names are missing altogether. The National Park Service passed the buck to the Defense Department, which supplied the names. DOD said compiling the list was "challenging." "No one bothered to check it before they set it in stone," said Ted Barker. "But now that it has been done, we need to get it right." [NY Times, 1/11/2023]

Compelling Explanation

Fans of romance writer Susan Meachen were devastated in September 2020 when they read on her Facebook page, titled "The Ward," that she had taken her life in response to online bullying, CNN reported. So imagine their surprise in early January when they read a new post there, claiming to be from Meachen herself. "I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it's right or not," the post read. "There's going to be tons of questions. ... My family did what they thought was best for me and I can't fault them for it. ... I am in a good place now and I am hoping to write again. Let the fun begin." When a fellow romance writer asked for an explanation, Meachen responded, "I simply want my life back." Her former assistant, Connie Ortiz, told CNN she was "devastated" by Meachen's acts. "I did not know what Susan was doing, even though we were close." [CNN, 1/10/2023]

Break Out the Crab Legs

Firefighters were called to the Associated Milk Producers Inc. plant in Portage, Wisconsin, on Jan. 2 after flames broke out there, WMTV reported. But they were hampered by melted butter: "Butter was running down like 3 inches thick on the steps, so our guys were ... trying to drag the hose line. The hose line got so full of butter they couldn't hang onto it anymore," said fire Chief Troy Haase. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was called in after the fire was contained to assess the butter runoff, some of which went to a water treatment plant. But about 20 gallons ended up in a nearby canal; booms were used to contain the buttery mess. Officials say the environmental impact appears to be low. [WMTV, 1/3/2023]

What's in a Name?

Someone bought a winning $15.1 million Megabucks ticket at -- wait for it -- Wayne's Food Plus in Luck, Wisconsin, WISN-TV reported on Jan. 5. "We could not be happier for the winner," said store manager Paul Wondra (also a great name). "They truly got lucky in Luck." [WISN, 1/5/2023]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.