Dutch artist Iepe created the sport of chess boxing, which began in earnest in Amsterdam in November with several matches of six four-minute chess rounds alternating with five two-minute boxing rounds... more

Municipal employee George Pavlovsky stalked through his shop in April, drunk, carrying a loaded, sawed-off shotgun (sending colleagues fleeing in fear), and looking for the two supervisors who had rec... more

Enraged that his computer was virtually disabled by e-mail spam earlier this year, Charles Booher, 44, of Sunnyvale, Calif., allegedly repeatedly threatened employees of the spammer with torture (cast... more

The man convicted of blowing up the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people, lives in relative luxury in a private four-room suite in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison, according ... more

Michael Nelson opened a law firm in an Orlando, Fla., suburb recently (plush leased office space, a Mercedes company car, a letterhead listing law partners) and began soliciting business from drug con... more

-- For 23 years, Dennis Hope, 55, of Gardnerville, Nev., has operated a business selling people "official" title to land on the moon, Mars and Venus for about $20 an acre. Although others are in the s... more

-- For 23 years, Dennis Hope, 55, of Gardnerville, Nev., has operated a business selling people "official" title to land on the moon, Mars and Venus for about $20 an acre. Although others are in the s... more

In November, just three days after a published report that lawyers were about to collect $350 million on the settlement for the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 explosion (with another $480 million to come, und... more

In October, West Point, Ky., hosted 12,000 visitors for the weekend Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot, billed as the nation's largest, with a separate competition for flame-throwers. Especially c... more

As of mid-October (six months after the so-called fall of Baghdad), nearly one-fourth of U.S. troops in Iraq still had not been issued life-saving Interceptor ceramic body armor and were using compara... more

The Federal Communications Commission ruled in October that the "F word," used as an adjective with the "ing" ending by U2 singer Bono during the live telecast of the Golden Globe awards ceremony in J... more

According to a September BBC report, police in South Korea are investigating some of the 22,000 complaints made already this year by computer gamers that characters and property that they have acquire... more

Renewing a debate, Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr reported in September that human infection by Taxoplasma gondii (to which cat owners are vulnerable as they clean litter boxes) tends to make women "r... more

Hurricane Isabel roared through Virginia Beach, Va., in September, inflicting serious property damage, despite public calls for prayer to keep it away by prominent resident Rev. Pat Robertson, whose C... more

A man, so far unidentified, created a frenzy in London in September when he began offering a free call-in service in which he (dressed in a full "superhero" costume of colorful tights, cape and mask),... more

Between June and August, high school dropout Jonathan Harris, 34, acted as his own lawyer in three Philadelphia felony cases and won them all, including a murder trial that could have sent him to deat... more

Females in tribes in Kenya and other African nations are finally rebelling at the ancient custom of requiring a newly widowed woman to pay to have sex with the village's "cleanser" to purify her soul ... more

Tensions are brewing in the family of Zell Kravinsky, 48, and his psychiatrist-wife, Emily, over what she believes is his excessive altruism, according to an August profile in The New York Times. Krav... more

Researchers Steven Potter (Georgia Tech) and Guy Ben-Ary (University of Western Australia, Perth) have created a robotic "arm" that makes a painter's rudimentary brush strokes at Ben-Ary's lab, direct... more

-- Wired magazine reported in August that an order screen at the big e-mail spammer, Amazing Internet Products, was left unsecured and was hacked into recently, revealing not only an inexplicably larg... more

-- The Future of War: Although India and Pakistan have backed off of their recent potentially nuclear confrontation over Kashmir, computer hackers from both countries have stepped up their wars agains... more

-- Largo, Fla., private school principal (and Disney fanatic) Dick Baker, 52, was under pressure in August to resign after revelations by the St. Petersburg Times that he took chosen middle-school-age... more

-- Toning up one's body is apparently a need that unites diverse soldiers in America's so-called culture war. In July, USA Today profiled the Lord's Gym in the West Palm Beach suburb of Greenacres, ca... more

-- On the heels of a journal report on increased use since 1999 of posthumous sperm extraction (so the family line can be continued even after the father passes away) came a June report than an Israel... more

-- British shock artist Damien Hirst, chronicled several times in News of the Weird (e.g., skinned dead cattle in copulating positions), told The Guardian newspaper in June that he had discovered a ne... more

-- Motorist Catherine Donkers got a ticket in Portage County, Ohio, on May 8 for not having her baby strapped in, mainly because she was breastfeeding it while she drove. Rather than pay the $100 fine... more

-- Retailers in Los Angeles, New York and Miami say more and more young, urban, heterosexual men are choosing to dress in women's tight, low-slung jeans and to use stylish lotions, fragrances and hair... more

-- A June Associated Press dispatch from Macha, Bolivia, reported on the most prominent of the annual Tinku festivals that neighboring tribes on the country's high plains engage in. On a midnight in M... more